called street. There was an open sewer in the middle. Goats browsed near the top and small Cuban children played in the dirt, very lightly provided for as to clothes. The Military Hospital, an enormous low, square building colored a dull terra cotta, lay before us. It was still under Spanish officials, and the smart-looking soldier at the door waved us blandly to enter. Over seventeen hundred Spanish sick and wounded were quartered here, and very comfortable they seemed too. They were waited upon by Sisters of Charity, and many of them had their beds in the court-yard. The officers' private rooms ran along in the outer building. Usually they had a growth of black beard and, in the white gowns provided by the hospital, their racial characteristics were accentuated-they were unmistakably Latins. I was surprised at the general cleanliness and good order. To be sure there were piles of rubbish in a back court and the horns and skin of an ox lay there just as they had been taken off the animal, but there were such things as that on every street of the city-the carcasses of dogs or cats and other refuse too filthy to describe. The odors arising from them were

not pleasant and seemed sufficiently strong to germinate almost any kind of disease on the calendar! The people show a supreme indifference-an unconsciousness-in regard to such matters which demonstrates that this condition must be habitual and any departure from it would be hailed with astonishment.

After leaving the hospital we skirted by the Spanish headquarters and entered a street which led us past several barricades to the trenches, the barbed-wire, and the batteries. On either side, in small plaster and brick houses which had been deserted by their owners, a thousand or more of the Spanish soldiers must have been quartered. They literally swarmed over the porches and coorsteps. Some were eating a late breakfast of beans and coffee and mangoes. An orderly sent into the town from our headquarters had stopped to chaff in a language of broken sentences and gestures. Take them as a whole they did not look very dilapidated, not so much so as many of our poor fellows. The Spanish uniform is especially adapted to the climate. It looks like bed-ticking, only it is much thinner. The campaign hats are of straw, sometimes

with a cockade at the side. Sergeants had two long red stripes hanging loose from the shoulder to the wrist of the blouse. All the firearms had been given up, but many of the men still carried machetes.

We returned from the Spanish trenches in time to do some shopping, not much tired by

a ten-mile tramp. The city had become alive with Spanish soldiers and they were selling everything that they possessed. The contingent of war correspondents from the Aransas had had no chance for many days to spend money. Bargaining for machetes was going

CUBAN HUrs On the outskirts of the city.

on with the Spaniards on all sides. They were bought at prices varying from one to six dollars. I secured one with a horn handle from a soldier, and a Cross of San Fernando, equivalent to the Victoria Cross of the British army, from another. We walked along

the street till we met a soldier who possessed something which we wished to buy. We touched it and said:

"Quantus ?"

Quatro pesos!" would come the answer with the most surprising alacrity, though probably the man had never before considered selling it.

"No, no!" we would say, shaking our heads.

"Si, si!" he would reaffirm. "Tres pesos?"

"No, no!" with a wave of the finger.

If we could agree on a price in Spanish we handed over just half that amount in American money. In the meantime a great concourse of people would gather about and giggle and frown sympathetically. Buttons off the men's coats were very popular, chevrons, decorationsanything. The stores drove the briskest trade of months. Some of our officers had come over from camp to see about their tents still aboard the transports-which now filled the harbor as it had never been filled before-and stopped to purchase soap and other luxuries! We bought fans, indicating what we wanted by

waving our outspread hand back and forth. I inquired for clay water-bottles or "monkeys," and they directed me to a valise store. A tooth-brush was purchased by more pointed gestures.

Many of our number patronized the Venus Café, where they got the best that the city afforded (which was not much) at exorbitant prices. The proprietor had recently been a Colonel of Spanish volunteers, but now he was a full-fledged Cuban and took extreme pains to impress the fact of his newfound sympathies on the "Americanos." There were many Spaniards in Santiago who turned Cuban about that time on short notice.

We went straggling back to the Aransas laden with goods of all descriptions. One man had three great clay water-bottles

I

T was at a diplomatic dinner given in Berlin a few winters ago that the feasibility of an American becoming a guest at Friedrichsruh was brought under discussion. The American Ambassador, to whom I presented an autograph letter from the President of the United States directing him to secure an invitation for me from the Castle, nearly fainted from shock at my audacity; he called in the First Secretary of Legation to support his dictum: "The thing is impossible, unheard of; no one reaches the Prince, who is regarded as greater than the Emperor; he refuses even royalty; every day prominent countrymen and women of mine come here with such requests; they pull every imaginatle wire, but the door remains closed. The idea is prepos erous. Let me advise you to relinquish it before the disappointment makes you sick, like the frantic society lady we had here from Chicago last year on a similar errand. I am very sorry, but it is absolutely impossible, absolutely hopeless."

"But, your Excellency," I exclaimed, "nothing is hopeless, nothing is impossible."

The situation, however, bristled with difficulties until I held a consultation with a German friend whose mother had been the confidante as well as lady-in-waiting to the old Empress Augusta, to which I summoned the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, than whom there is no more gallant or clever officer in his Majesty's realm. These friends declared that the Prince dearly loved a present, but an almost insurmountable difficulty lay in the selection of what might strike his fancy, for they said the attic of the Schloss was full of gifts in cases which had never been opened, besides any quantity of the more acceptable sort which were distributed throughout the Cast'e. We paused; we considered; a difficult problem confronted us. Then, like an inspiration, those charming lines of Longfellow came into my thought which begin:

Thou too, sail on, O ship of state, Why should I not send the old Prince a noble ship to bear my message? It was soon built. The framework of the ship was three yaic's long, covered with quilted and embossed

laurel and oak leaves, as befitted an cld hero. Parma violets made the sails; lilies-ofthe-valley formed the ropes; at the two mastheads flew the Prussian and the American colors. The cargo consisted of great purple grapes, outvying the largest plums in size, and hot-house strawberries sent from Italy in response to a telegram, as at this season of the year this favorite fruit of the Prince was unattainable in Berlin; from underneath peeped the choicest apples of sunny France and the pomegranates of the South, while bunches of veritable acorns were studded here and there among the fruit, an heraldic emblem in the princely coat of arms.

Then the Baroness von Pummer Esche and I sat down to wait in Berlin while the ship was convoyed to Friedrichsruh by special messenger, together with a little letter which I had written, and another, elegant in diplomatic phrase and diction, from the American Ambassador. On his return we learned that the man had been taken into an anteroom in the Castle, whence, while the Old Chancellor and his family were gathered at table, he could peep through the glass door and watch the Prince, to whom the butler at once carried my beautiful Ship of State." The Prince, surprised, rose to his feet, made a little tour of inspection around the laurel ship, perused the letters which had been handed to him, and caled for a telegraph form. The message he then dictated reached me before the man could return to Berlin; after thanking Von Herzen for the schöne Geshenck, the message read, "Ich werde mich freuen Sie zu sehen," and asked me to telegraph the date of my visit, as the Prince would order the Hamburg express, which rushes past the Castle, to stop at the Friedrichsruh station-an insignificant place by the roadside. Thus did his Excellency the Ambassador's" utterly impossible pass!

come to

As the carriage, with rather dilapidated blue liveries, drew up before the Castle, several gentlemen and a bevy of men servants stood at the entrance, and barely was there sufficient time to get out of my long Alexandrine coat before Countess Rantzan-Bis