Two officers and a womanTHE OFFICER'S DRESS—A NEW-COMER FOR A CALL.
After our quarters were chosen by the Colonel, we took another house, of moderate size, bought a few pieces of furniture of an officer leaving the post, and began to live our first homelike life. The arrival of the new officers was for a time our only excitement. Most of them had been in the volunteer service, and knew nothing of the regular army. There was no one to play practical jokes on the first comers; but they had made some ridiculous errors in dress and deportment, when reporting at first, and they longed to take out their mortification at these harmless mistakes, by laying pitfalls for the verdant ones who were constantly arriving. The discipline of the regular army, and the punctilious observance compelling the wearing of the uniform, was something totally new to men who had known little of parades in their fighting days in the tented field. If it was possible to intimidate a new officer by tales of the strictness of the commanding officer regarding the personal appearance of hisregiment, they did so. One by one, those who had preceded the last comer called in to pay their compliments; but by previous agreement they one and all dwelt upon the necessity of his making a careful toilet before he approached the august presence of the Lieutenant-colonel. Then one or two offered carelessly to help him get himself up for the occasion. Our brother Tom had arrived by this time, but there was nothing to be made out of him, for he had served a few months with a regular regiment before being transferred to ours. He was therefore sent one day to prepare me for the call of an officer who had been assisted into his new uniform by the mischievous knot of men who had been longest with us. If I had known to what test I was to be put to keep my face straight, or had dreamed what a gullible creature had come into their roguish hands, I would not have consented to receive him. But it was one of the imperative roles that each officer, after reporting for duty, must pay a formal visit to the commanding officer and his family. I went into the parlor to find a large, and at that time awkward, man, in full uniform, which was undeniably a tight fit for his rather portly figure. He wore cavalry boots, the first singularity I noticed, for they had such expanse of top I could not help seeing them. They are of course out of order with a dress coat. The red sash, which was thenen règlefor all officers, was spread from up under his arms to as far below the waist line as its elastic silk could be stretched. The sword-belt, with sabre attached, surrounded this; and, folded over the wide red front, were his large hands, encased in white cotton gloves. He never moved them; nor did he move an eyelash, so far as I could discover, though it seems he was full of internal tremors, for the officers had told him on no account to remove his regulation hat. At this he demurred, and told them I would surely think he was no gentleman; but they assured him I placed military etiquette far above any ordinary rule for manners in the presence of ladies, while the truth was I was rather indifferent as to military rules of dress. As this poor man sat there, I could think of nothing but a childwho is so carefully dressed in new furbelows that it sits as if it were carved out of wood, for fear of disarranging the finished toilet. Diana made an almost instant excuse to leave the room. The General's mustache quivered, and he moved restlessly around, even coming again to shake hands with the automaton and bid him welcome to the regiment; but finally he dashed out of the door to enjoy the outburst of mirth that he could no longer control. I was thus left to meet the situation as best I could, but was not as fortunate as the General, who had a friendly mustache to curtain the quiver in his mouth. The poor victim apparently recalled to himself the martial attitude of Washington crossing the Delaware, or Napoleon at Waterloo, and did not alter the first position he had assumed. In trying to prevent him from seeing my confusion, I redoubled my efforts to entertain him, and succeeded only too well, for when he slowly moved out of the door I found myself tired out, and full of wrath toward my returning family. I never could remember that these little spurts of rage were the primest fun for my people. The poor officer who had been so guyed did not gratify his tormentors by getting angry, but fell to planning new mischief for the next arrival. He lost no time in begging my pardon for the hat, and though I never saw much of him afterward, he left only pleasant impressions on my mind of a kind-hearted man, and one of those rare beings who knew how to take a joke.
We derived great pleasure from our horses and dogs during the autumn. A very pretty sorrel horse was selected for Diana, but we had little opportunity to have her for a companion. The young officers engaged her a week in advance, and about all we saw of her riding was an avalanche of flying curls as she galloped off beside some dashing cavalier. I remember once, when she was engaged otherwise, and my horse temporarily disabled, I took hers, and my husband kept begging me to guide the animal better, for it was nettling his fiery beast by insisting upon too close proximity. It finally dawned upon us that the little horse was a constitutional snuggler, and we gave up trying to teach him new tricks.But how the General shouted, and bent himself forward and back in his saddle, after the horse had almost crushed his leg and nothing would keep him at a distance. He could hardly wait to get back to garrison, and when we did, he walked into the midst of a collection of the beaux and told the whole story of how dreadfully demoralized a cavalry horse in good and regular standing could become, in the hands of a belle. The girl blushed, and the officers joined in the laughter, and yet every one of them had doubtless been busy in teaching that little telltale animal this new development of character.
