Part 8

As long as Maceo lived there was no prospect of the blacks and whites of Cuba participating in a race war. He loved his country too well to allow it, and could have easily prevented such a clash, as he had the implicit confidence and respect of the Negroes. He was very reticent in speaking of his wounds, of which he bore twenty-three. With one exception, these wounds were received in the ten years' war.

In the death of Gen. Maceo Cuba loses a man who was without fear, a man of rare intellect, an honest man, and a genuine patriot, whose death will doubtless be avenged by his faithful followers. By Maceo's death Cuba loses one of the most valiant defenders she ever had. After his participation in the ten years' war and his exile to Jamaica, at its unsuccessful termination, his subsequent career has been told in the following interesting sketch:

"Early in 1879 a brown-skinned, weather-beaten man arrived in New York on one of the Jamaica steamers. For a month or more he lived alone, without other companionship than that of books. It was Maceo, and the fire of liberty, still smoldering in his breast, was only seeking a favorable opportunity to burst into flame. In a few months he made his way to West Point, where he obtained employment as a hostler. Nobody in the academy dreamed for a moment that the broad-shouldered, dark-browed man who handled the horses so easily had ever smelled the smoke of battle or heard the song of rifle bullets. Day after day on the parade grounds the taciturn man watched the evolutions of the cadets, listened to the commands of the officers, studied the discipline of the place, pored over volumes of military tactics that he had managed to borrow, and added to his natural genius the knowledge of other great generals. Then the dark-skinned hostler, who was regarded as book mad, gave up his position and returned to New York. From New York he went to Costa Rica, taking a hundred or more weighty volumes with him. Some wealthy Cubans had settled in Costa Rica during the war, and they now offered Maceo a tract of land on which to colonize his brave followers. Here for ten years the exiled Cuban worked and studied and dreamed and instructed his fellow-veterans in the modern theories of war. At times he would lecture them; at other times he would give them practical lessons in drilling and in cavalry evolutions. With each day, each week, month, and year his dream of the freedom of Cuba was brighter than before. Never for a moment did he seem to forget the points of his purpose.

"In 1888, ten years after the close of the war, he began to scheme for another uprising in Cuba. He took the former officers into his confidence, and the little band of revolutionists spent almost a year in making plans for the overthrow of Spain. Finally Maceo sailed for Jamaica, and from Jamaica to Santiago de Cuba, disguised as a laborer. Not for a moment, however, during the entire ten years that had elapsed since the war had the Spanish Government lost sight of Maceo. The Spaniards knew him too well. Consequently when he disappeared from Costa Rica there was a hue and cry. 'Maceo has gone,' was telegraphed to Madrid; 'Look out for Maceo,' was the word sent to Havana. Search was made throughout the island. Finally the government got word of him around Santiago. Under torture, a Cuban confessed that he had seen Maceo in El Christo, disguised as a muleteer. In the meantime Maceo had become aware that his whereabouts had been discovered. His schemes were consequently frustrated. A fisherman who had fought under him during the long war sailed with Maceo for Kingston one dark night in his fishing boat. For many weeks thereafter the Spaniards searched in vain for the Cuban leader.

"Maceo returned to Costa Rica disappointed, but not discouraged. He saw plainly that the revolutionary ball must be set rolling by other hands than his. He entered into correspondence with prominent Cuban sympathizers in American cities, and with Gen. Gomez in San Domingo. This was kept up until local juntas were formed in almost every prominent city in the United States. Then Maceo and his little band of patriots in Costa Rica had nothing to do but possess their souls in patience and wait for events. The years between 1890 and 1895 were passed in hard work and in studying the possibilities of Cuba from a military standpoint. One day in February, 1895, word came that the Cubans had risen. Blood had been shed, and Julio Sanguilly had been arrested and imprisoned. At last, after many years, here was an opportunity to strike once more for Cuba. Freedom, the dream of a lifetime, would come later on. On the following day an emissary of the Spanish Government asked Maceo if he intended to join the movement. 'Join it?' he replied, 'I shall join nothing.' He did not think it necessary to say that he had joined it years ago. This is why the papers of the next morning all over the world published a statement that Maceo was not identified with the revolutionary movement in Cuba.

