Just as the magazine Puck related through an 1897 cartoon of Uncle Sam waiting for the fruit of Cuba to fall into his basket, with the headline: “Patient Waiters Are Not Losers.”Under ran the caption, with Uncle Sam saying as he looked up at the Cuban fruit: “I ain’t in a hurry; it’ll drop into my basket when it gets ripe”In his hamper was the previous harvest of California, Texas, Alaska and Louisiana. For Cuba to become part of the United States was simply a matter of time.