re every man dresses by choice like a grand
opera brigand, and not only for photographic purposes. I have been on
the move all the time, chasing in the rear of armies that turn back as
soon as I approach and apologize for disappointing me of a battle, or
riding to the scene of a battle that never comes off, or hastening to a
bombardment that turns out to be an attack on an empty fort.

I live on brown bread and cheese and goat's milk and sleep like a log
in shepherds' huts. It is so beautiful that I almost grudge the night.
Nora and Mother could take this trip as safely as a regiment and would
see things out of fairyland. And such adventures! Late in life I am
at last having adventures and honors heaped upon me. I was elected a
captain of a band of brigands who had been watching a mountain pass for
a month, and as it showed no signs of running away had taken to dancing
on the green. I caught them at this innocent pastime and they allowed
me to photograph them and give them wine at eight cents a quart which
we drank out of a tin stovepipe. They drank about four feet of
stovepipe or thirty-six cents' worth, then they danced and sang for me
in a circle, old men and boys, then drilled with their carbines, and I
showed them my revolver and field-glasses and themselves in the finder
of the camera; and when I had to go they took me on their shoulders and
marched me around waving their rifles. Then the old men kissed me on
the cheek and we all embraced and they wept, and I felt as badly as
though I were parting from fifty friends. They told my guide that if I
would come back they would get fifty more "as brave as they" and I
could be captain. I could not begin to tell you all the amusing things
that have happened in this one week. I did not want to come at all,
only a stern sense of duty made me. For I wanted to write the play in
Charley's gilded halls and get to Paris and London. But I can never
cease rejoicing that I took this trip. And it will make the book, "A
Year from a Reporter's Diary," as complete as it can be. That was why
I came. Now I have the Coronation of the Czar, the Millennial at
Hungary, the Inauguration at Washington, the Queen's Jubilee, the War
in Cuba, and the Greco-Turkish War. That is a good year's work and I
mean to loaf after it. You will laugh and say that that is what I
always say, but if you knew how I had to kick myself out of Florence
and the Cascine to come here you would believe