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“And then Wainwright begins to talk; but the president interrupts him.

“‘You Yankees,’ says he, polite, ‘assuredly take the cake for assurance, I assure you’–or words to that effect. He spoke English better than you or me. ‘You’ve had a long walk,’ says he, ‘but it’s nicer in the cool morning to walk than to ride. May I suggest some refreshments?’ says he.

“‘Rum,’ says Wainwright.

“‘Gimme a cigar,’ says I.

“Well, sir, the two talked an hour, keeping the generals and equities all in their good uniforms waiting outside the fence. And while I smoked, silent, I listened to Clifford Wainwright making a solid republic out of the wreck of one. I didn’t follow his arguments with any special collocation of international intelligibility; but he had Mr. Gomez’s attention glued and riveted. He takes out a pencil and marks the white linen tablecloth all over with figures and estimates and deductions. He speaks more or less disrespectfully of import and export duties and custom-house receipts and taxes and treaties and budgets and concessions and such truck that politics and government require; and when he gets through the Gomez man hops up and shakes his hand and says he’s saved the country and the people.

“‘You shall be rewarded,’ says the president.

“‘Might I suggest another–rum?’ says Wainwright.

“‘Cigar for me–darker brand,’ says I.

“Well, sir, the president sent me and Wainwright back to the town in a victoria hitched to two flea-bitten selling-platers–but the best the country afforded.

“I found out afterward that Wainwright was a regular beachcomber–the smartest man on the whole coast, but kept down by rum. I liked him.

“One day I inveigled him into a walk out a couple of miles from the village, where there was an old grass hut on the bank of a little river. While he was sitting on the grass, talking beautiful of the wisdom of the world that he had learned in books, I took hold of him easy and tied his hands and feet together with leather thongs that I had in my pocket.

“‘Lie still,’ says I, ‘and meditate on the exigencies and irregularities of life till I get back.’

“I went to a shack in Aguas Frescas where a mighty wise girl named Timotea Carrizo lived with her mother. The girl was just about as nice as you ever saw. In the States she would have been called a brunette; but she was better than a brunette–I should say she was what you might term an ecru shade. I knew her pretty well. I told her about my friend Wainwright. She gave me a double handful of bark–calisaya, I think it was–and some more herbs that I was to mix with it, and told me what to do. I was to make tea of it and give it to him, and keep him from rum for a certain time. And for two weeks I did it. You know, I liked Wainwright. Both of us was broke; but Timotea sent us goat-meat and plantains and tortillas every day; and at last I got the curse of drink lifted from Clifford Wainwright. He lost his taste for it. And in the cool of the evening him and me would sit on the roof of Timotea’s mother’s hut, eating harmless truck like coffee and rice and stewed crabs, and playing the accordion.

“About that time President Gomez found out that the advice of C. Wainwright was the stuff he had been looking for. The country was pulling out of debt, and the treasury bad enough boodle in it for him to amuse himself occasionally with the night-latch. The people were beginning to take their two-hour siestas again every day–which was the surest sign of prosperity.

“So down from the regular capital he sends for Clifford Wainwright and makes him his private secretary at twenty thousand Peru dollars a year. Yes, sir–so much. Wainwright was on the water-wagon–thanks to me and Timotea–and he was soon in clover with the government gang. Don’t forget what done it–calisaya bark with them other herbs mixed–make a tea of it, and give a cupful every two hours. Try it yourself. It takes away the desire.