have been the reflections of the old, wounded hero, in that
midnight hour, as he drank the poisoned cup that was to give him
rest."

And bitter indeed must have been the reflections of the young
wounded American, robbed, by the parsimony of his country, of
the right he had earned to serve it, and who was driven out to give
his best years and his life for a strange people under a strange flag.

GENERAL WILLIAM WALKER,
THE KING OF THE FILIBUSTERS

IT is safe to say that to members of the younger generation the
name of William Walker conveys absolutely nothing. To them, as
a name, "William Walker" awakens no pride of race or country. It
certainly does not suggest poetry and adventure. To obtain a place
in even this group of Soldiers of Fortune, William Walker, the
most distinguished of all American Soldiers of Fortune, the one
who but for his own countrymen would have single-handed
attained the most far-reaching results, had to wait his turn behind
adventurers of other lands and boy officers of his own. And yet
had this man with the plain name, the name that to-day means
nothing, accomplished what he adventured, he would on this
continent have solved the problem of slavery, have established an
empire in Mexico and in Central America, and, incidentally, have
brought us into war with all of Europe. That is all he would have
accomplished.

In the days of gold in San Francisco among the "Forty-niners"
William Walker was one of the most famous, most picturesque