came
forward.

"If you like," he said, "we'll try to arrange some part of the work that
you can do all yourself, writing and everything else, so that it will
be 'real' editorial work, and you'll be able to see your own writing in
print."

Hamilton thanked him fervently, and from that day on would have done
anything for his new superior.

"This is a considerable change, Mr. Alavero," said Hamilton the
following morning, when he found himself at a table littered with maps
and drawings of the island, with papers in Spanish and English, with
reports and circulars containing pictures of the sub-tropical landscapes
and towns of Porto Rico. "I have been doing nothing but Alaska for a
month past."

"Too cold!" the Porto Rican cried, with a shrug of the shoulders. "I was
in Washington this last winter and I thought I should die of freezing."

"You are from Porto Rico yourself, Mr. Alavero?"

"I was never away from the island at all," was the reply, "never even on
a steamboat until I came to the United States last autumn; I came to
show the people in your Congress that the coffee growers of Porto Rico
need help."

"Why?"

"Porto Rican coffee is the finest in the world," the editor answered
with a graphic gesture, "and when Porto Rico was Spanish we could sell
in Europe at high prices, but now the European tariff against the United
States includes us, and our coffee is taxed so that we cannot sell it.
And the American market is satisfied with Brazilian coffee, which is of
a cheaper grade."

"Is coffee the principal crop down there?" queried the boy. "I notice
that nearly half these papers and books deal with coffee plantations."

"It is still, but not as it once was," the Porto Rican answered. "Sugar
and tobacco are the other big crops."

"Coffee is easy to grow, isn't it?" asked the boy. "It doesn't want all
the attention that cotton does?"

"After a grove is well-established, no, though we prune a great deal;
but sugar, yes. That's not such an obstacle though. There is plenty of
labor on the island."

"Isn't the bulk of the island colored?"

"No, no, no," answered the Porto Rican, shaking his finger in emphatic
denial, "more than three-fifths are pure white, a much smaller
proportion of negroes than in some of your Southern States. The
negroes were slaves, but Spain freed them in 1873. There was no war." He
smiled. "We are a most peaceful people."

[Illustration: GATHERING COCOANUTS. Where the census-taker