"A week later Maceo, his brother Jose, Flor Crombet, Cabreco, and sixteen other veterans sailed from Costa Rica for San Domingo. From this point, a week or so later, they slipped away for Cuba. They landed on the morning of March 30 at a point near Baracoa, where many times in years gone by Maceo had seen the flash of _machete_ and bayonet. True to the traditions of the place, hardly had he touched his foot on Cuban soil before Spanish rifles were cracking and bullets were singing all about him. The force of Spaniards numbered about fifty. Maceo had with him only nineteen men in addition to his brother Jose, Crombet, and Cabreco. There was a running fight along the road in the direction of an old log house, where the Cubans finally took refuge. In this skirmish Crombet was killed. In the log house, surrounded by Spaniards, the Cubans fought for days. In the meantime word had been sent out that Antonio Maceo had been captured immediately upon landing on the island, and that Flor Crombet had been killed. This was Maceo's first death during the present war. On the night of the third day Maceo called the men together and told them that their only hope was in making a rush for the woods. The door had hardly been opened before the Spaniards discovered the movement. Then ensued a fierce running fight, in which several of the Cubans were killed, and Maceo received a bullet through his hat. Separating from the rest of his companions, Maceo wandered through the pathless forest for two weeks alone, living on plantains, guavas, and other fruits. One day he stumbled upon the band of insurgents led by Rabi. He was taken to the hut occupied by the leader.

"'Who are you?' he was asked.

"'One who will fight to the death for Cuba Libre,' was the reply.

"'Your name?'

"'Antonio Maceo.'

"At first Rabi was incredulous. When he finally recognized in the haggard and hungry man the dashing leader of the ten years' war the joy of the insurgent was boundless. In a few days all his old-time vigor returned. He was more of a leader than ever. His ten years of exile had only served to make him more cautious and calculating. He knew that he was a better soldier than when he was banished. In a fortnight he made his way to Guantanamo, to the spot where he had disbanded his men years before. The big tree was still standing, taller and grayer with age, rotted in spots, but quite as sturdy as ever. Under this tree he had sheathed his sword. Under its branches he once more drew it from its scabbard against the Spanish oppressor. In a few weeks he had recruited almost a thousand men. Starting out with this nucleus of a future army, he swept everything before him."

MARRIED LIFE--ITS JOYS AND SORROWS.

BY BISHOP ARNETT.

A good wife is the greatest earthly blessing. A wife never makes a greater mistake than when she endeavors to coerce her husband with other weapons than those of love and affection. Those weapons are a sure "pull," if he has anything human left in him. Forbear mutual upbraidings. In writing letters during temporary separation let nothing contrary to love and sincere affection be expressed; such letters from a wife have a most powerful emotional effect, sometimes little understood by those who write them. It is the mother who molds the character and destiny of the child as to the exteriors; therefore let calmness, peace, affection, and firmness rule her conduct toward her children. Children are great imitators; whether they have scolding or peaceful mothers, they are generally sure to learn from the example set before them, and thus the consequent joy or sorrow is transferred to other families. Therefore let mothers take heed to their conduct. It is not possible to exercise judgment and prudence too much before entering on the married life. Be sure that the affections on both sides are so perfectly intertwined around each other that the two, as it were, form one mind. This requires time and a thorough mutual knowledge on both sides. Marry into your religion and into a blood and temperament different from your own. Bend your whole form, and especially avoid everlastingly dishing up any unsuccessful past action that was done from a good motive and with the best intentions at the time. Let nothing foreign to the spirit of love and mutual affections intervene to cause distance between husband and wife. To this end let self-denial and reciprocal unselfishness rule over each. Avoid habitual fault-finding, scolding, etc., as you would perdition itself. Many men tremble as they cross their threshold into the presence of scolding wives. Let husband and wife cultivate habits of sobriety, and specially avoid drunkenness in every form. What a dreadful spectacle it is to see a husband transformed into a demon, tottering homeward to a broken-hearted wife, whose noble, self-sacrificing devotion to him seems to partake more of the nature of heaven than of earth! Never part, even for a journey, without kind and endearing words; and as a kiss symbolizes union from interior affection, do not dispense with it on such occasions, repeating it when you return. In one word, let love rule supreme.

In all your dealings with women take a lesson from the cooing dove. Speak softly, deal gently, kindly, and considerately with her in every way. Let every husband and every wife cherish for each other the heavenly flame of affection, and let no rude, harsh, or embittered expression on either side chill the sacred fire. If every adoration of the creature may hope for pardon, surely the worship rendered by man to a kind, pure, affectionate, and loving wife--Heaven's best gift--may invoke forgiveness. What countless millions of women have sacrificed health, strength, and life in attendance on sick and dying husbands, children, and strangers! How many have perished by rushing through fire and water to save their children, and starve themselves that they might live! In how many hospitals has she proven herself an angel of mercy, and her sweet voice uttered words of comfort and cheer! Therefore let woman have her full rights, even that of voting, if she desires it, for a good woman's influence will ever be used for a good purpose; but let woman act toward man as indicated in the above advice for man to act toward woman, and she would be all but omnipotent; for man, in a manner, would move heaven and earth to serve her, and would do unspeakably more for her than can ever be done by all the fussy croakers, old maids, and woman's rights associations and lectures in creation. Love in the family is the one thing needful to regenerate the earth and cause the wilderness to become as Eden and the desert to blossom as the rose. Reversed, love and discord have broken more hearts, caused more sorrow, estrangement, and downright death than war, pestilence, and all other causes combined. It palsies energy and ambition, engenders gloom and despair, and transforms manhood into an icicle. Statistics prove that the married live longer, on the average, by several years than the unmarried, a most satisfactory proof that the married state is pre-eminently the life designed for man. Therefore let all interested do their utmost to make it the happiest. (The Budget.)

