I do not ask that they shall never tread With weary feet the paths of pain; I ask that in the darkest hour They may faithful and true remain. I only ask their lives may be Pure as gems in the gates of pearl, Lives to brighten and bless the world-- This I ask for my boy and girl. I ask to clasp their hands again 'Mid the holy hosts of heaven; Enraptured, say: "I am here, O God! And the children thou hast given." [Illustration: GEN. ANTONIO MACEO. The great Cuban Negro warrior.] GEN. ANTONIO MACEO. The Great Cuban Negro Warrior. Gen. Maceo was a born warrior. He came of a race of warriors. Of ten brothers, he was the last survivor who had escaped the bullets of the Spaniards in the ten-years' war, begun in 1868, and the present war. They were all soldiers and patriots, following in the footsteps of their father, and they all died fighting for Cuba. The distinguishing characteristics of Antonio Maceo were intense love of Cuba, courage that knew no fear, and a natural genius for war. He was of Spanish and African blood, and his enemies often accused him of waging a race war, but this he always denied, and his friends believed him. He fought only for Cuban independence. Gen. Maceo was the terror of the Spaniards. They feared him as they feared no other Cuban. They put a price of twenty-five thousand dollars on his head, dead or alive. The Spaniards could not capture or defeat him in open warfare, and the work of destroying him fell to the part of an infamous traitor in his camp: his physician, who betrayed him into the hands of the enemy. Maceo was great in his life, and in the manner of his death he has raised up friends for his beloved Cuba all over the world. His parents were both "pardos"--that is, light-colored mulattoes--and they were quite well off. Marcos owned and operated a cattle ranch and a pony express between the town and near-by estates. He was worth about forty thousand dollars. Antonio was well trained in contra-Spanish ideas. His father had been quietly interested in the small revolutionary disturbances that took place up to 1868, and Ascenio, his godfather, a prominent lawyer of Santiago City, was one of the most active promoters of the ten-years' struggle that began in 1868. After a boyhood spent in the best schools of Santiago de Cuba, Antonio's seventeenth year found him engaged in business for his father. The preparations for the war were then secretly going on, and young Maceo, being thought to possess a discretion beyond his years, was initiated into the movement. He labored hard for the cause then, and when the time came for action he promptly took the field, at eighteen years of age, with a few men whom he had organized and armed.