Very much the lowest bid came from a firm in Lancaster, Pa., which 

 I felt compelled to accept, much as I wished to give the work to the 

 Boston people, because of the beautiful sample page which they sub- 

 mitted. I wrote Mr. Houghton, asking if I might use that page as a 

 guide to the successful bidders, saying that I knew it to be a very un- 

 usual request which I ventured to make, but that this was not a com- 

 mercial enterprise and neither I nor any of my collaborators, was to 

 receive pay for our work. He very handsomely consented and to his 

 generosity is due the exceptionally fine appearance of the quarto page. 

 After the peace treaty with Spain had been concluded and the first 

 American military occupation of Cuba effected, my Brother was ordered 

 to Havana, as adjutant to General Ludlow, who commanded the city, 

 General Brook being in command of the whole island until relieved 

 by General Wood. In the Christmas vacation of 1899 I secured an order 

 to go to Havana by an Army transport, paying only for my meals. 

 There was no impropriety in this, as it cost the Government nothing. 

 When I boarded the ship at her Brooklyn pier I immediately noticed 

 something famiUar about her and, on examination, the transport 

 Sedgwic\ turned out to be the old City of Chester, which had taken us 

 to England in 1888. The ship's surgeon, too, turned out to be an old 

 acquaintance, for he was the doctor of the Berlin, on which I had 

 crossed in 1895. I reached Havana on Christmas Eve and found my 

 Brother quartered with his staff in the vast Maestranza de Artilleria, 

 in which room was readily found for me. 



On Christmas Day we dined at Quemados with General Fitzhugh 

 Lee, son of the great Confederate leader and a most genial, humour- 

 loving soul. On his staff I was deHghted to find Dr. J. A. Kean, who 

 had been out with us in Dakota and Nebraska on the expedition of 1890. 

 The week I spent in Havana was full of interest, not only in going 

 about and seeing the city and the surrounding country, but also in what 

 I learned from our officers of the Cubans and Spaniards and their, to 

 us, extraordinary ways. Especially enlightening was a talk with Colonel 

 Bhss, then in charge of the customhouse. As Lieutenant-General BHss 

 he distinguished himself in France during the World War. Bhss 

 had put fifty of his clerks under arrest (I saw them marching to jail) 

 for collusion with certain merchants in evading the payment of duties. 

 I asked him: "What about the merchants? are you going to arrest them 

 too?" To which he replied: "I can't arrest the whole city of Havana; 

 there isn't a commercial fortune here that's been made in any other 

 way." He explained the extraordinary mixture of the most meticulous 



C 239 3 



