PBA Galleries

194 pp. Full calf, worn, with front cover detached, but present, rear cover loose, and spine covering lacking.

Inscribed on front pastedown: "Grover Cleveland, President of the United States. With compliments Commander Wilde, U.S.N., March 7, 1896". (Later signature on facing page of a New York attorney)

Presented to the President in the third year of his second term by George F.F. Wilde, a Naval officer who had graduated from Annapolis during the Civil War, had subsequently served on vessels in the South Pacific and Atlantic but had never seen combat. He then held a sinecure as Secretary of the US Lighthouse Board and was probably happy to call the President’s attention to his thoughtfulness. The book may have in fact have been of interest to Cleveland as it had many references to US relations with Spain, two years before the US went to war with that country.