would result he awaited the issue.
Governor Leedy, of Kansas, telegraphed for him, and he became Colonel
of the Twentieth Kansas. He went with General Miles to Cuba in June,
1898, and sailed with his regiment for Manila in October. Three weeks
before he sailed Colonel Funston met Miss Ella Blankhart of Oakland.
As impetuous in love as in war he wooed and won her, the marriage
taking place the day before the transport sailed.

Of his daring risks and feats in the Philippines and of his capture of
Aguinaldo the general public is so familiar as not to need
recapitulation here. Of his qualities as a fighting man pure and
simple, there can be no two opinions. Says General Harrison G. Otis:
"Funston is the greatest daredevil in the army, and would rather fight
than eat. I never saw a man who enjoyed fighting so much." Another
friend of his once said that Funston was a sixteenth-century hero,
born four hundred years or so too late, who had ever since been
seeking to remedy the chronological error of his birth.

CHAPTER XIII.

IN THE REFUGE CAMPS.

=Scenes of Destitution in the Parks Where the Homeless
Were Gathered--Rich and Poor Share Food and Bed
Alike--All Distinctions of Wealth and Social Position
Wiped Out by the Great Calamity.=

Next to viewing the many square miles of ruins that once made San
Francisco a city, no better realization of the ruin can be gained than
from the refugee camps located in the districts which were untouched
by the flames. Golden Gate park was the mecca of the destitute. This
immense playground of the municipality was converted into a vast
mushroom city that bore striking resemblance to the fleeting towns
located on the border of a government reservation about to be opened
to public settlement.

The common destitution and suffering wiped out all social, financial
and racial distinctions. The man who before the fire had been a
prosperous merchant occupied with his family a little plot of ground
that adjoined the open-air home of a laborer. The white man of
California forgot his antipathy to the Asiatic race and maintained
friendly relations with his new Chinese and Japanese neighbors.

The society belle of the night before the fire, a butterfly of fashion
at the grand opera performance, assisted some factory girl in the
preparation of humble daily meals. Money had little value. The family
who had foresight to lay in the largest stock of foodstuffs on the
first day