cided not to risk
feelings being hurt by giving it to either-- So, Boone who was at
Annapolis a month ago was told to fire the shot-- We all took his name
and he has grown about three inches. We told him all of the United
States and England would be ringing with his name-- When I was alone he
came and sat down on a gull beside me and told me he was very glad they
had let him fire that first gun because his mother was an invalid and
he had gone into the navy against her wish and he hoped now that she
would be satisfied when she saw his name in the papers. He was too
sweet and boyish about it for words and I am going to take a snapshot
at him and put his picture in Scribner's--"he only stands about so
high--"

DICK.

I enclose a souvenir of the bombardment. Please keep it carefully for
me-- It was the first shot "in anger" in thirty years.

TAMPA, May 3rd, 1898.

DEAR NORA:

We are still here and probably will be. It is a merry war, if there
were only some girls here the place would be perfect. I don't know
what's the matter with the American girl--here am I--and Stenie and
Willie Chanler and Frederick Remington and all the boy officers of the
army and not one solitary, ugly, plain, pretty, or beautiful girl. I
bought a fine pony to-day, her name was Ellaline but I thought that was
too much glory for Ellaline so I diffused it over the whole company by
re-christening her Gaiety Girl, because she is so quiet, all the Gaiety
Girls I know are quiet.

She never does what I tell her anyway, so it doesn't matter what I call
her. But when this cruel war is over ($6 a day with bath room
adjoining) I am going to have an oil painting of her labelled "Gaiety
Girl the Kentucky Mare that carried the news of the fall of Havana to
Matanzas, fifty miles under fire and Richard Harding Davis." To-morrow
I am going to buy a saddle and a servant. War is a cruel thing
especially to army officers. They have to wear uniforms and are not
allowed to take off their trousers to keep cool-- They take off
everything else except their hats and sit in the dining room without
their coats or collars-- That's because it is war time. They are
terrible brave--you can see it by the way they wear bouquets on their
tunics and cigarette badges and Cuban flags and by not saluting their
officers. One General counted today and forty enlisted men passed him
without saluting. The army will have to do a lot of fighting to make
itself solid with