to me.

I had a brother in Chicopee Falls who owned manufactories--cotton, or
sugar, or A. A. sheetings, or something in the commercial line. He was
vulgarly rich, and therefore reverenced art. The artistic temperament of
the family was monopolized at my birth. I knew that Brother James would
honor my slightest wish. I would demand from him a position in cotton,
sugar, or sheetings for William Trotter--something, say, at two hundred
a month or thereabouts. I confided my beliefs and made my large
propositions to William. He had pleased me much, and he was ragged.

While we were talking, there was a sound of firing guns--four or five,
rattlingly, as if by a squad. The cheerful noise came from the direction
of the cuartel, which is a kind of makeshift barracks for the soldiers
of the republic.

"Hear that?" said William Trotter. "Let me tell you about it.

"A year ago I landed on this coast with one solitary dollar. I have the
same sum in my pocket to-day. I was second cook on a tramp fruiter; and
they marooned me here early one morning, without benefit of clergy, just
because I poulticed the face of the first mate with cheese omelette at
dinner. The fellow had kicked because I'd put horseradish in it instead
of cheese.

"When they threw me out of the yawl into three feet of surf, I waded
ashore and sat down under a palm-tree. By and by a fine-looking white
man with a red face and white clothes, genteel as possible, but somewhat
under the influence, came and sat down beside me.