“Two of our men have died of yellow fever. We hope to keep it out of camp, and if we succeed, I trust we shall soon get to Porto Rico. Whatever comes, I cannot say how glad I am to have been in this. I feel that I now leave the children a memory that will partly offset the fact that I did not leave them much money. I have been recommended for the Colonelcy of this regiment, and for the medal of honor. Of course, I hope to get both, but I really don’t care very much, for the _thing itself_ is more important than the reward, and I have led this regiment during the last three weeks, the crowning weeks of its life. There is nothing I would have exchanged for having led it on horseback, where, first of all the army, we broke through the enemy’s entrenchments. By the way, I then killed a Spaniard myself with the pistol Will Cowles raked up from the _Maine_. Of the six hundred men with whom I landed, less than three hundred are left; the others are dead or in the hospital; the mismanagement has been beyond belief.” Alas, how sad it seems that the mismanagement should have been beyond belief at such a time! On July 27 a letter dated “First Regiment, U. S. Volunteer Cavalry, in camp near Santiago de Cuba,” was received by my husband. A very characteristic letter it was, full of the joy of a fight well fought, and full also, of that tremendous human sympathy with his men, combined with an intelligent practicality which resulted later in the “round robin,” requesting that the men who had fought so bravely, should not be allowed to die of disease unnecessarily by being retained for no good reason in the broiling heat of a Cuban summer. “Dear Douglas,” he writes, “we had a bully fight at Santiago, and though there was an immense amount that I did not exactly enjoy, the charge itself was great fun. Frankly, it did not enter my head that I could get through without being hit, but I judged that even if hit, the chances would be about 3 to 1 against my being killed.