Part 19 (1/2)

SANTIAGO

Headquarters Cavalry Division, U S Arh Riders

June 29th, 1898

DEAR DAD:

I suppose you are back from Marion now and I have missed you I can't tell you how sorry I a up the street this summer in your knickerbockers and with no fish, but still happy Never ood walks don

I hope Mother will come up and visit me this September, at Marion and sit on Allen's and on the Clarks' porch and we can have Chas too I suppose he will have had his holiday but he can coo the day after to-morrow, and it's about tier It rains every day at three o'clock for an hour and such rain you never guessed

It is three inches high for an hour Then we all go out naked and dig trenches to get it out of the way It is very rough living I have to confess that I never kneell off I was until I got to s of that left The enlisted rass, roots and tea Some of them can't sleep they are so nervous for the want of it, but to-day a lot came up and all will be well for them I've had a steady ration of coffee, bacon and hard tack for a week and one ht to serve is rice and beans as fried bacon is impossible in this heat Still, every one is well This is the best crowd to be with--they are so well educated and so interesting The regular army men are very dull and narrow and would bore one to death We have Wood, Roosevelt, Lee, the British Attache, Whitney and a Doctor Church, a friend of mine from Princeton, who is quite the most cheerful soul and the funniest I everline the other day back half aaround headquarters in an undershi+rt oftarantulas I woke up the otherand as hairy as your head reposing on my pillow My sciatica bothersrain gutters and cut ith any of them It is very funny to see Larned, the tennis champion, whose everywouy hi ”As You Like It” and whenever I go down the line half the men want to knoon the boat race-- To-day Wood sent ive thee boys, with Willie Tiffany as sergeant and we had a fine time and could see the Spanish sentries quite plainly without a glass I hope you will not worry over this long separation I don't know of any experience I have had which has donewith such a fine lot of fellows is a great pleasure 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 saere in co every day and would probably have been in by this time This weather shows that Havana n in this mud

dick

SANTIAGO, July 1898

DEAR FAMILY:

This is just to reassure you that I aht 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 ined We never saw the ene to the others not to ot excited and took a carbine and charged the sugar house, which hat is called the key to the position If the ulars I would have sat in the rear as B---- did, but I knew every other one of the, with theht to help The officers were falling all over the shop, and after it was all over Rooseveltspeech before soiment any time I wanted it He told the associated Press ie” than your huht

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 , certainly theevents” for which Richard was responsible was the sending of an English district-o The idea was inspired by er service and his particular belief in one Williaers, a fourteen-year-old lad whom Richard had frequently e a casual luncheon conversation at the Savoy with his friend Soers were asked to carry a e to New York that he could not only do it but would express no surprise at the commission This conversation resulted in the bet described in the following letters The boy slipped quietly away from London, but a few days later the bet became public and the newspapers were filled with speculation as to whether Jaggers could beat the er carried three letters, one to o, whom Richard married a few months later, and one to ers delivered his notes several hours before letters travelling by the same boat reached the sa accounts of Jaggers's triuain, but used the success of his undertaking as a text for n-ers left London on March 11, 1899, and was back again on the 29th, having travelled nearly eighty-four hundred hteen days On his return he was received literally by a crowd of thousands, and his feat was given official recognition by a gold medal pinned on his youthful chest by the duchess of Rutland Also, later on, at a garden fete he was presented to the Queen, and incidentally, still later, returned to the United States as ”buttons” to my brother's household

Bachelors' Club, Piccadilly, W

March 15th, 1899

DEAR CHAS

I hope you are not annoyed about Jaggers When he started no one knew of it but three people and I had no idea anyone else would, but the co n correspondents went to the the letter-- I told the company it was none of their damned business--that I employed the boy by the week and that I could send hiot proud and wrote to The Mail about his age and so they got the boy's name Mine, however, is still out of it, but in America they are sure to know as the people on the steamer are crazy about hiets back froo and Philadelphia, you can do with hi is taken up as it is here and the fat is in the fire, then you can do as you please-- I mean you can tell the papers about it or not-- Somerset holds one end of the bets and I the other There are two bets: one that he will beat theto consider the letter you give hi froet receipts from you, Nora and Bruce, and return here by the 5th of April-- You and Bobby ought to be able to do well by him if it becomes, as I say, so far public that there is no possibility of further concealment-- You haveinto ive hireatest possible interest in the o to, the waiters all wait on me in order to have the latest developments and when it was cabled over here that the Custoed at the Foreign office

of love,

dick

89 Jermyn Street, S W