INTEMPERANCE.

BY MRS. M. A. M'CURDY, ROME, GA.

Intemperance has so rapidly grown to be the crowning curse of all nations and has taken so deep root in the heart of many influential countrymen as to cause the impediments that are thrown in the pathway of those who try to promote the cause of "God, home, and native land" to appear to be legions.

The horrors of intemperance have never been fully portrayed. No pencil is black enough to paint the picture and do it full justice. No tongue is eloquent enough to tell the sad, sad story in all its details. It has so spread itself as to compel us to style it a wide and verily a withering curse. It is the parent of many physical disorders, that begin with bleared eyes, a blistered tongue, general derangement of the stomach, paralysis of the nerves, and hardening of the liver; and to so great an extent it poisons the blood as to cause coagulation of the brain. All of which, as a natural consequence, induce and aggravate many diseases, ending with causing to be dug a myriad of premature graves.

Intemperance is a mental curse, and it clouds the judgment, dethrones reason, promotes ignorance to the extent that to approach the unenlightened upon the subject of temperance is the means of incurring the displeasure of many, and in numerous instances causes vile epithets to be applied to those who are advocates of the cause of temperance.

Another great and startling reason why all persons should abstain from the use of intoxicating liquors is that it is a mental curse, because it produces imbecility and transforms its unhappy victims into maniacs and fools. Intemperance or the use of alcoholic liquors brings a curse upon the morals of all nations, and thereby proves to be a moral curse. It weakens the will and so influences the passions as to hush the voice of conscience and prepare the way for every vice and crime. Then, with all that, let us briefly review a few of the attendant miseries of intemperance that are about us like a swarm of locusts coming as a plague: In the slimy trail of this alcoholic serpent can be found everything that is dark and dreadful--yea, everything that is ruinous. In it can be found men without manhood, women without womanhood, infancy without hope, want and woe, rage and wretchedness, disease and death; and, furthermore, in the trail of this venomous serpent can be found broken vows and broken hearts, bad manners and bad morals, bad words and bad actions, bad parents and bad children, a bad beginning and a bad end. Then surely intemperance is the crowning curse of American society; and as such the traffic is, as has been often said, a gigantic crime. It came and continues to be an unwelcome intruder. It erects in our midst distilleries or dramshops. Everywhere we need the church and schoolhouse, these being uplifting and elevating forces, while the distilleries and dramshops are mediums through which distress and want, sorrow and death, are brought into our midst in an inconceivably short time, carrying to untimely graves and everlasting woe hundreds--yea, thousands--who otherwise might be saved.

The traffic is a temptation and a snare, a man trap and a woman trap, luring ever its victims to death and damnation. No wonder that Lord Chesterfield, in words as eloquent as they were burning, should say of rumsellers: "Let us crush out these artists in human slaughter who have reconciled their countrymen to sickness and ruin and spread over the pitfalls of debauchery such baits as men cannot resist." And his suggestions continue to be repeated, serving as a nucleus to which many cling and receive strength for present and future action. Yet there is room for more, as the battle is fierce and will possibly be long.

The traffic is a monster of cruelty. It has ever been one of tears and groans and blood, in vice, crime, and misery; ever conscienceless, unprincipled, and as cruel as the grave, while the trafficker is rarely ever moved by widows' woes, though they swell into rivers of tears. His heart seems to be incased in stone, while he applies his infamous trade and hoards his unhallowed wealth, regardless alike of the claims of God and the cries of his murdered victims.

