s were easily gained, and
hundreds of honest, earnest women were rewarded with paper scrolls
setting forth that they were named as Sisters of the American Soldier,
Patriotic Daughters of America, or Ministering Angels of the Camp and
Cot. Shades of Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton! the very voice of
such self-appointed angels as Miss Perkins was enough to set the nerves
of strong men on edge and to drive fever patients to madness! Even the
Red Cross could not always be sure of its selection. It did prevent the
sending to Manila of certain undesirable applicants, but it could not
prevent the going of Miss Perkins at the expense of the deluded, on
ships that were common carriers, even though she were a common scold.
There she was, portentous as the British Female portrayed by Thackeray.
Backed by apparently abundant means and obviously indomitable "gall,"
she counted on carrying all before her by sheer force of her powers of
self-assertion and the name of the Patriotic Daughters of America. But
the commanding general was the most impassive of men, gifted with a keen
though little suspected sense of humor, and no little judgment in
estimating motive and character. He actually enjoyed the first call made
by Miss Perkins, suggested her coming again on the morrow, and summoned
his chief surgeon and his provost marshal, another keen humorist, to be
present at the interview. It has been asserted that this triumvirate
went so far as to encourage the lady to even wilder flights of
assertion. We have her own word for it that then and there she was
promised as offices three big rooms in the Palace,--the
Ayuntamiento,--six clerks, and a private secretary, but an impartial
witness avows that the sole basis for this was a question propounded to
the provost marshal by the chief surgeon as to whether the chief
quartermaster or the chief engineer should be called on to vacate the
rooms assigned to them as officers in order that the P. D. A. might be
properly recognized and quartered, to which the response was made with
unflinching gravity that something certainly should be vacated "P. D.
Q." if it took all his clerical force to effect it, but this was _sotto
voce_, so to speak, and presumably unheard by the general commanding. It
was gall of another kind, and wormwood, after these first few flattering
receptions, to be greeted thereafter only by aides-de-camp or a military
secretary; then to be told by the chief surgeon that, under in