The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1899-01-01

HLn
formerly of the American consular serv-
Ice a great many curious things hap
Ron To- a consul. 1 could tell you expert
euces Of mine that I rather calculate would
estoDish YOU some, provided, of course, that
vcu were willing to believe them. For in
stance l once stood a three weeks siege
bv thirty-two American old maids, and
can tell you L was pretty badly scared. If
YOU care TO hear the story 1 don't mind tell
ing it to you, though as a general thing
am careful not to speak OF it to my fellow
counTymen
Along i'm 1886 [ was the American consul
at Aragua, q town in the south of Spain
about Il hundred miles from the coast. The
place didn't need an American consul any
more than cow needs bicycle, for it had
40 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
Aracua with a salary just about large
enough to keep me from starvation. L was
nightly pleased with the appointment until
7 got to Aragua and found what lonesome,
dead-ald-alive place 1t was. 1t had about
1900 inhabitants, 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 I were pref
ty 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 Professionals I should have felt like
turning Catholic just to oblige him. for
got to say that 1 could speak Spanish mid
ding we'll That was the reason why the
President sent me to Spain. He said it
would be a novelty for 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 i'm Europe finds out is that it swarms
with American tramps. Two or three times
a week a ragged, dirty scoundrel would
come to my Office and demand help on the
ground that he was an American citizen.
Usually he was a German, or a Russian, or
q Polish Jew, who said that he had been
naturalized in America and had lost his pa
pers. I suppose that ninety-nine times out
of 2 hundred the fellow lied. and was no
more of an American citizen than the King
Of Spain himself, but 1 didn't dare to take
the chances that he was an impostor and
treat him as such. Once l did brace up and
tell 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 a fraud. He burst into tears, and
after fUmbiing in his pocket produced lot
of-dirty papers among which was nat
uralization certificate signed by the clerk
of a New York court, who was an old friend
Of mine / begged the mans pardon and
lent him s. on the spot, but a year after
wards l saw New York paper containing
an account of the brutal and outrageous
treatment that an American citizen had re-
ceived at the hands of the American con-
sui at AragUa That was Il lesson to me,
and after that / never disputed any mans
assertion that ne was an American citizen.
knowing that if he really was naturalized
American he might have friend in Con-
eress who would denounce me as a man un-
tit to hold IN office, and would either have
me turned out or have my consulate abo.-
ished.
4 l
army of tramps. but l furnished them with
railroad tickets to the nearest seaport. The
chief Of police had authority to send all
rogues and vagabonds out of the province;
and whenever sent 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 American consul at Avilas, the
seaport to which 1 sent my tramps, grew
indignant, and before l had been month
I'm 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 1 told
every tramp who came TO me to go straight
t. the consul at Avilas, who was 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 con-
sui as I 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 tTamps, must have
amounted to at least half his salary. He
couldn't complain to the government for II
he did he would have been accused of un-
Willingness 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 1 sent him. Word got
around among all the tramps in Europe that
by calling on me they could get an intro
duction to the consul at Avilas which would
be worth having. and consequently, before l
had been six months in office my average
weekly shipment of tramps was about
trebcd.
DO you remember the wreck Of the steam
cr Morning Light off Avilas, in the year
1857? Well, it don't matter whether you do
or not. The fact is that the steamer was
wrecked. though only four men We're
drowned. Among the passengers was a per-
sonally-cCnducted party of thirty-two
American female school teachers, all Of
whom were unmarried and over forty years
of age. The conductor of the party was one
Of the men who was 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
j don't suppose there was ten dollars in the
whole party and, of course, the moment
they got ashore they went to the consul for
assistance.
When those thirty-two old maids marched