For heartless cruelty and desolating results, the highway robber is not to be compared with the vender of alcoholic beverages, because the robber simply demands your money or your life, while the liquor seller demands your money and your life; and there being more than half a million of them, they seem to be determined to rule the remaining faction of sixty millions with worse than a rod of iron, even proving insolent and defiant to the last degree. Sitting supreme in our national Congress and walking with a swing of conscious triumph up and down our legislative halls, monarchs of all they survey, succeeding in every effort made to muzzle ministers, bribe lawmakers, control officers and business men of our country, and place the nation in great peril. The traffic is an intolerable burden to the state, a burden on every back, a blight on every industry, sapping the heartblood out of all concerned. Think of $900,000,000 as a direct annual drink bill, and an equal sum to cover the sad consequence. Two-thirds of this amount is expended by laboring men at the sacrifice of personal comforts and family necessities. Then why, O why, will not a greater number of our male relatives assist in striking every saloon until they are all crushed into hopeless flinders? and why will not a greater number of our women unite with those who are making efforts to raise up many who have fallen through and by the use of intoxicating liquors, and in many ways assist our husbands, brothers, and fathers in laying plans that will in the near future annihilate the demon rum? Last, but not least, the liquor traffic is a deadly foe to the Church. Well and truly did Charles Buxton say that "the struggle of the Church, school, and the library all united against the beer shop and the gin place is but one development of the war between Heaven and Hades." The traffic paralyzes the pulpit, hardens human hearts, alienates men and women from the Church of God, and in so doing rises like a mountain in the path of Christian civilization, and we agree with Rev. A. A. Phelps in saying: "It is a terrible fact, sad enough to make angels weep, that the two hundred thousand grogshops of this nation are doing more to damn the people than all the Churches are doing to save them." Then, in conclusion, let us rally to the cause of temperance and apply the prohibition as to the deadly upas tree of intemperance, taking God and his word for our guide, adopting our Creator's philosophy, imitating his example, and thereby build on those basic principles that underline the eternal throne, ever remembering that there is work for all to do, and that in God's universal system

None fall back or slip aside; Each of all the mighty forces Serves with dignity and pride.

There are evils we must strangle, There are enemies we must fight, Cruel foes most fierce and active Keeping back the good and right.

We must all be up and at them Meet them here and meet them there; Brothers, fathers ever active, Women diligent in prayer.

RACE NAME--WHAT SHALL IT BE?

OPINION OF H. C. C. ASTWOOD, CAMBRIDGEPORT, MASS.

The controversy going on regarding the particular term by which to designate the race is important and of general interest. After reading all that has been said upon the subject up to date, I must conclude that the logic and the facts are with the "Colored American."

The word "Afro-American" is simply an individual fad of recent construction, which has been generally used by some to designate the race without stopping to think that it is really out of place and can have no significance at all as far as the race is concerned in this country. The word "African" or "Negro" may be applied in a general way to the native-born African and his descendants or to the Negro of Africa, because of the intense blackness of color, but the "Afro-American" race does not now nor ever did exist. It is argued that the German-American, the Irish-American, and the Anglo-American are distinctly racial lines, and for that reason the "Afro-American" must be applied to the race of African descent in America.

The conditions are not the same and the facts are against the argument. Let us analyze the different thousands of German, Irish, French, Dutch, and Italian nationalities who come to our shores annually. They form a distinct nationality within themselves, and as long as they retain their nationality they are German, French, and so on; but as soon as they become naturalized they become German-American, French-American, and so on; but their descendants born here are not German-Americans or French-Americans or Dutch-Americans; they are simply Americans, and nothing more. This is not the condition of the colored race in this country. I am of the opinion that it would be difficult to find a hundred native-born Africans in the United States; hence nationality is extinct. The ten millions of colored people in this country are native-born Americans, who never have had any other nationality, and cannot, therefore, be classed as anything else but Americans. If you wish to designate them because of their color, you cannot use a false term. They are not Africans nor Negroes, and there is no such a race as the Afro-American race known in the world. The particular race cannot be known otherwise than the "colored race," or, if you apply the nationality, the "Colored American." I don't think that the matter admits of argument, and the intelligent gathering of colored women who assembled in Washington knew exactly what they were doing and applied the correct term to themselves.

The editor of the "Colored American" is correct in the stand taken, and is supported by the well-thinking colored people of the entire country. The word "Afro-American" grew out of a freak at Chicago, and is only generally used by the "Age" and a few others; and as far as its application is concerned, it can never be acceptable, and will die a natural death, without even a struggle to smother. I am sure that this will elicit a storm of ridicule; but be this as it may, the word "Afro" and the word "Negro" can never be forced upon an American, regardless of his color, without his consent, and I stand ready to maintain my position in the premises based upon sound reason and common sense.

* * * * *

OPINION OF T. M'CANTS STEWART, NEW YORK CITY.

I invariably use the term "Afro-American" to designate our race residing in the United States. No stronger article has come under my eyes than the one which recently appeared from the pen of Prof. DuBois, showing that our term "Afro-American" can only be adhered to as an ark of refuge from the term "Negro," which is too apt to be written with a small "n" and too frequently with two "g's."