I find many friends of my Captain Boynton or "Capt.
Burke." Tonight the officers of the Raleigh give me a grand dinner at which I wear a dress suit and make speeches--they are the best chaps I ever met in the Navy.

Lots of love and best wishes to Dad and to Nora for a happy, happy New Year.

You know me and you know my conscience but it would not let me go back in order to save you anxiety so you won't think me selfish.

God bless you.
DICK.
KEY WEST, January 2nd, 1897.
DEAR FAMILY: I have learned here that the first quality needed to make a great filibuster is Patience, it is not courage, or resources or a knowledge of the Cuban Coast line, it is patience.

Anybody can run a boat into a dark bayou and dump rifles on the beach and scurry away to sea again but only heroes can sit for a month on a hotel porch or at the end of a wharf, and wait.