that might well be quickly remedied for the benefit of all
concerned.

[Illustration: Plaza Principal, Mayaguez. A Public Celebration of the New
Flag's Advent, under the Auspices of the Local School-teachers and their
Pupils.]

As we passed the occasional little hacienda, set in its grove of cocoanut
palms or orange-trees, dusky and wrinkled women came forth from the doors,
bearing upon their heads huge jars, from which we filled our ever-parched
canteens with cool, sweet water. They also brought us mangoes and other
native fruits, and queer cigars of most abominable flavor. Because we were
forbidden to eat of the fruit, we stuffed ourselves with it, and looked for
more. From time to time a weary or sick soldier would lay himself down by
the roadside, to be picked up later on by an ambulance; but, as the day
wore on, the intervals of rest grew longer and more frequent. We had but
one opportunity to water the sweating horses of the artillery, and then it
was a painful matter of buckets. We munched hard-tack for our noonday meal,
and made merry over it, talking of the day when we should go home and feast
on beans and beefsteak and countless other things of which the heathen
wot not. We were intensely voluble or silent by turns, and invented new
nicknames for each other, which were so apt, spite of being touched with
bitterness, that they stuck forevermore. And never, so far as I can
remember, did any one mention the "Maine" or Cuba Libre.

At last, shortly after sunset, we descended a long, steep hillside, and
went into camp in the valley of the Rio Grande, just without the gates of a
small town, uninteresting in character, and Sabana Grande by name. We had
marched only twelve miles, but were hungry, limp, and ugly. So, having
crammed down a hasty supper of nothing in particular, we made short shift
of absent tents, and, pulling our blankets to our chins, lay face upward
to the stars that made us homesick, and slept the sleep of tired little
children.

I was wakened in the middle of the night by a distant jangle of sabres and
rattle of hooves. Seeing our officer of the day, Lieutenant R.E. Callan,
standing not far away and looming gigantic against the sky, I asked him the
meaning of the noise; and he replied that it was Captain Macomb's troop
of cavalry just coming in. I lit my pipe and talked for a while with the
lieutenant of other things than war--Maude Adams and John Drew, football,
ambition, and books--till finall