statesman and a gentleman. As a "crank" letter he turned it over to the
Washington correspondents. You can imagine what they did with it.

The day following the reporters in New York swept down upon the
chancellery and upon the Minister of Foreign Affairs. It was the "silly
season" in August, there was no real news in town, and the troubles of
De la Boissiere were allowed much space.

They laughed at him and at his king, at his chancellery, at his broken
English, at his "grave and courtly manners," even at his clothes. But in
spite of the ridicule, between the lines you could read that to the man
himself it all was terribly real.

I had first heard of the island of Trinidad from two men I knew
who spent three months on it searching for the treasure, and when
Harden-Hickey proclaimed himself lord of the island, through the papers
I had carefully followed his fortunes. So, partly out of curiosity and
partly out of sympathy, I called at the chancellery.

I found it in a brownstone house, in a dirty neighborhood just west of
Seventh Avenue, and of where now stands the York Hotel. Three weeks ago
I revisited it and found it unchanged. At the time of my first visit,
on the jamb of the front door was pasted a piece of paper on which
was written in the handwriting of De la Boissiere: "Chancellerie de la
Principaute de Trinidad."

The chancellery was not exactly in its proper setting. On its door-step
children of the tenements were playing dolls with clothes-pins; in the
street a huckster in raucous tones was offering wilted cabbages to women
in wrappers leaning from the fire escapes; the smells and the heat of
New York in midsummer rose from the asphalt. It was a far cry to the
wave-swept island off the coast of Brazil.

De la Boissiere received me with distrust. The morning papers had made
him man-shy; but, after a few "Your Excellencies" and a respectful
inquiry regarding "His Royal Highness," his confidence revived. In the
situation he saw nothing humorous, not even in an announcement on the
wall which read: "Sailings to Trinidad." Of these there were _two_; on
March 1, and on October 1. On the table were many copies of the
royal proclamation, the postage-stamps of the new government, the
thousand-franc bonds, and, in pasteboard boxes, the gold and red
enamelled crosses of the Order of Trinidad.

He talked to me frankly and fondly of Prince James. Indeed, I never
met any man who knew Harden-Hickey well who did not spe