Part 15 (1/2)

I got your letters late last night and theyto have people care for you like that and to care for them as I do I can't tell you howyou for a month has meant to me, but I have talked it all out with ht As Mrs Crown said, ”There's a whole churchful up here praying for you,” and I guess that will pull ht she was cross with me

She could not be cross with me, and her letter told me how much she cared, that was all, and made me be extra careful But I need not promise you to be careful You have an idea I aave the guides to understand their duty was to keep us out of danger if we had to walkin, as real estate agents and coffee-planters and dru in on every steaain quick I have just as strong a prejudice against killing aet scared if you don't hear for a et our stories back once a week, but you knoe are at the convenience of the Cubans ill pocket our despatches andtrip back Thank dear Dad for his letter full of good advice It was excellent Reood men and I like them immensely Already we are firm friends

Love,

KEY WEST--January 1, 1897

DEAR MOTHER:

As you will know byboat or waiting for one There is no turning back fro so was the knowledge of the way you would suffer and worry I argued it out that it was selfish in raphed as the war correspondent that always Turned Back against a month of uneasiness for you, but later I saw I could not do it er toadventure and you will have to believe me and not worry but be a Spartan hed at and the loss of er, but I do not You will not lose o now I can sit still next tis than that” If I had not gone it would have meant that I would have had to have done just that et that I had failed in this one Now do cheer up and believe in the luck of Richard Harding Davis and the British Army We have carte blanche from The Journal to buy or lease any boat on the coast and I rocked them for 1000 in advance payment because of the delay over the Va, I could not have faced anyone had I not, although we had nothing to do with the failure, we tried to cross fairly in the damn tub and it was her captain who put back I lay out on the deck and cried when he refused to go ahead, we had waited so long The Cubans and Res but fortunately I had not and so was spared that humiliation What I don't know about the Fine Art of Filibustering now is unnecessary I find many friends of ht the officers of the Raleigh give rand dinner at which I wear a dress suit and make speeches--they are the best chaps I ever met in the Navy Lots of love and best wishes to Dad and to Nora for a happy, happy New Year You know o back in order to save you anxiety so you won't think me selfish God bless you

dick

KEY WEST, January 2nd, 1897

DEAR FAMILY:

I have learned here that the first quality needed to e, or resources or a knowledge of the Cuban Coast line, it is patience Anybody can run a boat into a dark bayou and duain but only heroes can sit for a month on a hotel porch or at the end of a wharf, and wait That is all we do and that is e in the bay and then dress fully and have a greasy breakfast and then light a huge Key West cigar, price three cents and sit on the hotel porch withone's boots polished as the two industries of this place are blacking boots and driving cabs I have two boys to blackand pay the one who does his the better of the two-- It generally ends in a fight so that affords diversion-- Then afor you” and I get up and look for Rele of streets where one can find him and I call at ”Josh” Curry's first and then at Pendleton's News Store and read all the back numbers of the Police Gazette for the hundredth time and then call here at the Custom House and then look in at the Cable office, where Michaelson lives sending telegras ain, where I have o intofor ets to ”Josh's” as I leave the Custom House-- In the afternoon I study Spanish out of a text book and at three take a bicycle ride, at five I call at the garrison to take tea with the doctor and his wife, who is sweeter than angel's ever get to be with a el of a baby called Martha I wait until retreat is sounded and the gun is fired at sunset and having co drop on the grass instead of catching it on the arms as a bluejacket does, I ride off to the bay for another bath-- Then I take the launch to the Raleigh and dine with the officers and rejoice in the clean fresh paint and brass and decks and the lights and black places of a great shi+p of war, than which nothing is more splendid We sit on the quarter-deck and sain, in ti theanotherold novels and the ”Lives of Captain Walker” and ”Captain Fry of the Virginius,” two great books fro to write a short story like the one of the Alamo or of the Jah and the life of Captain Fry with all the old wood cuts and the newspaper comments of the tiet away but it is no use kicking about it, Michaelson is doing all he can and the new tug will be along in a week anyway I shall be so glad to get to Cuba that I will dance with glee

dick

MATANZAS, January 15th, 1897

DEAR MOTHER:

I sent you a note by Reo to Sagua La Grande It is on the northern coast I think froos on the Southern coast and then if I can catch a steao to see my old friends, at the Juraqua mines and MacWilliams' ore road and ”the Palms”-- Everywhere I a a great deal and talking very little,bad

There is war here and no mistake and all the people in the fields have been ordered in to the fortified tohere they are starving and dying of disease Yesterday I saw the houses of these people burning on both sides of the track-- They gave shelter to the insurgents and so very soon they found their houses gone I ah I had won 5000 He was a splendid fellow but a perfect kid and had to be humored and petted all the tih with this in a feeeks but it has had such a set back at the start that I am afraid it can never make a book and I doubt if I can write a decent article even I aer than is necessary and so I as Address me care of Consul General Lee, Havana and confine your re on here I don't believe half I hear but I aton is more excitable than I aetting details and verifying things He is right on a big scale but every one has lied so about this island that I do not want to say anything I do not believe is true This is a beautiful little city and after Jaruco, where we slept two days ago, it is Paris There we slept off the barnyard and cows and chickens walked all over the floor and fleas all over us It was like Honduras only filthier Speaking of Paris, tell the Kid I expect to go over to him soon after I return to New York

of love

dick

CARDENAS--North Coast of Cuba

January 16th, 1897

DEAR MOTHER:

It is very funny not knohat sort of a place you are to sleep in next and taking things out of a grab bag, as it were-- In Europe you can always guess what the well knoill give you for you have a guide book, but here it is all luck Matanzas was a pretty city but the people were awful, the hotel was Spanish and the proprietor insolent, though I was spending more of Willie Hearst's money than all of the officers spend in a week, the Consul could not talk English or Spanish, he said he hadn't coloried in the fact he had been there three years without knowing a word of the language His vice-Consul orse and everything rong generally Every one I met was an Alarton if he was the ave us the Iowa Deht I reached here after a six hours ride through blazing fields of sugar cane and stopped on my way to the hotel to ask the Consul when the next boat went to Saqua la Grande-- I had no letter of introduction to him as I had to the Matanzas consul, but as soon as he saw ain and was as hearty and well bred and delightful as Charley hi on hiet o to-morrow My hotel looks on the plaza and the proprietor and the whole suite of attendants are my slaves It is just as different as can be My interpreter does it, he calls hih I point out to him that two shi+rts and twelve collars do not constitute a wardrobe even with a rubber coat thrown in But he likes to play at er and I can't say I object Only when you remember the way I was invited to see Cuba and expected to see it, and now the way I a it from car ith A VALET What would the new school of yellow kid journalists say if they knew that For the first time on this trip I have wished you were both withreally beautiful but that it instantly makes me feel selfish and wish you could see it too It has happened again and again and to night I wish you could be here with me on this balcony The town runs down a slope to the bay and in the middle of it is the Plaza withroom-- ”the room” so the proprietor tells me, ”reserved only for the Capitain General” It is just like the description in that remarkable novel of mine where Clay and Alice sit on the balcony of the restaurant I have the ht and the Cathedral with the open doors and the bronze statue in the ht fro around the plaza below If it was in any way as beautiful as this Clay and Alice would have ended the novel that night