who was driven out to give his best years and
his life for a strange people under a strange flag.

GENERAL WILLIAM WALKER,

THE KING OF THE FILIBUSTERS

IT is safe to say that to members of the younger generation the name of
William Walker conveys absolutely nothing. To them, as a name, "William
Walker" awakens no pride of race or country. It certainly does not
suggest poetry and adventure. To obtain a place in even this group
of Soldiers of Fortune, William Walker, the most distinguished of all
American Soldiers of Fortune, the one who but for his own countrymen
would have single-handed attained the most far-reaching results, had to
wait his turn behind adventurers of other lands and boy officers of
his own. And yet had this man with the plain name, the name that
to-day means nothing, accomplished what he adventured, he would on this
continent have solved the problem of slavery, have established an empire
in Mexico and in Central America, and, incidentally, have brought us
into war with all of Europe. That is all he would have accomplished.

In the days of gold in San Francisco among the "Forty-niners" William
Walker was one of the most famous, most picturesque and popular figures.
Jack Oakhurst, gambler; Colonel Starbottle, duellist; Yuba Bill,
stage-coach driver, were his contemporaries. Bret Harte was one of his
keenest admirers, and in two of his stories, thinly disguised under a
more appealing name, Walker is the hero. When, later, Walker came to New
York City, in his honor Broadway from the Battery to Madison Square was
bedecked with flags and arches. "It was roses, roses all the way." The
house-tops rocked and swayed.

In New Orleans, where in a box at the opera he made his first
appearance, for ten minutes the performance came to a pause, while the
audience stood to salute him.

This happened less than fifty years ago, and there are men who as boys
were out with "Walker of Nicaragua," and who are still active in the
public life of San Francisco and New York.

Walker was born in 1824, in Nashville, Tenn. He was the oldest son of
a Scotch banker, a man of a deeply religious mind, and interested in
a business which certainly is removed, as far as possible, from
the profession of arms. Indeed, few men better than William Walker
illustrate the fact that great generals are born, not trained.
Everything in Walker's birth, family tradition, and education pointed
to his becoming a member of one of the "lea