onto—­not into—­the bed produces a perspiration, and the mosquito bar threatens suffocation, reliance may be had that if you can compose yourself on top of the sheet (which feels like a hard wood floor, when the rug gives way on the icy surface and you fall) and if you use the three rolls of hard substance, covered with red silk, discreetly and considerately, in finding a position, and if you permit the windows—­no glass—­fifteen feet by twelve, broadcast, as it were, to catch the breath of the river and the park; if you can contrive with infinite quiet, patience and pains to go to sleep for a few hours, you will be cool enough; and when awakened shivering there is no blanket near, and if you must have cover, why get under the sheet, next the Manila mat, and there you are!  Then put your troublesome and probably aching legs over the bigger red roll, and take your repose!  Of course, when in the tropics you cannot expect to bury yourself in bedclothing, or to sleep in fur bags like an arctic explorer.  The hall in front of your door is twelve feet wide and eighty long, lined with decorative chairs and sofas, and in the center of the hotel is a spacious dining room.  The Spaniard doesn’t want breakfast.  He wants coffee and fruit—­maybe a small banana—­something sweet, and a crumb of bread.  The necessity of the hour is a few cigarettes.  His refined system does not require food until later.  At 12 o’clock he lunches, and eats an abundance of hot stuff—­fish, flesh and fowl—­fiery stews and other condolences for the stomach.  This gives strength to consider the wrongs of Spain and the way, when restored to Madrid, the imbeciles, who allowed the United States to capture the last sad fragments of the colonies, sacred to Spanish honor, shall be crushed by the patriots who were out of the country when it was ruined.  It will take a long time for the Spaniards to settle among factions the accounts of vengeance.  One of the deeper troubles of the Spaniards is that they take upon themselves the administration of the prerogatives of him who said “Vengeance is mine.”  The American end of the dining room contains several young men who speak pigeon Spanish, and Captains Strong and Coudert are rapidly becoming experts, having studied the language in school, and also on the long voyage out.  There are also a group of resident Englishmen and a pilgrim from Norway, but at several tables are Americans who know no Spanish and are mad at the Spaniards on that provocation among other things.

There is, however, a connecting link and last resort in the person of a young man—­a cross between a Jap and Filipino.  He is slender and pale, but not tall.  His hair is roached, so that it stands up in confusion, and he is wearied all the time about the deplorable “help."’ It is believed he knows better than is done—­always a source of unhappiness.  His name is Francisco; his reputation is widespread.  He is the man who “speaks English”—­and is the only one—­and it is not doubted that he knows at least a hundred