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 words of our noble tongue. He says, "What do you want?" "Good morning, gentlemen"; "What can I do for you?" "Do you want dinner?" "No, there is no ice till 6 o'clock." He puts the Americans in mind of better days. Behind this linguist is a little woman, whose age might be twenty or sixty, for her face is so unutterably sad and immovable in expression that there is not a line in it that tells you anything but that there is to this little woman a bitterly sad, mean, beastly world. She must be grieving over mankind. It is her duty to see that no spoon is lost, and not an orange or banana wasted, and her mournful eyes are fixed with the intensity of despair upon the incompetent waiters, who, when hard pressed by wild shouts from American officers, frantic for lack of proper nourishment, fall into a panic and dance and squeal at each other; and then the woman of fixed sorrow, her left shoulder thin and copper-colored, thrust from her low-necked dress, her right shoulder protected, is in the midst of the pack, with a gliding bound and the ferocity of a cat,