Wood and Gen. Young, by agreement the night before and without orders from anybody decided to advance at daybreak and dislodge the Spaniards from Las Guasimas. They went by two narrow trails single file, the two trails were along the crests of a line of hills with a valley between. The dotted line is the trail we should have taken had the Cubans told us it existed, if we had done so we would have had the Spaniards in the frontband rear as General Young would have caught them where they expected him to come, and we would have caught them where they were not looking for us. Of course, the Cubans who are worthless in every way never told us of this trail until we had had the meeting. No one knew we were near Spaniards until both columns were on the place where the two trails meet. Then our scouts came back and reported them and the companies were scattered out as you see them in the little dots. The Spaniards were absolutely hidden not over 25 per cent of the men saw one of them for two hours-- I ran out with the company on the right of the dotted line, marked "our position." I thought it was a false alarm and none of us believed there were any Spaniards this side of Santiago. The ground was covered with high grass and cactus and vines so that you could not see twenty feet ahead, the men had to beat the vines with their carbines to get through them. We had not run fifty yards through the jungle before they opened on us with a quick firing gun at a hundred yards. I saw the enemy on the hill across the valley and got six sharp shooters and began on them, then the fire got so hot that we had to lie on our faces and crawl back to the rear. I had a wounded man to carry and was in a very bad way because I had sciatica, Two of his men took him off while I stopped to help a worse wounded trooper, but I found he was dead. When I had come back for him in an hour, the vultures had eaten out his eyes and lips. In the meanwhile a trooper stood up on the crest with a guidon and waved it at the opposite trail to find out if the firing there was from Spaniards or Len Young's negroes. He was hit in three places but established the fact that Young was up on the trail on our right across the valley for they cheered. He was a man who had run on the Gold Ticket for Congress in Arizona, and consequently, as some one said, naturally should have led a forlorn hope. A blackguard had just run past telling them that Wood was killed and that he had been ordered to Siboney for reinforcements. That was how the report spread that we were cut to pieces-- A reporter who ran away from Young's column was responsible for the story that I was killed. He meant Marshall who was on the left of the line and who was shot through the spine-- There was a lot of wounded at the base and the fighting in front was fearful to hear. It was as fast as a hard football match and you must remember it lasted two full hours; during that time the men were on their feet all the time or crawling on their hands-- Not one of them, with the exception of ----, and a Sergeant who threw away his gun and ran, went a step back. It was like playing blindman's buff and you were it. I got separated once and was scared until I saw the line again, as my leg was very bad and I could not get about over the rough ground. I went down the trail and I found Capron dying and the whole place littered with discarded blankets and haversacks. I also found Fish and pulled him under cover--he was quite dead-- Then I borrowed a carbine and joined Capron's troop, a second lieutenant and his Sergeant were in command. The man next me in line got a bullet through his sleeve and one through his shirt and you could see where it went in and came out without touching the skin. The firing was very high and we were in no danger so I told the lieutenant to let us charge across an open place and take a tin shack which was held by the Spaniards' rear guard, for they were open in retreat. Roosevelt ordered his men to do the same thing and we ran forward cheering across the open and then dropped in the grass and fired. I guess I fired about twenty rounds and then formed into a strategy board and went off down the trail to scout. I got lonely and was coming back when I met another trooper who sat down and said he was too hot to run in any direction Spaniard or no Spaniard. So we sat down and panted. At last he asked me if I was R. H. D. and I said I was and he said "I'm Dean, I met you in Harvard in the racquet court." Then we embraced--the tenth came up then and it was all over. My leg, thank goodness, is all right again and has been so for three days. It was only the running about that caused it. I won't have to run again as I have a horse now and there will be no more ambushes and moreover we have 12,000 men around us-- Being together that way in a tight place has made us all friends and I guess I'll stick to the regiment. Send this to dear Mother and tell her I was not born to be killed. I ought to tell you more of the charming side of the life--we are all dirty and hungry and sleep on the ground and have grand talks on every subject around the headquarters tent. I was never more happy and content and never so well. It is hot but at night it is quite cool and there has been no rain only a few showers. `No one is ill and there have been no cases of fever. I have not heard from you or any one since the 14th, which is not really long but so much goes on that it seems so. Lots of love to you all.

DICK.

After reading this over I ought perhaps to say that the position of the real correspondents is absolutely the very best. No one confounds us with the men at the base, and nothing they have they deny us. We are treated immeasurably better than the poor attaches who are still on the ship and who if they were spies could not be treated worse. But for Whitney, Remington and myself nothing is too good. Generals fight to have us on their staffs and all that sort of thing, so I really cannot complain, except about the fact that our real news is crowded out by the faker in the rear.

