Already we are firm friends.
Love, KEY WEST--January 1, 1897.
DEAR MOTHER: As you will know by my telegram we are either off on a safe sea going boat or waiting for one.

There is no turning back from here and the only reason I thought of doing so was the knowledge of the way you would suffer and worry.

I argued it out that it was selfish in me to weigh my getting laughed at and paragraphed as the war correspondent that always Turned Back against a month of uneasiness for you, but later I saw I could not do it much as I love you for the element of danger to me is non-existent; it is merely an exciting adventure and you will have to believe me and not worry but be a Spartan mother.

I would not count being laughed at and the loss of my own self respect if I really thought there was great danger, but I do not.

You will not lose me and if I go now I can sit still next time and say "I have done better things than that." If I had not gone it would have meant that I would have had to have done just that much harder a stunt next time to make people forget that I had failed in this one.