The San Francisco call., 1898-07-03
NEWSPAPER LIFE
 AT THE SEAT OF WAR
Lively Experiences of ne Correspondents
 With the Spanjards, he Rat'ons0nd That
 Terrible Creature, the Press Censor. :.
Fron, The Call Special War Correspondence,

glow of soldierly enthusiasm which he . wore a week ago has disappeared, and :. he pathetically murmurs. that this IS; magnificent. but it is not war:
 I do not know whether to be sorry. most for the censor or for the. trans port officer. Every one of the author. ized correspondents Is entitled to transz::: port for himself. his baggage and his: horse, and with regard to baggage . every one of us Is a complete little. military expedition In. himself There: are only about a dozen transport Yes- :: sells waiting down at the port. After. we have been accommodated L really cannot imagine how the army is going to manage. We should not have been so heavily equipped if 1t had. not been :: for the time we have had in which to : think of things we could not poSsibly do without. :: =:
 You see, we have just been sitting: here day after day for three. weeks. among the palm trees with nothing in the world to do except to wait for meal times and to-morrQW!s: naval .engage- ment which never comes off. ; In fact, : we have been leading. ladies lives, and naturally enough we have. sought the: feminine solace of shopping: =: =. = ::
 It is a pity that some great: philoso- pher has not been here to observe us: We should have supplied him with ma
 
 enervating influences of, fdleness.
 When we first came here, all in dusty eagerness, from the North, we ..Vied with one another in a severe Spartan simplicity. The O'Shaughnessy, from Chicago, took us up to his room and proudly exhibited his kit-another pair of socks, another shirt, two .handker- . chiefs, cake of soap and blanket. all wrapped up in a water-prOof sheet tied with rope; that; in addition to what he stood up in and what he car: ried in his pocket, constituted his outfit
 The waterproof sheet, he explained, not only served as a wrapping for his kit but in combination with a heap Of brushwood which he would cut with his tackknife would constitute. his bed and his canopy when the rainy season in Cuba. should set In. He rather apolo- gized for the soap; it would be handy, he explained, for washing his clothes, in case such a proceeding should be- .. come desirable; moreover; he confessed shamefacedly that on the day upon which We made our triumphal entry into Havana he had dandified notron of washing himself. But he put himself right with us on this point when some one tauntingly said:
 Anyway, what's the good of soap unless you carry towel along?"
 "Towels" said the O'Shaughnessy, contemptuously-"t towels! Did ever any one hear of man needing a towel when he'd got another shirt?'
 I was secretly conscious of the: pos session of a kitbag with all sorts of wildly absurd things in 1t, such as comb and brush, and a patent safety razor. and-shall l admit ft?-a folding shaving mirror; so next morning l severely edited my outfit and packed a big parcel back to New York
 But Sparta was not the starting point. of the Gulf Stream, and I doubt whether the Spartan warriors had their headuuarters in a pleasure resort hotel. with table d'hote three times a. day and nothing to do for long, lang 1lorors neeks. One morning Rathom of San Francisco, who had been stretched out in a rocking chair, wear ily flaming himself with his nat; iumped up suddenly and said, with de- termination:
 longer. I am going out somewhere to do something.
 He strode out fiercely,. and In an hour or two came back looking very hot and dustv. and said, I've been for ride"
 ''On the trolley car?" we asked jeer- ingly. ,. ..,.: i've bought horse.
 A horse. We pricked up our ears. Rathom has bought horse That was an incident-an adventure, II you like. And, after all, a horse was very suitable thing for a war correspondent to possess. The cavalry had horses, and most of the officers, too, and to keep pace with the officers or to prop erly observe the conduct of a cavalry charge a horse was desirable. and in fact necessary.
 Some of us thought a we'll acclimated Cuban mule would be more reliable, es- pecially for mountain fighting, but the balance of opinion was that the horse was the nobler animal and much moro useful when 1t became question of getting down to the coast with the first news of a victory.
 So we rose with resolution and went out buying horses
 That afternoon there was a grand collection of horses standing in charge of long faced horsecopers under in front of the hotel and market prices went up with bound. It was not long before the horse dealers began to be ashamed of their earlier moderation. They grew very independent, and the appearance of some of the horses they : brought along was nothing less than an insolence At. first so long as the local stock held out the favorite description of a horse was that he was "accli- mated"
 Say. mistuh, said the dealers, with their languid Southern drawl, "yo doen wawnt CT hawse as Is suah ter pull himself ter pieces in CT. week. yo wawnt CT hawse CT Is acclimated. Heahs one raised right heah suah, and es good es he waws Cuby bawn."
 The word "acclimated' captured us all. and we led our prizes to the livery stable, where rates jumped up fifty per cent in two hours.
 After the surplus supply had been exhausted they began to fetch horses out of milk carts-gentle, contempla- tive chargers, which, when you were riding them, would stop from force of habit whenever they came to house. Then they began to import horses from gradually ascending Northern lati- tudes, first from Jacksonville then from Middle Georgia and Tennessee and Kentucky-"the blue graws coun- try, mistuh,' they explained, where de racehawses Is raised"
 THE DEFENSE OF HONGKONG.