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four volumes of Gibbon and three or four chapters of Motley. The battles in Carlyle’s
Frederick the Great;
Hay and Nicolay’s
Lincoln
, and the two volumes of Lincoln’s
Speeches and Writings
—these I have not only read through, but have read parts of them again and again; Bacon’s
Essays … Macbeth; Twelfth Night; Henry the Fourth; Henry the Fifth; Richard the Second;
the first two cantos of Milton’s
Paradise Lost;
some of Michael Drayton’s
Poems
—there are only three or four I care for; portions of the
Nibelungenlied.…

    ROOSEVELT HAD BARELY settled in his seat before the first hint of trouble in Panama reached the State Department. Hubbard’s early-morning dispatch from Colón had gone astray; this one came from Oscar Malmros, the United States Consul in Colón.
    REVOLUTION IMMINENT … GOVERNMENT VESSEL CARTAGENA, WITH ABOUT 400 MEN, ARRIVED EARLY TODAY, WITH NEW COMMANDER IN CHIEF, TOVAR … NOT PROBABLE TO STOP REVOLUTION .
    Washington was ill prepared to deal with such sudden news, since most of its top officials, including Root, Moody, and the President himself, were out of town on election trips. Assistant Secretary Loomis cabled Felix Ehrman, the United States Vice Consul in Panama City, ordering him to keep the State Department apprised of the situation in Panama City. Ehrman could reply only that it was “critical,” but not yet violent. Some sort of uprising was expected “in the night.”
    Had the Vice Consul been better informed, he might have noticed the curious frequency with which deadlines of “five o’clock” recurred in local communications.Governor Obaldía had promised the increasingly desperate Tovar that his battalion would be delivered at that hour. The fire brigade wason notice to be ready for action then, and a freelance scribe assigned to write an important public proclamation had his contract amended accordingly. Word spread that there would be “a great mass meeting” in Plaza de Santa Ana at 5:00 P.M. , and certain key citizens were told to bring guns.

     … Church’s
Beowulf;
Morris’ translation of the
Heimskringla
, and Dasent’s translation of the sagas of Gisli and Burnt Njal;Lady Gregory’s and Miss Hull’s
Cuchulain Saga
together with
The Children of Lir, The Children of Turin, The Tale of Deirdre
, etc.;
Les Précieuses Ridicules, Le Barbier de Séville;
most of Jusserand’s books, of which I was most interested in his studies of the
Kingis Quhair;
Holmes’
Over the Teacups;
Lounsbury’s
Shakespeare and Voltaire;
various numbers of the
Edinburgh Review
from 1803 to 1850; Tolstoi’s
Sebastopol
and
The Cossacks;
Sienkiewicz’s
Fire and Sword
, and parts of his other volumes;
Guy Mannering; The Antiquary; Rob Roy; Waverley; Quentin Durward;
parts of
Marmion
and the
Lay of the Last Minstrel;
Cooper’s
Pilot;
some of the earlier stories and poems of Bret Harte; Mark Twain’s
Tom Sawyer; Pickwick Papers; Nicholas Nickelby; Vanity Fair; Pendennis; The Newcomes; Adventures of Philip;
Conan Doyle’s
White Company.…

    WHEN ELISEO TORRES , the young colonel whom General Tovar had left in command of the
tiradores
, asked Colonel Shaler when his men might expect to cross the Isthmus, he received a variety of answers. At first Shaler repeated Obaldía’s promise of delivery by five, but when that hour drew near, the railroad suddenly demanded advance payment of all fares. Torres, who had no money, was quick-thinking enough to insist on the government of Colombia’s right to transport troops on credit. Consul Malmros, overhearing, confirmed that such a right was written into the railroad’s concession. Shaler did not contest this, but noted that the concession also called for the Governor of Panama’s signature on all military travel requisitions. Also there was still the question of a shortage of available cars, most of the railroad’s rolling stock unfortunately being on the other side of the Isthmus.
    Torres waxed more and more angry. Shaler had