MEXICO Dunsany's Brother

Dunsany's Brother

The world gasped three years ago when blatant Huey Pierce Long, then Governor of Louisiana, hoisted himself out of bed in pajamas and received a full-dress courtesy call from the commander of the German cruiser Emden. In Veracruz, Mexico, never, never would Mayor Epigmenio Guzman be guilty of such a breach of etiquet. Last fortnight the British cruiser Norfolk dropped anchor in Veracruz bearing in her stern cabin none less than the Commander-in-Chief of Britain's America & West Indies Station, Vice-Admiral the Hon. Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, C. B., D. S. 0., who is in addition the younger brother of Ireland's mystic dramatist Lord Dunsany.*

Mayor Epigmenio Guzman neither paid nor received a call, but he knew his duty. To the Norfolk he sent a polite wire expressing his desolation at his inability to chat with the Hon. Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax. Reason: polite Mayor Guzman was in jail charged with murder.

Leaving Veracruz, the Norfolk and the Admiral reached New Orleans last week, found all the banks shut, no chance for his 500 sailors to receive their shore-leave pay or change the few pound notes they possessed. Admiral Drax summoned British Consul General Frank Gordon Rule and demanded $3,000 in cash. Consul General Rule went to A. B. Patterson of the New Orleans Association of Commerce and pointed out the good that this money would do to the various New Orleans institutions that sailors enjoy.

"Pardon me," said President Patterson, "but. just as a matter of form, what security can you give me?"

"Sir," said Consul General Rule, "I give you THE BRITISH EMPIRE."

"The British Empire is O. K. with me," said President Patterson, and that night the Norfolk's tars had their fun.

* The Admiral's widowed mother, to increase the inheritance legally adopted the names of every visible relative in 1905. Dramatist Dunsany inherited the title and Irish properties, leaving the residuary estate and nomenclature to Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, who in 1916 adopted his mother's last three names to inherit the inherited estates.

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