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4 of your class. You deserve a good, long holiday. How will you take it?"

To answer this question puzzled me at first, for I knew I had the whole world before me. I had been as far east as New York and as far south as St. Louis, and had even taken a trip on Lake Michigan. I concluded that I had gone eastward far enough.

"If it's all the same, I'll go to Hong Kong and get acquainted with our branch out there," was my answer, and the use of the words, "our branch," made my father laugh.

"That will suit me exactly," was his return. "You shall go from San Francisco direct to Hong Kong, and you can return by way of the Philippines and see how our place of business is doing at Manila. The place at Manila is running down—the Spaniards are doing their best to drive us out altogether, and if you can see any way of improving conditions, now or later on, so much the better."

In less than two weeks I was ready to start, but I did not leave home even then as quickly as did my father, who received word which took him to the east and then to Cuba. What happened to my parent in Cuba has been excellently told by my friend, Mark Carter, in his story which has been printed under the title of "When Santiago Fell." At that time I did not know