The story of a toiler's life

the long version

"This memoir gives new insights into the experiences and forgotten hopes of the white-collar professionals who provided late nineteenth-century Irish nationalism with its activists. First published in 1921, after the author's death, the book's unfashionable political and religious attitudes ensured its neglect, although it includes memorable vignettes of meetings with Parnell, Davitt and Pearse. It gives an invaluable description of the poverty and sectarian divisions of post-Famine rural Ulster and the anti-Irish prejudices of Britain in the 1880s, but also of the new opportunities provided by a slowly modernising state which a lucky and enterprising boy could attain at great emotional cost."--BOOK JACKET.