find anything to eat in the city,
and asked her if she would not please get my table-steward "Tommy" to
lower to me over the ship's side a few slices of bread and butter and a
cup of coffee. A half-shocked and half-indignant expression came into
her face as she mentally grasped the situation, and she replied with
emphasis: "Certainly! just wait a minute." She rushed back into the
cabin to call Tommy, while I sat down on a bag of beans with the
comforting assurance that if I did not get something to eat that
afternoon there would be a fracas on the _State of Texas_. Mrs. Porter
evidently regarded it as an extraordinary state of affairs which forced
the vice-president of the Red Cross to go hungry in a starving city
because a ship flying the Red Cross flag refused to allow him on board.

In five minutes more Tommy appeared in the starboard gangway of the
main-deck, and lowered down to me on a tray a most appetizing lunch of
bread and butter, cold meats, fried potatoes, preserved peaches,
ice-water, and coffee. I resumed my seat on the bag of beans, holding
the tray on my knees, and gave myself up to the enjoyment of the first
meal I had had in Santiago, and the best one, it seemed to me, that ever
gladdened the heart of a hungry human being in any city. The temperature
in the fierce sunshine which beat down on my back was at least 130 deg. F.;
the cold meats were immediately warmed up, the butter turned to a
yellowish fluid which could have been applied to bread only with a
paint-brush, and perspiration ran off my nose into my coffee-cup as I
drank; but the coffee and the fried potatoes kept hot without the aid of
artificial appliances, and I emptied the glass of ice-water in two or
three thirsty gulps before it had time to come to a boil. Mrs. Porter
watched me with sympathetic interest, as if she were enjoying my lunch
even more than she had enjoyed her own, and when I had finished she
said: "It is absurd that you should have to take your meals on that hot,
dirty pier; but if you'll come down every day and call for me, I'll see
that you get enough to eat, even if they don't allow you on board."

All the rest of that week I slept in the Anglo-American Club and took my
meals on the pier of the Juragua Iron Company, Mrs. Porter keeping me
abundantly supplied with food, while I tried to make my society an
equivalent for my board by furnishing her, three times a day, with the
news of the city. Getting my meals in a basket or