MY DEAR E

Nov. 7/82.

How often you must find yourself in want of a pin! For instance, you go into a shop, and you say to the man: "I want the largest penny bun you can let me have for a halfpenny." And perhaps the man looks stupid and does n't quite understand what you mean. Then how convenient it is to have a pin ready to stick into the back of his hand, while you say: "Now then! Look sharp, stupid!" . . . And even when you don't happen to want a pin, how often you must think to yourself: "They say Interlachen is a very pretty place. I wonder what it looks like!" (That is the place that is painted on this pincushion.)

When you don't happen to want either a pin or pictures, it may just remind you of a friend

who sometimes thinks of his dear little friend E-, and who is just now thinking of the day he met her on the parade, the first time she had been allowed to come out alone to look for him. . . .

have to entertain them! Sometimes they are a real terror to me-specially boys; little girls I can now and then get on with, when they 're few enough. They easily become de trop. But with sent "Sylvie and Bruno " to an Oxford friend, and, little boys I'm out of my element altogether. I in writing his thanks, he added: "I think I must bring my little boy to see you." So I wrote to say "Don't," or words to that effect; and he wrote again that he could hardly believe his eyes when he got my note. He thought I doted on all children. But I'm not omnivorous!-like a pig. I pick and choose.

You are a lucky girl, and I 'm rather inclined I have never read a page of him; yet I am sure the to envy you, in having the leisure to read Dante. "Divina Commedia" is one of the grandest books in the world-though I am not sure whether the reading of it would raise one's life and give it a nobler purpose, or simply be a grand poetical treat. That is a question you are beginning to be able to answer. I doubt if I shall ever (at least in this life) have the opportunity of reading it; my life seems to be all torn into little bits among the hosts of things I want to do! It seems hard to settle what to do first. One piece of work, at any it will take months of hard work; I mean the 2nd rate, I am clear ought to be done this year, and Vol of "Sylvie and Bruno." I fully mean, if I have life and health till Xmas next, to bring it out then. When one is close on sixty years old, it seems presumptuous to count on years and years of work yet to be done. . . .

hundred or so of child-friends who have brightened she is rather the exception among the my life. Usually the child becomes so entirely a different being as she grows into a woman that our friendship has to change, too; and that it usually does by gliding down from a loving intimacy into an acquaintance that merely consists of a smile and a bow when we meet! . . .

Jan. 1/95.

time since you have heard from me; in fact, I find you are quite correct in saying it is a long that I have not written to you since the 13th of last November. But what of that? You have access to the daily papers. Surely you can find out negatively that I am all right? Go carefully through the list of Bankruptcies, then run your eye down the Police Cases; and if you fail to find my name anywhere, you can say to your mother, in a tone of calm satisfaction: "Mr. Dodgson is going on well."

2

II. THE EXPLOSION.

THE MAINTOP.

ON

N the night of the explosion, the Maine, lying in the harbor of Havana at the buoy where she was moored by the Spanish pilot on her entrance into the port, was heading in a direction quite unusual-at least, for the Maine. In this connection it should be explained that Havana is in the region of the tradewind, which, howThe Stars and Stripes flying ever, is not so stable at half-mast over the wreck there as farther to of the Maine, and above the flag is seen hanging from a the eastward, espeline of the signal-yard a swab blown from the deck. cially in the winter months. During the day the wind is commonly from the eastward, and about sundown it is likely to die down. During the night there may be no wind at all, and a ship swinging at her buoy may head in any direction. On the night of the explosion the Maine was heading to the northward and westward, in the general direction of the Machina, or naval "shears," near the admiral's palace. Some of the watchofficers said afterward that they had not before known her to head in that direction at Havana. I myself did not remark any peculiarity of heading, because I had not been on deck much during the night-watches. Stated simply as a fact, the Maine was lying in the position in which she would have been sprung to open her batteries on the shore fortifications. If an expert had been charged with

1 The officers of the Maine at the time were: captain, Charles D. Sigsbee; executive officer, LieutenantCommander Richard Wainwright; navigator, Lieutenant George F. W. Holman; lieutenants, John Hood and Carl W. Jungen; lieutenants, junior-grade, George P. Blow, John J. Blandin, and Friend W. Jenkins; naval cadets, Jonas H. Holden, Watt T. Cluverius, Amon Bronson, and David F. Boyd, Jr.; surgeon, Lucien G. HeneVOL. LVII.-31.

mining the Maine's mooring-berth, purely as a measure of harbor defense, and having only one mine available, it is believed that he would have placed it under the position that the Maine occupied that night.

A short distance astern, or nearly astern, was the American steamer City of Washington, Captain Frank Stevens, of the Ward line. The Alfonso XII and the Legazpi occupied the berths mentioned in the first paper. They were on the starboard side of the Maine. There were other vessels in the harbor, but they were more remote from the Maine's berth. It was a dark, overcast night. The atmosphere was heavy, and the weather unusually hot and sultry. All of the twenty-six officers were aboard excepting Passed Assistant Engineer F. C. Bowers, Naval Cadet (Engineer) Pope Washington, Paymaster's Clerk Brent McCarthy, and Gunner Joseph Hill.

1

The members of the crew, three hundred and twenty-eight in number, were on board as usual. One of the steam-launches was in the water, and riding at the starboard boom. The crew, excepting those on watch or on post, were turned in. The men of the quarter-watch were distributed about the deck in various places, wherever they could make themselves comfortable within permissible limits as to locality. Some of the officers were in their state-rooms or in the messrooms below; others were on the main or upper deck, in or about the officers' smokingquarters, which were abaft the after-turret, on the port side, abreast the after-superstructure.

