FLORIDA AND THE WEST INDIES 187 



intellectual Americans reside in the island, these 

 most in evidence are the cheap brand of tourist 

 already incidentally mentioned in these pages, the 

 stamp that we at home, in deference to their 

 restlessness rather than their grace of movement, 

 call " trippers," or what the West Indian nigger 

 euphoniously terms "dam fool Cook." Most 

 countries have these joyous holiday-makers, and in 

 Anglo-Saxon communities they are seen and heard 

 at their worst. One might as fairly judge the 

 English nation by a first-Monday-in-August crowd 

 on Margate Sands as the people of America by some 

 of the dreadful republicans that cruised with me to 

 Cuba. One of their number, a " lady-drummer,*' I 

 shall never, alas ! forget. The whole of our after- 

 noon at Key West she waved the Stars and Stripes 

 over me. Next morning her behaviour was like that 

 of the emblematic eagle, and she seemed to fasten her 

 claws in the soil of Cuba and spread ragged wings 

 over the new republic. She harangued me on the 

 greatness of her country and countrymen, which at 

 first I was only too ready to concede, until, just as 

 we came abreast of the Maine s topmast, she 

 goaded me into saying (what I did not for one 

 moment mean) that Washington dared not sanction 

 the raising of that historic wreck for fear that the 

 world might share the knowledge of the divers that 

 the explosion, the pretext of the war of liberation, 

 came from the inside. That heresy dammed the 

 torrent of her jingoism, and I thought forone moment 

 that she would rend me where I stood, but, instead, 

 she tottered away, leaving me free to assure her com- 

 patriots that my hypothesis had been the last resort 

 of a desperate man to free himself of their terrible 