SANTIAGO.

Headquarters
Cavalry Division, U. S. Army.
Headqrs. Wood's Rough 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 am. I wanted to see you coming up the street this summer in your knickerbockers and with no fish, but still happy. Never mind, we shall do the theatres this Fall, and have good walks downtown. 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 come up for a Sunday. We expect to move up on Santiago the day after to-morrow, and it's about time, for the trail will not be passable much longer. 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 knew how well off I was until I got to smoking Durham tobacco and I've only half a bag of that left. The enlisted men are smoking dried horse droppings, grass, 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 mango, to night we had beans. Of course, what they ought 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 ever met. He carried four men from the firing line the other day back half a mile to the hospital tent. He spends most of his time coming around headquarters in an undershirt of mine and a gold bracelet fighting tarantulas. I woke up the other morning with one seven inches long and as hairy as your head reposing on my pillow. My sciatica bothers me but has not prevented me seeing everything and I can dig rain gutters and cut wood with any of them. It is very funny to see Larned, the tennis champion, whose every movement at Newport was applauded by hundreds of young women, marching up and down in the wet grass. Whitney and I guy him. To-day a sentry on post was reading "As You Like It" and whenever I go down the line half the men want to know who won the boat race-- To-day Wood sent me out with a detail on a pretense of scouting but really to give them a chance to see the country. They were all college 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 done me so much good, and being with 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 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 to carry a message 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 mails. The messenger carried three letters, one to my sister, one to Miss Cecil Clark of Chicago, whom Richard married a few months later, and one to myself. As a matter of fact, Jaggers delivered his notes several hours before letters travelling by the same boat reached the same destinations. The newspapers not only printed long accounts of Jaggers's triumphal progress from New York to Chicago and back again, but used the success of his undertaking as a text for many editorials against the dilatory methods of our foreign-mail service. Jaggers left London on March 11, 1899, and was back again on the 29th, having travelled nearly eighty-four hundred miles in eighteen 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 company sent it to The Mail without my name but describing me as "an American gentleman"-- Instantly the foreign correspondents went to them to find out who I was and to whom I was sending 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 him where-ever I chose. Then the boy's father got 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 him and Kinsey the Purser knows he is sent by me. After he gets back from Chicago and Philadelphia, you can do with him as you like until the steamer sails. If the thing 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 the mail to Chicago, Somerset agreeing to consider the letter you give him to Bruce, as equivalent to one coming from here. The other bet is that he will deliver and get 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 have my permission to do what you please-- He is coming into my employ as soon as he gets back and as soon as the company give him a medal.

Over here there is the greatest possible interest in the matter-- At the Clubs I go to, the waiters all wait on me in order to have the latest developments and when it was cabled over here that the Customs' people intended stopping him, indignation raged at the Foreign office.

of love,

DICK.

89 Jermyn Street, S. W.

March--1899
DEAR NORA:

This is to be handed to you by my special messenger, who is to assure you that I am in the best of health and spirits-- Keep him for a few hours and then send him on to Chicago-- As he is doing this on a bet, do not give him any written instructions only verbal ones. I am very well and happy and send you all my love-- Jaggers has been running errands for me ever since I came here, and a most loyal servitor when I was ill-- On his return I want to keep him on as a buttons. See that he gets plenty to eat-- If he comes back alive he will have broken the messenger boy service record by three thousand miles. Personally, it does not cost me anything to speak of. The dramatization of the Soldiers continues briskly, and Maude is sending Grundy back the Jackal, to have a second go at it. Maude insists on its being done--so I stand to win a lot. RICHARD.

Beefsteak Club, 9, Green Street,
Leicester Square, W. C. Tuesday.
March--1899.
DEAR MOTHER:--

The faithful Jaggers should have arrived to-day, or will do so this evening-- I am sure you will make the poor little chap comfortable-- I do regret having sent him on such a journey especially since the papers here made such an infernal row over it-- However, neither of us will lose by it in the end--

I dined with Lady Clarke last night and met Lord Castleton there and he invited me up to Dublin for the Punchtown Races-- I have a great mind to go and write a story on them-- Castleton is a great sport and very popular at home and in England and it would be a pleasant experience. Kuhne Beveridge is doing a bust of me in khaki outfit for the Academy and also for a private exhibition of her own works, which includes the Prince of Wales, and the Little Queen of Holland.

Hays Hammond has invited me down to South Africa again, with a promise of making my fortune, but I am not going as it takes too long. DICK.