The black man's tone showed Strawbridge that he should have known Bolivar the Libertador.
“Oh, sure!” the drummer said easily; “the Libertador. I had forgot his business.”
The black man looked around at his companion as straight as his politeness admitted.
“Señor,” he ejaculated, “ I mean the great Bolivar. He has been compared to your Señor George ”Washington of North America.“
Strawbridge turned and stared frankly at the negro.
“Wha-ut?” he drawled, curving up his voice at the absurdity of it and beginning to laugh. “Compared to George Washington, first in war, first in—”
“Sí, ciertamente, señor,” Gumersindo assured his companion, with Venezuelan earnestness.
“But look here—” Strawbridge laid a hand on his companion's shoulder—“do you know what George Washington did, man? He set the whole United States free!”
“But, hombre!” cried the editor. “Bolivar! This great, great man—” he pointed to the blue marble mansion—“set free the whole continent of South America!”
“He did!”
“Seguramente! And this man, who freed a continent, was at length exiled by ungrateful Venezuela and died an outcast, señor, in a wretched little town on the Colombian coast—an outcast!”
Strawbridge looked at Bolivar's house with renewed interest.
“Well, I be damned!” he said earnestly.“ Freed all of South America! Say! why don't somebody write a book about that?”
Gumersindo pulled in one side of his wide-rolling lips and bit them. The two men walked on in silence for several blocks west. They passed the Yellow House, the seat of the Vene-
