out of the running,
the choice by common consent fell upon Tomas Estrada Palma; and a better
choice could not have been made. We have already seen something of his
work as the head of the Cuban Junta in New York. He was now past the
prime of life, having been born at Bayamo in 1837, but he was in full
mastery of his ripe intellectual and physical powers. The son of a rich
and distinguished family, he was sent in his youth to Seville to study
law, and for a time practised it with much success in Cuba. But he was a
patriot, and when the Ten Years' War began he entered the Cuban ranks
and had a distinguished career in the field, as also in the councils of
the Republic in the field. Unfortunately he was captured by the enemy
and was sent to Spain, where he was a prisoner until the end of the war.
Then he went to Honduras, became Postmaster-General of that country, and
married the accomplished daughter of President Guardiola. Thence he
went to the United States and for some years was the head of an
admirable private school for boys at Central Valley, New York; most of
his pupils being from Cuba and other Latin-American countries.

At the outbreak of the War of Independence in 1895 the veteran patriot
promptly offered himself for any service that he could perform. Though
nearing the age of three score, he would gladly have taken up his rifle
again and gone into the field. But there was more important and more
profitable work for Cuba to be done than that would have been, and he
entered upon it with zeal, as the head of the Cuban Junta in New York.
Especially after the death of Marti, he was the guiding spirit of that
organization, and as such, at least in the eyes of America and of the
world at large, he was the actual head of the Cuban revolution, even
more than the President of the Provisional Government in the patriot
stronghold in the mountains of Cubitas. He was not merely the very
active head of the working organization of the Junta, which supplied the
Cuban army with the sinews of war, but he was the diplomatic
representative of Cuba, though only informally recognized, at
Washington. He was at this time still in the United States, and was
making no effort whatever to secure the Presidential nomination.
Doubtless he would have been quite content not to receive it, and would
have given his heartiest and most efficient support to any other man who
might have been chosen. But there was a spontaneous turning of all Cuban
ey