The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1899-07-27
eRESIEGEDs

BY W. L. ALDEN.

Yes, Slr, remarked the Hon. Daniel
Smith. formerly of the American consular
service. "a great many curious things hap
pen to a consul 1 could tell you expert
ences Of mine that rather calculate would
astonish you some, provided. of course,
that you were willing to believe them.
For instance, l once stood a three-weeks'
siege. by 80 American old maids, and can
tell you l was pretty badly scared. II
you care to hear the story, I don't mind
telling 1t to you. though as a general thing
l am careful not to speak Of 1t to my fell
low-countrymen.
Along In 1886 was the American consul
at Aragua. q town In the south of Spain.
about a hundred miles from the coast. The
place didn't need an American consul any
more than cow needs q bicycle for 1t
had no trade with America. and no Ameri-
can tourists ever dreamed Of stopping there.
However. the president was a personal
friend Of mine. and he wanted to do me
good turn. 80 he appointed me consul at
Aragua, with a salary Just about large
enough to keep me from starvation. l was
nightly pleased with the appointment un-
til l got to Aragua and found what a lone
some. dead and alive place 1t was 1t had
about ten thousand inhabitants, and, with
the exception of the chief of police and
two or three priests. there wasn't soul
In the whole town that a sensible man
could talk with for half an hour. The chief
OF police was a capital fellow, who had
been in New York and could talk consid-
cradle English. He and l were pretty
thick. and he was always ready to do any
thing that 1 asked him to do. Then good
old Don Diego, priest that had made up
his mind to convert me to the Roman
Catholic faith. did his level best to make
Inns 0v n-1 = Nd No.,
that all the voters in my section Of Iowa
were Professionals, 1 should have felt like
turning Catholic just to oblige him. I for
got to say that I could speak Spanish mid
ding we'll. That was the reason why the
president sent me to Spain. He said 1t
would be 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.
lone Of the first things that an Ameri-
can consul in Europe finds out Is that 1t
swarms with American tramps. Two or
three times a week a ragged, dirty scoun-
drel would come to my office and demand
help on the ground that he was an Ameri-
can citizen. Usually he was German, or
Russian, or Polish Jew, who said that
he had been naturalized In America and
had his last papers 1 suppose that ninety
d
and was no more an American citizen than
the king OF Spain himself: but I didn't care
to take the chances that he was an i'm
poster and treat him as such. Once l did
brace up and tell a man who could only
speak a few words Of English, and who
said that he had left his papers in his
boarding house. that he was a fraud. He
burst into tears. and after fumbling at his
pocket producing a lot of dirty papers
among which was a naturalization certif1-
cate. signed by the clerk of New York
court who was an old friend of mine. l
begged the mans pardon and lent him IS
on the spot, but year afterwards l saw a
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 a lesson to me, and after that 1
never disputed any mans assertion that
he was an American citizen, knowing that
II he really were naturalized American
he might have friend in congress who
would denounce me as a man unfit to hold
office, and would either have me turned
out or have my consulate abolished
OF course l couldn't give money to all
This army Of tramps. but l furnished them
with railroad tickets to the nearest sea-
port. The chief of police had authority
to send all rogues and vagabonds out of
the province, and whenever l 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 1t 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
I sent my tramps, grew indignant, and be-
bore l had been a month in Aragua wrote
10 af l.;
tramps in Spain and promising to make it
lively for me if 1 didn't quit it. This made
me mad, and after that told every tramp
who came to me to go straight to the con-
sui at Avilas, who was very rich man
and would be certain to give him money.
1t was hard on the consul, l admit, for he
was at the end of the railroad, and he
couldn't pass the tramps on to another
consul as l 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 if he did he would have
been accused of unwillingness to help
Americans in distress, the only thing
he could do was to write me abusive let
tiers. The more letters he wrote the more
tramps 1 sent him. Word got round among
al 1.-The tramps in Europe that by calling on
me they could get an introduction to the
consul of Avilas, which would be worth
having. and consequently, before 1 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. of Avilas, 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
a personally conducted party Of 81 Amer
lean 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 was drowned. and as the steamer
went down In the middle of the night in the
hadn't time to save anything except the
clothes they stood in. 1 don't suppose
there was $40 In the whole party, and, of
course. the moment they got ashore they
went to the consul for assistance
when those 80 old maids marched into
the cOnsufs office and told him they hadn't
any money. and that they wanted him to
send them to Paris. he saw his way. The
women afterwards told me that he was as
smiling and pleasant as man could NOS
sibly be, and don't doubt it. He under
stood that his chance to get even with mo
had come at last, and he lost no time in
improving It, The next day. about II
o'clock in the morning, the whole gang
of women came into nv office and demanded