The city raised the first monument to O'Connell.
Of course I saw it, and thought it a good likeness. There is a square of
grass and trees near it, where is a monument of Spring Rice, he who,
when O'Connell was sick once, a political sickness, was said to be in
despair:
"Poor Spring Rice, with his phiz all gloom,
Kept noiselessly creeping about the room;
His innocent nose in anguish blowing,
Murmuring forth, 'He's going, going.'"
I did not hear the sweet bells that charmed the life out of the poor
wandering Italian, still I think I have perhaps told enough about the
ancient city of Limerick on the Shannon.
From Limerick up through Clare, the railway passes along by the river
Fergus, a big tributary of the Shannon. A Clare man informed me that
Clare returned Dan O'Connell to Parliament. He sank his voice into an
emphatic whisper to inform us that Dan was the first Catholic who ever
got into Parliament.
I have been taken for this one and that one since I came to Ireland, and
have been amused or annoyed, as the case may be, but I am totally at a
loss to know whom I resembled or was taken for in the County Clare. A
decent-looking countrywoman shook hands with me, telling me she had seen
me in some part of Clare a month ago, and I had never set foot into the
county until to-day.
