With it all he is as modest as can be, and says I am the greatest diplomat out of office, which I really think he believes, but I am only using old reporters' ways and applying the things other men did first.
My best stroke was to add to my cable to The Journal, "Recommend ample recognition of special facilities afforded by telegraph official"-- and then get him to read it himself under the pretext of wishing to learn if my writing was legible.

He grinned all over himself, and said it was.

After my first story is gone I will give him 200 roubles for himself in an envelope and say Journal wired me to do it.

That will fix him for the coronation story, as it amounts to six months' wages about.

But, my dear brother, in your sweet and lovely home, where the sun shines on the Cascine and the workmen sleep on the bridges, and dear old ladies knit in the streets, that is only one of the thousand things we have had to do.