Says the newspaper clipping which has preserved the Pratt oration: "At the conclusion of Mr. Pratt's speech refreshments were served, and as the Filipinos, being Christians, drink alcohol, [8] there was no difficulty in arranging as to refreshments." Then followed a general drinking of toasts to America, Dewey, Pratt, and Aguinaldo. Then the band played. Then the meeting broke up. Then the Honorable Spencer Pratt, Consul-General of the United States, retired to the seclusion of his apartments in Raffles Hotel, and, under the soothing swish of his plunkah, forgot the accursed heat of that stepping-off place, Singapore, and dreamed of future greatness. A few days later the even tenor of Mr. Pratt's meditations was disturbed by a letter from the State Department saying, in effect, that it was all right to get Aguinaldo's assistance "if in so doing he was not induced to form hopes which it might not be practicable to gratify." [9] But it did not tell him to tell the Filipinos so. For Aguinaldo was keeping the Spaniards bottled up in the old walled city of Manila on short and ever shortening rations, and American troops were on the way to join him, and the shorter the food supply grew in Manila the readier the garrison would be to surrender when they did arrive, and the fewer American soldiers' lives would have to be sacrificed in the final capture of the town. Every day of Aguinaldo's service under the Dewey-Pratt arrangement was worth an American life, perhaps many. It was too valuable to repudiate, just yet. July 20th, the State Department wrote Mr. Pratt a letter acknowledging receipt of his of June 9th "enclosing printed copies of a report from the Straits Times of the same day, entitled 'Mr. Spencer Pratt's Serenade,' with a view to its communication to the press," and not only not felicitating him on his serenade, but making him sorry he had ever had a serenade. It said, among other things: "The extract now communicated by you from the Straits Times of the 9th of June has occasioned a feeling of disquietude and a doubt as to whether some of your acts may not have borne a significance and produced an impression which this government would feel compelled to regret." [10] Hapless Pratt! "Feel compelled to regret" is State Department for "You are liable to be fired." The letter of reprimand proceeds: "The address * * * discloses an understanding on their part that * * * the ultimate object of our action is * * * the independence of the Philippines * * *. Your address does not repel this implication * * *". The letter then scores Pratt for having called Aguinaldo "the man for the occasion," and for having said that the "arrangement" between Aguinaldo and Dewey had "resulted so happily," and after a few further animadversions, concludes with this great blow to the reading public of Alabama: