What should I ask for my dear boy?
The richest gift of wealth or fame?
What for my girl? A loving heart
And a fair and spotless name?

What for my boy? That he should stand
A pillar of strength to the state.
What for my girl? That she should be
The friend of the poor and desolate.

I do not ask that they shall never tread
With weary feet the paths of pain;
I ask that in the darkest hour
They may faithful and true remain.

I only ask their lives may be
Pure as gems in the gates of pearl,
Lives to brighten and bless the world--
This I ask for my boy and girl.

I ask to clasp their hands again
'Mid the holy hosts of heaven;
Enraptured, say: "I am here, O God!
And the children thou hast given."

[Illustration: GEN. ANTONIO MACEO.
The great Cuban Negro warrior.]

GEN. ANTONIO MACEO.

The Great Cuban Negro Warrior.

Gen. Maceo was a born warrior. He came of a race of warriors. Of ten
brothers, he was the last survivor who had escaped the bullets of the
Spaniards in the ten-years' war, begun in 1868, and the present war.
They were all soldiers and patriots, following in the footsteps of
their father, and they all died fighting for Cuba.

The distinguishing characteristics of Antonio Maceo were intense love
of Cuba, courage that knew no fear, and a natural genius for war. He
was of Spanish and African blood, and his enemies often accused him of
waging a race war, but this he always denied, and his friends believed
him. He fought only for Cuban independence.

Gen. Maceo was the terror of the Spaniards. They feared him as they
feared no other Cuban. They put a price of twenty-five thousand
dollars on his head, dead or alive. The Spaniards could not capture or
defeat him in open warfare, and the work of destroying him fell to the
part of an infamous traitor in his camp: his physician, who betrayed
him into the hands of the enemy.

Maceo was great in his life, and in the manner of his death he has
raised up friends for his beloved Cuba all over the world.

His parents were both "pardos"--that is, light-colored mulattoes--and
they were quite well off. Marcos owned and operated a cattle ranch and
a pony express between the town and near-by estates. He was worth
about forty thousand dollars. Antonio was well trained in
contra-Spanish ideas. His father had been quietly interested in the
small revolutionary dis