the flag of Coamo. I pulled it off my saddle and said: "General,
it's too long a story to tell you now, but here is the flag of the
town. It's the first Spanish flag"--and it was--"that has been
captured in Porto Rico."

General Wilson smiled again and accepted the flag. He and about four
thousand other soldiers think it belongs to them. But the truth will
out. Some day the bestowal on the proper persons of a vote of thanks
from Congress, a pension, or any other trifle, like prize-money, will
show the American people to whom that flag really belongs.

I know that in time the glorious deed of the seven heroes of Coamo,
or eight, if you include "Jimmy," will be told in song and story.
Some one else will write the song. This is the story.



IV--THE PASSING OF SAN JUAN HILL



When I was a boy I thought battles were fought in waste places
selected for the purpose. I argued from the fact that when our
school nine wished to play ball it was forced into the suburbs to
search for a vacant lot. I thought opposing armies also marched out
of town until they reached some desolate spot where there were no
window panes, and where their cannon-balls would hurt no one but
themselves. Even later, when I saw battles fought among villages,
artillery galloping through a cornfield, garden walls breached for
rifle fire, and farm-houses in flames, it always seemed as though the