Wait a moment. Let me say one thing. The finest display of oratory I ever
heard was a speech made by John F Taylor at the college historical
society. Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, the present lord justice of appeal, had
spoken and the paper under debate was an essay (new for those days),
advocating the revival of the Irish tongue.
He turned towards Myles Crawford and said:
--You know Gerald Fitzgibbon. Then you can imagine the style of his
discourse.
--He is sitting with Tim Healy, J. J. O'Molloy said, rumour has it, on
the Trinity college estates commission.
--He is sitting with a sweet thing, Myles Crawford said, in a child's
frock. Go on. Well?
--It was the speech, mark you, the professor said, of a finished orator,
full of courteous haughtiness and pouring in chastened diction I will not
say the vials of his wrath but pouring the proud man's contumely upon the
new movement. It was then a new movement. We were weak, therefore
worthless.
He closed his long thin lips an instant but, eager to be on, raised an
outspanned hand to his spectacles and, with trembling thumb and
ringfinger touching lightly the black rims, steadied them to a new focus.
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