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.
