h me on this trip
than travel with the German Emperor, and you will enjoy to hear that he
wrote Sarah I was the most "good-natured" man he ever met. God bless
you all, and dear, dear Florence. Lots of love.

DICK.

Moscow--May, 1896.

DEAR CHAS:

I have just sent off my coronation story, and the strain of this thing,
which has really been on me for six months, is off. You can imagine
what a relief it is, or, rather, you cannot, for no one who has not
been with us these last ten days can know what we have had to do. The
story I sent is not a good one. It was impossible to tell it by cable,
and the first one on the entry was a much better one. I do not care
much, though; of course, I do care, as I ought to have made a great hit
with it, but there was no time, and there was so much detail and
minutia that I could not treat it right. However, after the awful
possibility, or rather certainty, that we have had to face of not
getting any story at all, I am only too thankful. I would not do it
again for ten thousand dollars. Edwin Arnold, who did it for The
Telegraph, had $25,000, and if I told you of the way Hearst acted and
Ralph interfered with impertinent cables, you would wonder I am sane.
They never sent me a cent for the cables until it was so late that I
could not get it out of the bank, and we have spent and borrowed every
penny we have. Imagine having to write a story and to fight to be
allowed a chance to write it, and at the same time to be pressed for
money for expenses and tolls so that you were worn out by that alone.
The brightest side of the whole thing was the way everybody in this
town was fighting for me. The entire town took sides, and even men who
disliked me, and who I certainly dislike, like C. W. and R---- of the
Paris Embassy, turned in and fought for my getting in like relations.
And the women--I had grand dukes and ambassadors and princes, whom I do
not know by sight, moving every lever, and as Stanhope of The Herald,
testified "every man, woman and child in the visiting and resident
legation is crazy on the subject of getting Davis into the coronation."
They made it a personal matter, and when I got my little blue badge,
the women kissed me and each other, and cheered, and the men came to
congratulate me, and acted exactly as though they had got it themselves.

It was a beautiful sight; the Czarina much more beautiful and more
sad-looking than ever before. But it was not solemn