his wife. And the _Hattie_? If there's
any of you never seen her, then you ought to when she was alive. A great
little vessel, the _Hattie Rennish_!"

KILLORIN'S CARIBBEAN DAYS

Revolutions? These days? In those South American countries? Sh-h, boy,
sh-h--you don't know. In th' old gunboat days in the Caribbeans we never
called it a good week 'nless we suppressed three or four. And at that I
think we used to miss some.

Believe me, son, those were the days when they knew how to
revolutionize. You'd turn in of a night with the Blues or the Reds or
Greens, in, and have breakfast maybe in the mornin' with the Purples or
the Violets and brass bands celebratin' the vict'ry in the Palace
square.

And the first thing every new party did when they got in was to start up
the Bureau of Printin' 'nd Engravin' and roll off a few billion dollars
of gover'ment money. In Guadalquique the money for all parties was the
same, except each party used to rubber-stamp its name across the face.
An old navy yeoman hit the beach there one time named Tommie Anderson
and he was made chief of the Bureau o' Printin' 'nd Engravin' by the
Greens because he could make a rubber hand-stamp while they waited.
Some traitor who didn't get his 'd absconded with the 'ficial one,
Tommie said.

Of course that kind o' work tends to debilitate the best kind o' money.
In Almatara, which was one o' the best little revolutionary countries
ever I struck, you could see nigger boot-blacks shootin' crap for two or
three thousand dollars a throw of a holiday in the market square. It
used to cost a thousand dollars for a shine--that's a first-class shine
for a foreigner, I mean. The natives didn't have to pay that much.

Yes sir, son, a great old cruisin'-ground in the old days, the
Caribbeans, and fine times there, believe me. In the old _Hiawatha_ we'd
be layin' in to Kingston, or Havana, or Matanzas, or some port along
there, with big liberty parties ashore every day, when word 'd come from
Washington tellin' us there was hell to pay over to Guadalquique, or
Almatara, or somewhere else, and for us to beat it over there and sit on
'em before they got going.

The _Hiawatha_ she was a good old gunboat ratin' four fourteen and two
six-pounders, and, bein' the handiest thing in the fleet, 'twas always
her they detailed for those little revolutionary jobs, and aboard her we
got so, after a while, we didn't mind the report of a new revolution
any more 'n you