Four separate platforms were erected, and Redmond spoke from that nearest to the statue of his old chief.

He dwelt on the universality of the demonstration; nine out of eleven corporations were represented officially by their civic officers; professional men, business men, were all fully to the fore.

But one section of his countrymen were conspicuously absent.

To Ulster he had this to say: "We have not one word of reproach or one word of bitter feeling.

We have one feeling only in our hearts, and that is an earnest longing for the arrival of the day of reconciliation." A feature of that gathering, little noted at the time, assumes strange significance in retrospect.