operator said that what with fishing and bathing and "Tit-Bits" and
"Lloyd's Weekly Times," Jucaro was quite enjoyable. He is going home
the year after this.

"At least, that's how I put it," he explained. "My contract requires me
to stop on here until December of 1898, but it doesn't sound so long if
you say 'a year after this,' does it?" He had had the yellow fever, and
had never, owing to the war, been outside of Jucaro. "Still," he added,
"I'm seeing the world, and I've always wanted to visit foreign parts."

As one of the few clean persons I met in Cuba, and the only contented
one, I hope the cable operator at Jucaro will get a rise in salary
soon, and some day see more of foreign parts than he is seeing at
present, and at last get back to "the Horse Shoe, at the corner of
Tottenham Court Road and Oxford street, sir," where, as we agreed,
better entertainment is to be had on Saturday night than anywhere in
London.

In Havana, General Weyler had given me a pass to enter fortified
places, which, except for the authority which the signature implied,
meant nothing, as all the cities and towns in Cuba are fortified, and
any one can visit them. It was as though Mayor Strong had given a man a
permit to ride in all the cable cars attached to cables.

It was not intended to include the trocha, but I argued that if a
trocha was not a "fortified place" nothing else was, and I persuaded
the commandante at Jucaro to take that view of it and to vise Weyler's
order. So at five the following morning a box car, with wooden planks
stretched across it for seats, carried me along the line of the trocha
from Jucaro to Ciego, the chief military port on the fortifications,