edom of speech, conscience and country. There are pamphlets printed
the size of an average playing card, from thirty to forty pages each,
one "Don Rodriguez," and another "The Telephone." These I obtained
in Hongkong from the hands of the niece--daughter of the sister of
the Doctor,--and she presented me also his poem written when in the
shadow of death, of which this volume gives a prose translation. The
poem is the farewell of the author to his friends, his country and the
world. It is given in prose because in that style the spirit of the
poet, indeed the poetry itself, can be rendered with better results,
than by striving to sustain the poetic form. The poem would be regarded
as happy and affecting in the thought that is in it, the images in
which the ideas gleam, the pathos of resignation, the ascendency of
hope, if there were nothing in the attendant circumstances that marked
it with the blood of historic tragedy. This poetry that it would have
been high treason to own in Manila, for it would not have been safe
in any drawer however secret, was treasured by the relatives of the
martyr at Hongkong. The niece spoke excellent English, and there was
at once surprise and gratification in the family that an American
should be interested in the Doctor who sacrificed himself to the
freedom of his pen, so much as to ascend the steep places of the city
to seek his writings for the sake of the people for whose redemption
he died. On the page showing the face of the Doctor and the scene of
his execution, there are two men in black, the victim standing firm
as a rock to be shot down, and the priest retiring after holding the
crucifix to the lips of the dying; and the portrait of the beautiful
woman to whom the poet was married a few hours before he was killed. It
is said that Rizal wanted to go to Cuba, but Captain-General Weyler
answered a request from him that he might live there, that he would
be shot on sight if he set foot on Cuban soil. Rizal, hunted hard,
attempted to escape in disguise on a Spanish troop ship carrying
discharged soldiers to Spain, but was detected while on the Red Sea,
returned to Manila and shot to death. I stood on the curbstone that
borders the Luneta along the principal pleasure drive, between the
whispering trees and the murmuring surf of the bay, just where the
martyred poet and patriot waited and looked over the waters his eyes
beheld, the last moment before the crash of the rifles that destroyed