business" but instead of
stopping there, Cleveland uttered a cast iron ultimatum instead of
leaving a loophole for diplomacy and a chance for either or both to
back out. That's where I blame him as does every one else.

Sam Sothern is in Chicago and we all wrote him guying letters about the
war. Helen said she was going to engage "The Heart of Maryland"
company to protect her front yard, while Russell and I have engaged
"The Girl I Left Behind Me" company with Blanch Walsh and the original
cast.

We sent Somerset a picture of himself riddled with bullets. And Mrs.
Hicks made herself famous by asking if it was that odious Dunraven they
were going to war about.

My article was a very lucky thing and is greatly quoted and in social
gatherings I am appealed to as a final authority.

The football story, by the way, did me a heap of good with the
newspapers and the price was quoted as the highest ever paid for a
piece of reporting. People sent for it so that the edition was
exhausted. The Journal people were greatly pleased.

Yvette Guilbert is at Hammerstein's and crowds the new music hall
nightly, at two dollars a seat. Irving and Miss Terry have been most
friendly to me and to the family. Frohman is going to put "Zenda" on
in New York because he has played a failure, which will of course kill
it for next year for Eddie, when he comes out as a star. I have never
seen such general indignation over a private affair. Barrymore called
it a case of Ollaga Zenda. They even went to Brooklyn when Eddie was
playing there and asked him to stage the play for them and how he made
his changes and put on his whiskers. Poor Eddie, he lacks a business
head and a business manager--and Sam talks and shakes his head but is
little better. Lots of love and best wishes for the New Year.

DICK.

CHAPTER IX

MOSCOW, BUDAPEST, LONDON

The years 1896--1897 were probably the most active of Richard's very
active life. In the space of twelve months he reported the Coronation
at Moscow, the Millennial Celebration at Budapest, the Spanish-Cuban
War, the McKinley Inauguration, the Greek-Turkish War and the Queen's
Jubilee. Although this required a great deal of time spent in
travelling, Richard still found opportunity to do considerable work on
his novel "Captain Macklin," to which he refers in one of his letters
from London.

As correspondent of the New York American, then The Journal, Richard
went from Florence, where