Sunday brought relief. That day there was no exercise; but when we
were aroused we all went to Mass. The Protestant Chapel was used, for
there was no room elsewhere for both prisons-full. Everybody went,
whatever our creed, both for the comfort of one another, and for the
joint comfort of worship. There I saw for the first time the Dublin men
from the Crescent, many of them known to me, many of them wearing the
uniform of the Republican Army, in some cases scarred by battle. It was
a large concourse, and the body of song was a joy to hear after our
enforced silence. The warders sat at regular intervals on seats above
us, with their backs turned to the Altar and their faces toward us,
like strange idols perched aloft.
The priest, I learned, had told the first men on their arrival that
he was there to fulfil his functions only, though he abhorred their
actions and could have no dealings with them. This he had announced
at their first Mass, and he had till now preserved that attitude,
never suffering himself to discover by closer contact the cause of the
sufferings that stirred his anger.
The following day I put myself down to see him, and during the course
of the morning he visited me.
“You wish to see me,” he said. He was exceedingly kind and courteous.
“Yes,” I said; “I wish to congratulate you on the fact that you are not
here in prison with us.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“For preaching sedition, or at least reading seditionary stuff. You
recall the epistle you read yesterday? I think it was misapplied, mind
you. You were exhorting us to do just what we had done, and had been
thrown into prison for; but you read it all the same, and deserve
congratulation. Do you remember:
‘Be ye doers of the Word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own
selves, for if a man be a hearer of the Word, and not a doer, he shall
be compared to a man beholding his own countenance in a glass. For he
beheld himself, and went his way, and presently forgot what manner of
man he was. But he that hath looked into the perfect law of liberty,
and hath continued therein, not becoming a forgetful hearer, but a
doer of the work; this man shall be blessed in his deed.’
“That’s sound talk; every word of it applies; and we are blessed in the
deed, though we are in prison all the same.
* * * * *
In that connection you think over that phrase about the man who looked
into a mirror, and presently forgot what manner of man he was, till he
became a doer of the Word after having looked into the perfect law of
liberty. I thank you for that epistle; and I congratulate you that you
are not in prison.”
Afterwards he moved among us intimately and always. He made it his
business to know each man personally, and there was scarcely a man to
whom he did not endear himself. In very literal truth he spent himself
and his substance for us all. He got into touch with the men’s families
at home, and reassured both man and family as to the state of the
other. During those days, indeed, he lived his life with us, and every
man turned to him as to a brother. What he said to me of his opinion of
the men may pass; but I subsequently heard that he said publicly in his
chapel in the town that if his hearers wished to know what faith was,
what religion, what principle and truth, he would commend them to look
in the jail. He had his convictions and emotions as an Englishman; we
had ours as Irishmen; but there is no man who was at Stafford Jail for
his convictions and emotions who does not cherish with affection the
name of Father Moore.