o compromise Paget they used
his red silk handkerchief. Root I detailed to conciliate the inhabitants
by drinking with every one of them. He tells me he carried out my
instructions to the letter. I also settled one assault and battery case,
and put the chief offender under arrest. At least, I told the official
interpreter to inform him that he was under arrest, but as I had no one
to guard him he grew tired of being under arrest and went off to
celebrate his emancipation from the rule of Spain.

My administration came to an end in twenty minutes, when General Wilson
rode into Coamo at the head of his staff and three thousand men. He wore
a white helmet, and he looked the part of the conquering hero so
satisfactorily that I forgot I was Mayor and ran out into the street to
snap a picture of him. He looked greatly surprised and asked me what I
was doing in his town. The tone in which he spoke caused me to decide
that, after all, I would not keep the flag of Coamo. I pulled it off my
saddle and said: "General, it's too long a story to tell you now, but
here is the flag of the town. It's the first Spanish flag"--and it
was--"that has been captured in Porto Rico."

General Wilson smiled again and accepted the flag. He and about four
thousand other soldiers think it belongs to them. But the truth will
out. Some day the bestowal on the proper persons of a vote of thanks
from Congress, a pension, or any other trifle, like prize-money, will
show the American people to whom that flag really belongs.

I know that in time the glorious deed of the seven heroes of Coamo, or
eight, if you include "Jimmy," will be told in song and story. Some one
else will write the song. This is the story.

IV--THE PASSING OF SAN JUAN HILL

When I was a boy I thought battles were fought in waste places selected
for the purpose. I argued from the fact that when our school nine wished
to play ball it was forced into the suburbs to search for a vacant lot.
I thought opposing armies also marched out of town until they reached
some desolate spot where there were no window panes, and where their
cannon-balls would hurt no one but themselves. Even later, when I saw
battles fought among villages, artillery galloping through a cornfield,
garden walls breached for rifle fire, and farm-houses in flames, it
always seemed as though the generals had elected to fight in such
surroundings through an inexcusable striving after theatrical effe