o are going back again with the beards
that have grown in the field hospitals on their cheeks and their eyes
hollow, and too weak to move or speak. Six of them died while I was in
Jaroco, a town as big as Marion and that had been the average for two
months, think of that, six people dying in Marion every day through
July and August-- I didn't stay in that town any longer than the train
did-- Well I have been writing editorials here instead of cheering you
up but I guess I'm about right and when I see a little more I'll tell
it over again to The Journal-- It is not as exciting reading as deeds
of daring by our special correspondent and I haven't changed my name or
shaved my eyebrows or done anything the other men have done but I
believe I am getting near the truth. They have shut off provisions
going or coming from the towns, they have huddled hundreds of people
who do not know what a bath means around these towns, and this is going
to happen-- As soon as the rains begin the yellow fever and smallpox
will set in and all vessels leaving Cuban ports will be quarantined and
the island will be one great plague spot. The insurgents who are in
the open fields will live and the soldiers will die for their officers
know nothing of sanitation or care nothing. The little Consul has just
been here to see me and we have had a long talk and I got back at him.
He told me he had seen the Franco-German war as a correspondent of The
Tribune and I asked him if he had ever met another correspondent of The
Tribune at that time a German student named Hans who cabled the story
of the battle of Gravellote and who Archibald Forbes says was the first
correspondent to use the cable. The Consul who looks like William D.
Howells wriggled around in his chair and said "I guess you mean me but
I was not a German student, I was born and raised in Philadelphia and
Forbes got my name wrong, it is Hance." So then I got up and shook
hands with him in my turn and told him I had always wanted to meet that
correspondent and did not expect to do so in Cardenas, on the coast of
Cuba.

Thank you all for your letters. I am glad you liked the Jameson book.
I thought you knew I was a F. R. G. S. It was George Curzon proposed
me and as he is a gold medallist of the Society it was easy getting in.
Lots of love.

DICK.

Richard returned to New York from Cuba in February, 1897, but the
following month started for Florence to pay me a long-promised visit.