ing
not to cry. I got a stateroom to myself. With the electric fan on and
the airport open, it is about as cool as a blast furnace. But I was
given a seat on the left of General Funston, who is commanding this
brigade, and the other officers at the table are all good fellows. As
long as I was going, I certainly had luck in getting away as sharply as
I did. One day's delay would have made me miss this transport, which
will be the first to land troops.

April 25th.

A dreadnaught joined us today, the Louisiana. I wirelessed the Admiral
asking permission to send a press despatch via his battleship, and he
was polite in reply, but firm. He said "No." There are four transports
and three torpedo boats and the battleship. We go very slowly, because
we must keep up with one of the troop ships with broken engines. At
night it is very pretty seeing the ships in line, and the torpedo boats
winking their signals at each other. I am writing all the time or
reading up things about the army I forget and getting the new dope.
Also I am brushing up my Spanish. Jack London is on board, and three
other correspondents, two of whom I have met on other trips, and one
"cub" correspondent. He was sitting beside London and me busily
turning out copy, and I asked him what he found to write about. He
said, "Well, maybe I see things you fellows don't see." What he meant
was that what was old to us was new to him, but he got guyed
unmercifully.

April 27, 1914.

The censor reads all I write, and so do some half-dozen Mexican cable
clerks and 60 (sixty) correspondents. So when I cable "love," it MEANS
devotion, adoration, and worship; loyalty, fidelity and truth, wanting
you, needing you, unhappy for you. It means ALL that.

RICHARD.

VERA CRUZ, April 30, 1914.

This heat--humid and moist--would sweat water out of a chilled steel
safe; so imagine what it does to me with all the awful winter's
accumulation of fat. I hate to say it, but I LIKE these Mexicans--much
better than Cubans, or Central Americans. They are human, kindly; it
is only the politicians and bandits like Villa who give them a bad
name. But, though they ought to hate us, whenever I stop to ask my way
they invite me to come in and have "coffee" and say, "My house is
yours, senor," which certainly is kind after people have taken your
town away from you and given you another flag and knocked your head off
if you did not salute it. I now have a fine roo