been lost, and it is as King Congo that he was
known. That his royalty was genuine the other negroes never doubted,
and to parade on the day of the kings without a real king of their
own color to marshal the procession was not to be thought of.

El Rey Congo was aware of his power and of the impression he made on
the humbler residents of Santiago. Every now and then he heightened his
superiority to common clay by appearing in public in a starched collar,
looking over the top of it with an assumption of pride and ease, as
of one born to such luxury, but in reality chafing his neck against
its ragged edges and longing to be in the fields, where he would not
need to be spectacular. One year the day of the kings dawned without a
cloud, and Santiago was in a holiday humor. Everybody who had work to
do postponed it till to-morrow, as if All Kings' Day were like every
other day; for the procession that year was to be extra large and
fine. King Congo was to ride with spurs, though barefooted, and was
to have a military guard of four men. The band had been increased,
especially in the drum department, and the ladies, who would have
figured in the king's court if he had had a court, were turbaned
in new bandanas of red and yellow. The clergy and officers of the
garrison had promised to review the parade, and the cooper, down by
the custom-house, suggested that he'd better put a few hoops around
King Congo to keep his swelling heart from cracking his ribs.

A long trumpet-call from the square announced the hour for assembly,
and all eyes turned toward the street through which the king had been
used to make his entry. He did not come. Tardiness is a privilege
of kings. It proves them superior to the obligations laid upon the
vulgar herd. Beside, what is an hour in a manana country? But as
the hour went by and the king kept refraining from his arrival, some
presuming subjects went to look him up, and after much inquiry and
pedestrian exercise they found the sovereign in jail. His Majesty
explained that he had been arrested for debt a few days before,
and that because of a shortage in the paltry coin of a white man's
state--a wretched matter of $4.15--he was doomed to remain behind
the bars, perhaps forever. The messengers ran back to the square,
made an excited appeal to the populace, scratched the required sum
together in penny subscriptions, paid the innkeeper every centavo
that the king owed him, woke up the sheriff and the mag