n rallied from the shock of the
cowardly deed which sacrificed the lives of inoffensive sailors--why is
it, I say, that from under the very paws of the Sphinx, so far away in
Arizona--and at the call of Captain O'Neill, the noble mayor of
Prescott, there arose the first contingent of fighting volunteers in
our war with Spain? The inexorable Sphinx had resolved to grant to our
beloved and honored friend its last and most exalted gift, a hero's
death on the field of battle. It has graven the name of Prescott, the
city of the Sphinx, on scrolls of everlasting fame, as the town which
rallied first to the call of the President and as the only town which
gave the life of its mayor, its first, its most honored citizen, to the
nation.

On the isle of Cuba, in the battle of San Juan Hill, fell the gallant
Captain William Owen O'Neill of the regiment of Rough Riders. Peace to
his ashes!

I have been told the circumstances surrounding his death by friends,
who were soldiers of his company. They were lying under cover behind
every available shelter to dodge a hailstorm of Mauser bullets,
awaiting the order to advance. Captain O'Neill exposed himself and was
instantly killed. How could he avoid it? How could it have been
otherwise? What can keep an Irishman down in the ditch when bullets are
flying in air, "murmuring dirges" and "shells are shrieking requiems?"
You may readily imagine an Irishman on the firing line, poking his head
above the ground, exclaiming: "Did yez see that? And where did that
Dago pill come from now? Shure it spoke Spanish, but it did not hit me
at all, at all, Begorra!"

The activity of the Sphinx ended not with the battle of San Juan Hill,
for it cast the luster of its glorious power on the gallant Lieutenant
Colonel of the famous regiment of Rough Riders, Theodore Roosevelt, and
on him it conferred in time the greatest honor to be achieved on earth,
it made him President of the United States of America. Not knowing it,
perhaps, he still is at the time of this writing in the sphere of
influence and in the power of the Sphinx and is doing its bidding. Else
why should he, as is well known, favor the jointure of New Mexico and
Arizona into one State? Surely the loyal subjects of the Sphinx, the
Pueblo Indians of Aztec blood, live mostly in New Mexico, and the
cunning idol plans to deliver them out of the hands of the Spanish
Mexicans, and place them under the protection and care of the Americans
of Arizona,