late of corned-beef hash on the dock without serious
danger of infecting the ship with yellow fever, typhus, cholera, or
smallpox; and if the captain should object to my being fed in that way
on the ground that the ship's dishes might be contaminated by my
feverish touch, I was fully prepared to put my pride in my pocket and
meekly receive my rations in an old tomato-can or a paper bag tied to
the end of a string.

With all due respect for Red Cross soup, and the most implicit
confidence in Red Cross soup-kitchens, I inclined to the belief that I
should fare better if I got my nourishment from the _State of
Texas_--even at the end of a string--than if I went to the Cuban
soup-kitchen and claimed food as a reconcentrado, a refugee, or a
repentant prodigal son. In the greasy, weather-stained suit of brown
canvas and mud-bespattered pith helmet that I had worn at the front, I
might play any one of these roles with success, and my forlorn and
disreputable appearance would doubtless secure for me at least two
tincupfuls of soup; but what I longed for most was coffee, and that
beverage was not to be had in the Cuban soup-kitchen. I resolved,
therefore, to go to the pier, affirm with uplifted hand that I was not
suffering from yellow fever, typhus fever, remittent fever, malarial
fever, pernicious fever, cholera, or smallpox, and beg somebody to lower
to me over the ship's side a cup of coffee in an old tomato-can and a
mutton-chop at the end of a fishing-line. I was ready to promise that I
would immediately fumigate the fishing-line and throw the empty
tomato-can into the bay, so that the _State of Texas_ should not run
the slightest risk of becoming infected with the diseases that I did not
have.

About half-past one, when I thought Miss Barton and her staff would have
finished their luncheon, I walked down Gallo Street to the pier where
the steamer was discharging her cargo, hailed a sailor on deck, and
asked him if he would please tell Mrs. Porter (wife of the Hon. J.
Addison Porter, secretary to the President) that a Cuban refugee in
distress would like to speak to her at the ship's side. In two or three
minutes Mrs. Porter's surprised but sympathetic face appeared over the
steamer's rail twenty-five or thirty feet above my head. Raising my
voice so as to make it audible above the shouting of the stevedores, the
snorting of the donkey-engine, and the rattle of the hoisting-tackle, I
told her that I had not been able to