RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
anniversary of the outbreak of the Ten Years' War in 1858, and it was strange to see all parties uniting in a demonstration of what seemed to be real patriotism.
Havana was decorated in regular old-fashioned Fourth of July style, and there were parades and speeches, bands, banners and fireworks, just as if Cuba were the solidest little Republic in the world. One really couldn't take the situation very seriously after all,—except that it was costing the country a great deal of money and certainly would have cost many foolish lives had it not been taken in hand so promptly.
The next morning we inaugurated Governoon Magoon and took our departure, leaving him to his uncomfortable fate. I remember later a cartoon depicting him as sitting in agony on a sizzling stove labelled "Cuba," while Mr. Taft appeared in the distance in a fireman's garb carrying a long and helpful-looking line of hose. But that illustrated subsequent history.
We sailed from Havana on the battleship Louisiana, escorted by the Virginia and the North Carolina, Mr. and Mrs. Bacon, General Funston, Mr. Taft and I, on the 13th of October, just twenty-nine days from the day on which Mr. Roosevelt had called the momentous conference at Oyster Bay to decide what should be done about Cuba, and we escaped by only a few hours the terrible storm which swept east from the Gulf of Mexico that same evening. It was one of the worst storms the locality had ever known. It did untold damage to property, killed a number of people and by cutting the island off from outside communication gave the United States a short period of acute uneasiness on account of the thousands of American soldiers quartered in Cuba and the big fleet of American battleships lying in Havana harbour. The waters of Hampton Roads were so rough that after boarding the Dolphin for the trip up the Chesapeake and the Potomac to Washington we went ashore at Fort Monroe and took the train.
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