“You could not give me a more useful present than the watch. It was exactly what I wished. Thank old Douglas too, for the watch and for his many many kindnesses. I hope to leave to-morrow, but Wood, who is now in San Antonio, may keep me here a day or two longer to hurry up the shipment of the troops, rifles, etc. I much want to get with the regiment to help get it into shape, but there will be many tedious and irritating delays, of course. I have about twenty-five ‘gentlemen rankers’ going with me from the Knickerbocker Club, and twelve clean-cut stalwart young fellows from Harvard,--such fine boys. I feel rather like a fake at going, for we may never get down to Cuba at all, and if we do, I do not think we shall see very serious campaigning, while proper care will prevent the serious risk of disease.” And again on May 8: “Kenneth turned up just in time. [Referring to my husband’s young Scotch cousin, Kenneth Douglas Robinson, associated with my husband in business, who was confident that he was doing the right thing to follow his hero, Theodore Roosevelt, into the Spanish War.] I enlisted him and sent him off with Bob Ferguson [another Scotch friend] and the rest....” And again on May 12, after I had sent him a poem, he writes: “My own darling sister:--I loved the poem and I loved your dear letter; it made me sure that you really knew just how I felt about going. I _could not_ stay; that was the sum and substance of it;--although I realize well how hard it is for Edith, and what a change for the worse it means in my after life. It will be bitter if we do not get to Cuba, but we shall have to take things as they come. Your own brother.” I had doubted whether it was his duty to go to Cuba, feeling it might be even more his duty to remain in his important and difficult position of assistant secretary of the navy, but Theodore Roosevelt would not have been his true self unless he had practised what he had preached so vigorously. Kenneth Robinson writes on May 17 from San Antonio: “Theodore has been drilling us the last few days. The men always do their best when he is out. He would be amused indeed if he heard some of the adjectives and terms applied to him, meant to be most complimentary but hardly fit for publication. We certainly are a curious aggregation,--cavalry men, cowboys, college men, etc.” And Bob Ferguson, our very dear friend who had made America his home, and was like a member of our family, writes early in June: