e is as modest as can be,
and says I am the greatest diplomat out of office, which I really think
he believes, but I am only using old reporters' ways and applying the
things other men did first.

My best stroke was to add to my cable to The Journal, "Recommend ample
recognition of special facilities afforded by telegraph official"--and
then get him to read it himself under the pretext of wishing to learn
if my writing was legible. He grinned all over himself, and said it
was. After my first story is gone I will give him 200 roubles for
himself in an envelope and say Journal wired me to do it. That will
fix him for the coronation story, as it amounts to six months' wages
about. But, my dear brother, in your sweet and lovely home, where the
sun shines on the Cascine and the workmen sleep on the bridges, and
dear old ladies knit in the streets, that is only one of the thousand
things we have had to do. It would take years to give you an account
of what we have done and why we do it. It is like a game of whist and
poker combined and we bluff on two flimsy fours, and crawl the next
minute to a man that holds a measly two-spot. There is not a wire we
have not pulled, or a leg, either, and we go dashing about all day in a
bath-chair, with a driver in a bell hat and a blue nightgown, leaving
cards and writing notes and giving drinks and having secretaries to
lunch and buying flowers for wives and cigar boxes for husbands, and
threatening the Minister with Cleveland's name.

John A. Logan, Jr., is coming dressed in a Russian Uniform, and he wore
it on the steamer, and says he is the special guest of the Czar and the
Secretary of the visiting mission. Mrs. P. P. is paying $10,000 for a
hotel for one week. That is all the gossip there is. We lunched with
the McCooks today and enjoyed hearing American spoken, and they were
apparently very glad to have us, and made much of T. and of me. We only
hope they can help us; and I am telling the General the only man to
meet is Daschoff, and when he does I will tell him to tell Daschoff I
am the only man to be allowed in the coronation. I wish I could tell
you about the city, but we see it only out of the corner of our eyes as
we dash to bureau after bureau and "excellency" and "royal highness"
people, and then dash off to strengthen other bridges and make new
friends. It is great fun, and I am very happy and T. is having the
time of his life. He told me he would rather be wit