The scenery is very beautiful when it
is not raining. I have a cot raised off the ground in the Colonel's
tent and am very well off. If Chaffee or Lawton, who are the finest
type of officers I ever saw, were in command, we would have been
fighting every day and would probably have been in by this time. This
weather shows that Havana must be put off after Porto Rico. They
cannot campaign in this mud.

DICK.

SANTIAGO, July 1898.

DEAR FAMILY:

This is just to reassure you that I am all right. I and Marshall were
the only correspondents with Roosevelt. We were caught in a clear case
of ambush. Every precaution had been taken, but the natives knew the
ground and our men did not. It was the hottest, nastiest fight I ever
imagined. We never saw the enemy except glimpses. Our men fell all
over the place, shouting to the others not to mind them, but to go on.
I got excited and took a carbine and charged the sugar house, which was
what is called the key to the position. If the men had been regulars I
would have sat in the rear as B---- did, but I knew every other one of
them, had played football, and all that sort of thing, with them, so I
thought as an American I ought to help. The officers were falling all
over the shop, and after it was all over Roosevelt made me a long
speech before some of the men, and offered me a captaincy in the
regiment any time I wanted it. He told the Associated Press man that
there was no officer in his regiment who had "been of more help or
shown more courage" than your humble servant, so that's all right.
After this I keep quiet. I promise I keep quiet. Love to you all.

RICHARD.

From Cuba Richard sailed with our forces to Porto Rico, where his
experiences in the Spanish-American war came to an end, and he returned
to Marion. He spent the fall in New York, and early in 1899 went to
London.

One of the most interesting, certainly the most widely talked of,
"sporting events" for which Richard was responsible was the sending of
an English district-messenger boy from London to Chicago. The idea was
inspired by my brother's general admiration of the London messenger
service and his particular belief in one William Thomas Jaggers, a
fourteen-year-old lad whom Richard had frequently employed to carry
notes and run errands. One day, during a casual luncheon conversation
at the Savoy with his friend Somers Somerset, Richard said that he
believed that if Jaggers were asked t