even when he was looking far over her head, and he knew that she knew
that he was arguing the point then and there between them.

It was, he said, the first war of its kind in history. It marked an
epoch in the growth of national character since the world began. As an
American, he believed that no finger of mediævalism should so much as
touch this hemisphere. The Cubans had earned their freedom long since,
and the cries of starving women and children for the bread which fathers
and brothers asked but the right to earn must cease. To put out of mind
the Americans blown to death at Havana--if such a thing were
possible--he yet believed with all his heart in the war. He did not
think there would be much of a fight--the regular army could doubtless
take good care of the Spaniard--but if everybody acted on that
presumption, there would be no answer to the call for volunteers. He was
proud to think that the Legion of his own State, that in itself stood
for the reunion of the North and the South, had been the first to spring
to arms. And he was proud to think that not even they were the first
Kentuckians to fight for Cuban liberty. He was proud that, before the
Civil War even, a Kentuckian of his own name and blood had led a band of
one hundred and fifty brave men of his own State against Spanish tyranny
in Cuba, and a Crittenden, with fifty of his followers, were captured
and shot in platoons of six.

"A Kentuckian kneels only to woman and his God," this Crittenden had
said proudly when ordered to kneel blindfolded and with his face to the
wall, "and always dies facing his enemy." And so those Kentuckians had
died nearly half a century before, and he knew that the young
Kentuckians before him would as bravely die, if need be, in the same
cause now; and when they came face to face with the Spaniard they would
remember the shattered battle-ship in the Havana harbour, and something