Delaware gazette and state journal. (Wilmington, Del.) 1883-1902, 1899-04-06
B@siegJ@do
William l.. Alden.

~
sular service), a great many curious
things happen to consul. | could tell
you experiences of mino that | rather
calculate would astonish you some
provided, of course. that you were will
ing to believe them. For instance, [
once stood three weeks siege by 30
American old maids, and | can tell you
was pretty BADLY scared. If you
care to hear the story, | don't mind
telling it to you, though as general
thing | am careful not to speak OF it to
my fellow countrymen.
Along in 1886 l was the American
consul at Aragua, a town in the south
Of Spain about 100 miles from the
coast. The place didn't need an Ameri-
can consul any more than a COW needs
n bicycle; for it had no trade with
America, and no American tourist ever
dreamed of stopping there. However,
the President was a personal friend of
mine, and he wanted to do me good
turn, so he appointed me consul at
Aragua, with a salary just about large
enough to keep me from starvation.
was nightly pleased with the APP
pointment until | got to Aragua, and
found what a lonesome, dead-and- alive
place it was. 1t had about l0,000 in
habitants, and, with the exception Of
the chief of police and two or three
priests, there wasn't a soul in the
whole town that sensible man could
talk with for half an hour.
The chief of police was capital
fellow, who had been in New York,
and could talk considerable English.
He and | were pretty thick, and he
was always ready to do anything that
asked him to do. Then good old Don
Diego, a priest, who had made up his
mind TO convert me to the Roman
Catholic Church, did his level best to
make himself agreeable, and if it
hadn't been that all the voters in my
section of Iowa were Protestsnts, /
should have felt like turning Catholic
just to oblige him. forgot to say
that l could speak Spanish middling
well. That was the reason why the
President sent me to Spain. He said it
would be novelty Tor consul to
speak the language OF the country to
which he was sent, and he wanted to
see how the experiment would work.
One of the first things that an
American consul IN Europe finds out
is that it swarms with American
tramps. Two or three times "a week o
ragged, dirty scoundrel would come to
my office and demand help on the
ground that he was an American citi-
zen. Usually he was a German, or a
Russian, or Polish jew, who said
that he had been naturaliZed in
America and had lost his papers.
suppose that 80 times out of 100 the
fellow lied, and was no more an Ameri.
can citizen than the King of Spain
himself, but / didn't dare to take the
chances that he was an impostor and
treat him as such. Once | did brace
up and tell a man who could only
speak few words of English, and who
said that he had left his papers at his
boarding house, that he was fraud.
He burst into tears, and after fumbling
in his pocket produced lot of dirty
papers, among which was naturaliza-
tion certificate, signed by the clerk of
New York court, who was an old
friend of mine. | begged the man S
pardon, and lent him So on the spot,
but year afterwards l saw New
York paper containing an account of
the brutal and outrageous treatment
that an American citizen had received
at the hands of the American consul at
Aragua. That was lesson to me. and
after that j never disputed any man S
assertion that he was an American
citizen, knowing that if he really was
a naturalized American he might have
friend in Congress who would de-
nounce me as a man unfit to hold an
Office, and would either have me turned
out or have my consulate abolished.
OF course, / couldn't give money to
all this army of trsmps, but | furnished
them with railroad tickets to the
nearest seaport. The chief of police had
authority to send all rogues and vaga-
bonds out of the province; and when
ever | sent a tramp to him with the
request that he would give the man
third class ticket and send him on his
way, the chief would do it as a matter
of course. This would have been all
right had it not been that the Ameri-
can consul at Avilas, the seaport to
which sent my tramps, grew indig-
nant, and before had been a month
In Office wrote to me accusing me of
sending him all the tramps in Spain,
and promising to make it lively for me
If l didn't quit it. This made me
mad; and after that | told every tramp
that came to me to 60 straight to the
consul at Avilas, who was a very rich
man and would be certain to give him
money. 1t was hard on the consul, |
admit; for he was at the end of the
railroad, and he couldn't pass the
tramps on to another consul, as [ had
done. He had to keep them from
starving until he could send them
away on the next steamer that came
into. port, and his actual outlay in
buying steamer tickets and in boarding
the tramps must have amounted to at
least half his salary. He couldn't
complain to the government, for il he
did he would have been accused of
unwillingness to help Americans in
distress, so the only thing he could
do was to write me abusive letters.
The more letters he wrote the more
tramps | sent him. Word got around
among all the tramps in Europe that
by calling OH me they could get an
Introduction to the consul at Ayilas
which would be worth having, and.
consequently, before | had been six
months in office my average weekly
shipment of tramps was about trebled.
Do you remember the wreck of the
steamer Morning Light, off Avilasl in
the year 1887? Well, it don't matter
whether you do or not. The fact is
that the steamer was wrecked, though
only four men were drowned. Among
the passengers was personally con-
Quoted party of 80 American female
school teachers, all of whom were
unmarried and over 40 years of age.
The conductor Of the party was one
OF the men who were drowned, and
as the steamer went down in the
middle of the night and in the biggest
kind of a hurry, the school teachers
hadn't time to save anything except
the clothes they stood in. don't sun