I was in my quarters, sitting on the afterside of the table in the port or admiral's cabin. As previously stated, the Maine had been arranged to accommodate both an admiral and a captain. For this purpose her berger; paymaster, Charles M. Ray; chief engineer, Charles P. Howell; passed assistant engineer, Frederic C. Bowers; assistant engineers, John R. Morris and Darwin R. Merritt; naval cadets (engineer division), Pope Washington and Arthur Crenshaw; chaplain, John P. Chidwick; first lieutenant of marines, Albertus W.Catlin; boatswain, Francis E. Larkin; gunner, Joseph Hill; carpenter, George Helms; pay-clerk, Brent McCarthy.

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cabin space in the after-superstructure had been divided into two parts, starboard and port, which were perfectly symmetrical in arrangement and fittings. Looking from one cabin into the other through the large communicating doorway, one cabin was like the reflection of the other seen in a mirror. The two cabins were alike even in furniture. In the November article the illustration on page 90 shows me sitting at the starboard-cabin table, in my own cabin, looking at the log-book. At the time of the explosion I was sitting in the port cabin in the corresponding position. The situation would be shown if that illustration were reversed by reflection in a mirror.

About an hour before the explosion I had completed a report called for by Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, on the advisability of continuing to place torpedo-tubes on board cruisers and battle-ships. I then wrote a letter home in which I struggled to apologize for having carried in my pocket for ten months a letter to my wife from one of her friends of long standing. The cabin mess-attendant, James Pinckney, had brought me, about an hour before, a civilian's thin coat, because of the prevailing heat; I had taken off my blouse, and was wearing this coat for the only time during the cruise. In the pocket I had found the unopened and undelivered letter. Pinckney, a light-hearted colored man, who spent much of his spare time in singing, playing the banjo, and dancing jigs, was for some reason in an especially happy frame of mind that night. Poor fellow! he was killed, as was also good old John R. Bell, the colored cabin

Machina and boat landing. FROM A WHARF IN REGLA-I.

steward, who had been in the navy twentyseven years.

At taps ("turn in and keep quiet"), ten minutes after nine o'clock, I laid down my pen to listen to the notes of the bugle, which were singularly beautiful in the oppressive stillness of the night. The marine bugler, Newton, who was rather given to fanciful effects, was evidently doing his best. During his pauses the echoes floated back to the ship with singular distinctness, repeating the strains of the bugle fully and exactly. A half-hour later, Newton was dead.

I was inclosing my letter in its envelop when the explosion came. The impression made on different people on board the Maine varied somewhat. To me, in my position, well aft, and within the superstructure, it was a bursting, rending, and crashing sound or roar of immense volume, largely metallic in character. It was followed by a succession of heavy, ominous, metallic sounds, probably caused by the overturning of the central superstructure and by falling debris. There was a trembling and lurching motion of the vessel, a list to port, and a movement of subsidence. The electric lights, of which there were eight in the cabin where I was sitting, went out. Then there was intense blackness and smoke.

The situation could not be mistaken: the Maine was blown up and sinking. For a moment the instinct of self-preservation took charge of me, but this was immediately dominated by the habit of command. I went up the inclined deck into the starboard cabin, toward the starboard air-ports, which were relieved somewhat against the background of the sky. The sashes were out, and the

openings were large. My first intention was to escape through an air-port, but this was abandoned in favor of the more dignified way of making an exit through the passageway leading forward through the superstructure. I groped my way through the cabin into the passage, and along the passage to the outer door. The passage turned to the right, or starboard, near the forward part of the superstructure.

When the turn was reached, some one ran into me violently. It was Private William Anthony, the orderly at the cabin door. He said something apologetic, and reported that the ship had been blown up and was sinking. He was directed to go out on the quarterdeck, and I followed him. Anthony has been pictured as making an exceedingly formal salute on that occasion. The dramatic effect of a salute cannot add to his heroism. If he had made a salute it could not have been seen in the blackness of that compartment. Anthony did his whole duty, at great personal risk, at a time when he might have evaded the danger without question, and deserved all the commendation that he received for his act. He hung near me with unflagging zeal and watchfulness that night until the ship was abandoned.

I stood for a moment on the starboard side of the main-deck, forward of the superstructure, looking toward the immense dark mass that loomed up amidships, but could see nothing distinctly. There I remained for a few seconds in an effort to grasp the situation, and then asked Anthony for the exact time. He replied: "The explosion took place at nine-forty, sir." It was soon necessary to retire from the main-deck, for that part of

the ship was sinking rapidly. I then went up on the poop-deck. By this time Lieutenant-Commander Wainwright and others were near me. Everybody was impressed by the solemnity of the disaster, but there was no excitement apparent; perfect discipline prevailed.

The question has been asked many times if I believed then that the Maine was blown up from the outside. My answer to this has been that my first order on reaching the deck was to post sentries about the ship. I knew that the Maine had been blown up, and believed that she had been blown up from the outside. Therefore I ordered a measure which was intended to guard against attack. There was no need for the order, but I am writing of first impressions. There was the sound of many voices from the shore, suggestive of cheers.

I stood on the starboard side-rail of the poop and held on to the main-rigging in order to see over the poop-awning, which was bagged and covered with debris. I was still trying to take in the situation more completely. The officers were near me and showing a courteous recognition of my authority and responsibility. Directions were given in a low tone to Executive Officer Wainwright, who himself gave orders quietly and directed operations. Fire broke out in the mass amidships. Orders were given to flood the forward magazine, but the forward part of the ship was found to be under water. Inquiry as to the after-magazines and the guncotton magazine in the after-part of the ship showed a like condition of those compartments, as reported by those who had escaped from the ward-room and junior officers' quar