“‘I’m not joking,’ says O’Connor.  ’And I’ve got $1,500 cash to work the scheme with.  I’ve taken a liking to you.  Do you want it, or not?’

“‘I’m not working,’ I told him; ’but how is it to be?  Do I eat during the fomentation of the insurrection, or am I only to be Secretary of War after the country is conquered?  Is it to be a pay envelope or only a portfolio?’

“I’ll pay all expenses,’ says O’Connor.  ’I want a man I can trust.  If we succeed you may pick out any appointment you want in the gift of the government.’

“‘All right, then,’ says I.  ’You can get me a bunch of draying contracts and then a quick-action consignment to a seat on the Supreme Court bench so I won’t be in line for the presidency.  The kind of cannon they chasten their presidents with in that country hurt too much.  You can consider me on the pay-roll.’

“Two weeks afterward O’Connor and me took a steamer for the small, green, doomed country.  We were three weeks on the trip.  O’Connor said he had his plans all figured out in advance; but being the commanding general, it consorted with his dignity to keep the details concealed from his army and cabinet, commonly known as William T. Bowers.  Three dollars a day was the price for which I joined the cause of liberating an undiscovered country from the ills that threatened or sustained it.  Every Saturday night on the steamer I stood in line at parade rest, and O’Connor handed ever the twenty-one dollars.

“The town we landed at was named Guayaquerita, so they told me.  ’Not for me,’ says I.  ’It’ll be little old Hilldale or Tompkinsville or Cherry Tree Corners when I speak of it.  It’s a clear case where Spelling Reform ought to butt in and disenvowel it.’

“But the town looked fine from the bay when we sailed in.  It was white, with green ruching, and lace ruffles on the skirt when the surf slashed up on the sand.  It looked as tropical and dolce far ultra as the pictures of Lake Ronkonkoma in the brochure of the passenger department of the Long Island Railroad.

“We went through the quarantine and custom-house indignities; and then O’Connor leads me to a ’dobe house on a street called ’The Avenue of the Dolorous Butterflies of the Individual and Collective Saints.’  Ten feet wide it was, and knee-deep in alfalfa and cigar stumps.

“‘Hooligan Alley,’ says I, rechristening it.

“‘’Twill be our headquarters,’ says O’Connor.  ’My agent here, Don Fernando Pacheco, secured it for us.’

“So in that house O’Connor and me established the revolutionary centre.  In the front room we had ostensible things such as fruit, a guitar, and a table with a conch shell on it.  In the back room O’Connor had his desk and a large looking-glass and his sword hid in a roll of straw matting.  We slept on hammocks that we hung to hooks in the wall; and took our meals at the Hotel Ingles, a beanery run on the American plan by a German proprietor with Chinese cooking served a la Kansas City lunch counter.