"O'Connell was a great man. I never saw him, but I heard of his name. One time I saw his picture in a paper, where they were giving out meal, where Mrs. Gaynor's is and I kissed the picture of him. They were laughing at me for doing that, but I had heard of his good name. There was some poor man, a tinker, asked help of him one time in Dublin, and he said, 'I will put you in a place where you will get some good thing.' So he brought him to a lodging in a very grand house and put him in it. And in the morning he began to make saucepans, and he was making them there, and the shopkeeper that owned the house was mad at him to be doing that, and making saucepans in so grand a house, and he wanted to get him out of it, and he gave him a good sum of money to go out. He went back and told that to O'Connell, and O'Connell said, 'Didn't I tell you I would put you in the way to get some good thing?'"
"There was a gentleman sent him a present one time, and he bade a little lad to bring it to him. Shut up in a box it was, and he bade the boy to give it to himself, and not to open the box. So the little lad brought it to O'Connell to give it to him. 'Let you open it yourself,' says O'Connell. So he opened it, and whatever was in it blew up and made an end of the boy, and it would have been the same with O'Connell if he had opened it."
"O'Connell was a grand man; the best within the walls of the world. He never led anyone astray. Did you hear that one time he turned the shoes on his horses? There were bad members following him. I cannot say who they were, for I will not tell what I don't know. He got a smith to turn the shoes, and when they came upon his track, he went east and they went west. Parnell was no bad man, but Dan O'Connell's name went up higher in praises."
"I saw O'Connell in Galway one time, and I couldn't get anear him. All the nations of the world were gathered there to see him. There were a great many he hung and a great many he got off from death, the dear man. He went into a town one time, and into a hotel, and he asked for his dinner. And he had a frieze dress, for he was very simple, and always a clerk along with him. And when the dinner was served to him, 'Is there no one here,' says he, 'to sit along with me; for it is seldom I ever dined without company.' 'If you think myself good enough to sit with you,' says the man of the hotel, 'I will do it.' So the two of them sat to the dinner together, and O'Connell asked was there any news in the town. 'There is,' says the hotel man, 'there is a man to be hung to-morrow.' 'Oh, my!' says O'Connell, 'what was it he did to deserve that?' 'Himself and another that had been out fowling,' says he, 'and they came in here and they began to dispute, and the one of them killed the other, and he will be hung to-morrow.' 'He will not,' says O'Connell. 'I tell you he will,' says the other, 'for the Judge is come to give the sentence.' Well, O'Connell kept to it that he would not, and they made a bet, and the hotel man bet all he had on the man being hung. In the morning O'Connell was in no hurry out of bed, and when the two of them walked into the Court, the Judge was after giving the sentence, and the man was to be hung. '_Maisead_,' says the judge when he saw O'Connell, 'I wish you had been here a half an hour ago, where there is a man going to be hung.' 'He is not,' says O'Connell. 'He is,' says the judge. 'If he is,' says O'Connell, 'that one will never let anyone go living out of his hotel, and he making money out of the hanging.' 'What do you mean saying that?' says the judge. Then O'Connell took the instrument out of his pocket where it was written down all the hotel-keeper had put on the hanging. And when the judge saw that, he set the man free, and he was not hanged."