The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-04-11

another of the turbulent characters 7 smacked him in the eye with ripe man. go, which is a kind of soft boiled egg that grows on a tree down there. And then | the whole bunch of these daredevil muti- neers took their doll rags and their own rags and beat 1t to the tall pines But a strong force of the standing Cuban army, consisting of seven major generals and a private-the private to drive the 'bus-took the field in person and soon the desperate insurrectos or fuss-cats, as wa would call them in our language, had been i rounded up. At present they're locked up 1 in one of those impregnable Cuban for tresses with ironware jingle-jangles on their legs, playing dominoes with their guards and 1t is expected that they may get thirty days on the island. The deadly machette has been sheathed, or is now used only for domestice and household purposes, such as slicing the native gou- lash. The correspondents have beaten their spurs Into corkscrews. and peace is once more restored to distracted Cuba"
 Well it can't last" said the House Detective. ''Wot do them people know about governin' themselvesT
 You talk like an American conces- sion" said the Hotel Clerk. Ever since the Spaniards were licked by gentleman who shall be nameless here, but he's now on his way to Africa to kill lions at s1 a word, we've been promising the Cuban
 
 in his own way, and afraid he'd make good at it.
 Mature has dealt with his favored land most bountifully Without cultivation the palm, the pine. the banana, the red ant, the orange and the flea of commerce grow to amazing proportions. There is bush which produces a boiled custard that's all ready to eat with a spoon. The stinging lizard abounds freely the coffee beans grow wild upon the hillside and through the cerdure roams a dark brown caterpillar nine inches long and as big around as your thumb, and when you mash him underfoot it's like stepping on a. chocolate eclair. In places. I'm told, tho soil Is that rich you can plant an ordi- nary walking stick and in three weeks time grow silk umbrella with neat bone handle. There are fully 80 varieties of wild fruits, all tasting exactly alike- There's a pinching bug with an equip ment extending out from his brow that makes him look like an ice wagon helper. It's summer the year round and nearly everybody isMaking their vacation.
 Its such a land, Larry, as any large American trust would be glad to take charge of, paying the natives just enough to keep them hungry and not enough to make them naughty and disdainful of manual labor; the said pay to be in the
 
 at the commissary store conducted by the company. But the native Cuban has distaste amounting to prejudice against being a Golddust Twin for anybody. His complexion, in many instances, suits the role, but his nature is too restful. Amer ican promoters who wanted to give him a steady job at small safe wages found him as coy as young buck rabbit in the spring of the year. So the first time he took his machette out of the kitchen where his wife was making the national scrapple with it, and girded it on his waist and wont forth for one of those informal little o'clock revolutions, with cucumber sandwiches and fried bananas, such as all Latin American races delight in from time to time, except during Lent, there were loud cries from Wall street, lower Broadway and Washington. and pretty soon we had about 10000 of our troops down there to keep order. You bet they kept 1t, too. They kept all there was. AS the poet says, Hell hath no fury like Cuban corned,' but you can bet that any time Havana gent got a roomy and commodious skate aboard and went down South Main street looking for trouble he was liable to come back up Market look ing for dentist
 we cleaned up his fair city for him until he didn't feel at home in 1t any
 
 tell as he drifted along the Brado which family had the swellest garbage. We made him sanitary but uncomfortable. We took away his money from him and built roads with 1t. We discouraged him for the time being from the false lure of pol itics and the sinful lust for coffee. We deprived him of his favorite partime which was having the yellow fever and we spent many of our leisure hours giv- ing him advice that he hadn't asked for. In short, we did everything we could think of for him, also to him. and with him. And yet, as soon as our gallant soldiers are Withdrawn, he begins to call us hard names in Spanish and work up in- surrections that are almost as serious as a dispute with the umpire up at the Polo grounds
 "1t looks like to me the Cubians got no gratitood for all we done for 'em,' said the House Detective.
 Larry" said the Hotel Clerk, "if you were a little bit of guy and a husky chap about the size of James J. Jeffries. only much stronger. had you backed up fin corner slugging your face off, and I should come along and hand the big fellow one of those sleep-my- -little-one- sleep-my- pretty sleep lullaby love- taps on the jaw and put him down for the count. you'd feel very grateful to me- wouldn't you? Of course you would. But after that if I kept soming around to your place and throwing it up to you what I'd done for you, and informing you to your face what a futile, inconse- Quential little dud of a dub you were, and advising you how to manage your family and how to raise your children and telling you how much rent you ought to pay and whether or not you could keep a COW, and if I handed you a hard slap on the map every time you protested, I have a suspicion amounting to almost a conviction that pretty soon you'd begin to lose the edge off your gratitude. And after awhile, if I kept on, some evening in the dark of the moon, you'd be up an alley waiting for me to come along so you could call my attention to something that you had wrapped up in a piece of paper, the same being a gas pipe"
 'TIow about tho Philippines ?" asked the House Detective. "I a.it heard of no outbreaks out there lately"
 "The principal outbreak of recent years has been located nearer home,' said the Hotel Clerk. 'but now that he's gone to Mombassa we'll have time to listen to the news from elsewhere and I wouldn't be surprised any day to hear that our little brown brothers in the Philippines had been carrying on secret Irritation with those small yellow friends of ours, the Japs.
 ''Sometimes I think. Larry, we're not a hit at this colonial game. The English manage the thing better, having had more experience. They inaugurate a colonial policy by wiping out the original inhab- itants. But our work seems to lack that desirable golden oak finish shown by our British cousins. We wrestled with the of he 1oi for nf