While I was reading the inscriptions and making measurements an open two-seated carriage was driven up to the curbstone, about four o'clock in the afternoon. From this a gentleman in a business suit, about sixty years of age, alighted and approached me. He was a man of pleasing address. He said to me, "You seem to be interested in this cannon." "I am," was the reply. Then he began to pace it and to examine it, and said, "It is just twelve feet long." He thought that possibly it came into the hands of the Spaniards during the Napoleonic wars, and that it at length found its way over to Cuba to help in enslaving the people of that island. As I was attracted to my informant, I ventured to ask him whom I had the pleasure of addressing. Imagine my astonishment and delight when he said modestly--"I am General Shafter." I said to him, "I am glad to meet one so brave and who has helped to add new lustre to our Flag." He replied that "he considered it a privilege to have had a share in the liberation of Cuba, and that our beloved nation was on the march to still greater glory." Finding out where I came from, and that I lived near Ballston Spa, he said, "You must know my son-in-law, William H. McKittrick." I replied that I did, that I knew him when he was a boy, and that he and his family were my parishioners, when I was Rector of Christ Church, Ballston Spa, twenty-eight years ago. Said he, "William distinguished himself in the Cuban War. He is now a Captain and Assistant Adjutant-General, and it was he who was the first to hoist the Flag over Santiago." The General having courteously invited me to call on him, soon after bade me good-bye. It was a chance meeting, but full of interest, especially under the circumstances. Here was the hero who had captured the cannon and who had won laurels for himself and for his country. McKittrick also comes of a patriotic family, his father having laid his life on the altar of his country in the Civil War; and after the elder McKittrick is named the Grand Army Post of Ballston Spa, N.Y.--Post McKittrick. General Shafter was as modest on the day when I met him by the cannon as he was brave at Santiago. While the Republic has such worthy sons she has nothing to fear. Her mission is one of peace to her own people in all the States and Territories of the Union, and in all our Colonial possessions; and the motto of every citizen should be _Non sibi sed Patriae_. For every churchman it ought to be _Non sibi sed Ecclesiae_. CHAPTER VII CHINAMEN OF SAN FRANCISCO--THEIR CALLINGS AND CHARACTERISTICS