RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
ango, Mexico. This post was chosen because it is in a dry, mountainous region where the ravages of tuberculosis are supposed to be checked.
Mr. LeRoy was an exceedingly well-informed and studious man. He was a natural linguist, spoke Spanish with ease, and soon was able to acquire enough Tagalog to enable him to go among the people and get their point of view at first hand. He immediately became interested in writing a history of the Islands and wanted much to go to Spain to examine Spanish-Philippine documents at Seville and other places, but he was never able to do so.
In the days when death faced him in New Mexico, whither he had gone after leaving Durango, he wrote, as Grant wrote, on a book which he hoped might furnish some means to his wife after his death. He died before he was able to complete what Mr. Taft says is a very accurate, comprehensive and interesting history of the Archipelago from the beginning down to, and including, Dewey’s victory, the taking of Manila and the work of the first Commission. He had planned to give a full account of the work of the second Commission, with which he was so intimately connected, but his pen dropped before his purpose was fulfilled. His history has been only recently published.
Mrs. LeRoy later went to Washington, and Mr. Taft appointed her to one of the few clerical positions not covered by the Civil Service law. This is in the Land Office where she signs the President’s name to land patents. She is the only person in the government who has the right and power, given by special act of Congress, to sign the President’s name to a document.
Throughout the autumn of 1900 the insurrection dragged itself along; behind any bush the American soldiers were likely to find a lurking “patriot”; and the uncensored reports of the “brave stand” of the Filipinos were being sent
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