foes and one of the most efficient propagandists of Cuban
independence. For that reason, before he had a chance to enter the ranks
of the patriot army, he was deported from the island and doomed to
exile. He made his way to Mexico, thence to Guatemala, and there, a lad
still in his teens, became Professor of Literature in the National
University of that country--a striking testimonial to his erudition and
culture. After the Treaty of Zanjon he was permitted to return to Cuba,
but he was one of those whom the Spanish government most feared, and he
was therefore kept under the closest of surveillance by the police. It
was not in his nature to dissemble, or to be afraid. He quickly came
before the public in a series of memorable orations, memorable alike for
their sonorous eloquence, their cultured erudition, and their intense
patriotism; in which he set forth the deplorable state in which Cuba
still lay, after her ten years' struggle for better things, and the need
that the work which had been so bravely undertaken by Cespedes and his
associates should be again undertaken and pressed to a successful
conclusion. His orations seemed to have the effect attributed to
Demosthenes in his Philippics: They made his hearers want to take up
arms and fight against their oppressors.

This of course brought upon him the wrath of Spain. He was arrested, and
since he was altogether too dangerous a person to be set free in exile,
he was carried a close prisoner to Spain. But he quickly made his escape
and found asylum in the United States of America; and there his greatest
work for Cuba was achieved. Porfirio Diaz had invited him to make his
home in Mexico, where he might have risen to almost any eminence in the
state, but he declined. "I must go," he said, "to the country where I
can accomplish most for the freedom of Cuba from Spain. I am going to
the United States." In New York City, where he made his home, he engaged
in literary work, and was for some time a member of the staff of the New
York _Sun_. But above all he devoted his time, thought, strength and
means to organizing the Cuban revolution.

He gathered together in the Cuban Revolutionary Party all the surviving
veterans of the Ten Years' War, Cuban political exiles--like
himself--the remnants of Merchan's old "Laborers' Associations," and
welded them into a harmonious and resolute whole. He also traveled about
the United States, in Mexico and Central America, and in Jamaica