AS COMMISSIONER TO SANTO DOMINGO- 1871 495 



mountain chieftain entered, bearing a rifle, and, the first 

 salutations having been exchanged, he struck an oratori- 

 cal attitude, and after expressing, in a loud harangue, his 

 high consideration for the United States, for its represen- 

 tative, and for all present, he solemnly tendered the rifle 

 to me, saying that he had taken it in battle from Luperon, 

 the arch-enemy of his country, and could think of no other 

 bestowal so worthy of it. This gift somewhat discon- 

 certed me. In the bitterness of party feeling at home re- 

 garding the Santo Domingo question, how would it look 

 for one of the commissioners to accept such a present? 

 President Grant had been held up to obloquy throughout 

 the whole length and breadth of the land for accepting a 

 dog ; what, then, would happen to a diplomatic represen- 

 tative who should accept a rifle? Connected with the ex- 

 pedition were some twenty or thirty representatives of the 

 press, and I could easily see how my acceptance of such 

 a gift would alarm the sensitive consciences of many of 

 them and be enlarged and embroidered until the United 

 States would resound with indignant outcry against a com- 

 mission which accepted presents and was probably won 

 over by contracts for artillery. My first attempt was to 

 evade the difficulty. Rifle in hand, I acknowledged my ap- 

 preciation of the gift, but declared to the general that my 

 keeping such a trophy would certainly be a wrong to his 

 family; that I would therefore accept it and transmit it 

 to his son, to be handed down from generation to genera- 

 tion of his descendants as an heirloom and a monument 

 of bravery and patriotism. I was just congratulating my- 

 self on this bit of extemporized diplomacy, when a cloud 

 began to gather on the general's face, and presently he 

 broke forth, saying that he regretted to find his present 

 not good enough to be accepted; that it was the best he 

 had; that if he had possessed anything better he would 

 have brought it. At this, two or three gentlemen in our 

 party pressed around me, and, in undertones, advised me 

 by all means to accept it. There was no alternative; I 

 accepted the rifle in as sonorous words as I could muster 