It was delightful ground to ride over about Fort Riley. Ah! what happy days they were, for at that time I had not the slightest realization of what Indian warfare was, and consequently no dread. We knew that the country they infested was many miles away, and we could ride in any direction we chose. The dogs would be aroused from the deepest sleep at the very sight of our riding costumes, and by the time we were well into them and whip in hand, they leaped and sprang about the room, tore out on the gallery, and tumbled over one another and the furniture in racing back, and such a din of barking and joyful whining as they set up—the noisier the better for my husband. He snapped his whip to incite them, and bounded around crying out, "Whoop'em up! whoop'em up!" adding to the mêlée by a toot on the dog-horn he had brought from the Texas deer-hunts. All this excited the horses, and when I was tossed into the saddle amidst this turmoil, with the dogs leaping around the horses' heads, I hardly knew whether I was myself or the venturesome young woman who spends her life in taking airy flights through paper-covered circles in a sawdust ring. It took some years for me to accustom myself to the wild din and hubbub of our starting for a ride or a hunt. As I have said before, I had lived quietly at home, and my decorous, suppressed father and mother never even spoke above a certain tone. The General's father, on the contrary, had rallied his sons with a hallo and resounding shoutsfrom their childhood. So the hullabaloo of all our merry startings was a thing of my husband's early days, and added zest to every sport he undertook.
Coming fromMichigan, where there is a liberal dispensation of swamp and quagmire, having been taught by dear experience that Virginia had quicksands and sloughs into which one could disappear with great rapidity, and finally, having experienced Texas with its bayous, baked with a deceiving crust of mud, and its rivers with quicksand beds, very naturally I guided my horse around any lands that had even a depression. Indeed, he spoke volumes with his sensitive ears, as the turf darkened in hollows, and was ready enough to be guided by the rein on his satin-like neck, to the safer ground. It was a long time before I realized that all the Plains were safe. We chose no path, and stopped at no suspicion of a slough. Without a check on the rein, we flew over divide after divide, and it is beyond my pen to describe the wild sense of freedom that takes possession of one in the first buoyant knowledge that no impediment, seemingly, lies between you and the setting sun. After one has ridden over conventional highways, the beaten path marked out by fences, hedges, bridges, etc., it is simply an impossibility to describe how the blood bounds in the veins at the freedom of an illimitable sea. No spongy, uncertain ground checks the course over the Plains; it is seldom even damp, and the air is so exhilarating one feels as if he had never breathed a full breath before. Almost the first words General Sherman said to me out there were, "Child, you'll find the air of the Plains is like champagne," and so it surely was. Oh, the joy of taking in air without a taint of the city, or even the country, as we know it in farm life! As we rode on, speaking enthusiastically of the fragrance and purity of the atmosphere, our horses neighed and whinnied to each other, and snuffed the air, as if approving all that was said of that "land of the free." My husband could hardly breathe, from the very ecstasy of realizing that nothing trammeled him. He scarcely left the garrison behind him, where he was bound by chainsof form and ceremony—the inevitable lot of an officer, where all his acts are under surveillance, where he is obliged to know that every hour in the day he is setting an example—before he became the wildest and most frolicsome of light-hearted boys. His horse and he were one, not only as he sat in the saddle, a part of the animal, swayed by every motion of the active, graceful beast, but such unison of spirit took possession of each, it was hard to believe that a human heart did not beat under the broad, splendid chest of the high-strung animal.
It were well if human hearts responded to our fondness, and came instantly to been rapportwith us, as did those dear animals when they flew with us out to freedom and frolic, over the divides that screened us from the conventional proprieties. My husband's horse had almost human ways of talking with him, as he leaned far out of the saddle and laid his face on the gallant animal's head, and there was a gleam in the eye, a proud little toss of the head, speaking back a whole world of affection. The General could ride hanging quite out of sight from the opposite side, one foot caught in the stirrup, his hand on the mane; and it made no difference to his beloved friend, he took any mode that his master chose to cling to him as a matter of course, and curveted and pranced in the loftiest, proudest way. His manner said as plainly as speech, "See what we two can do!" I rarely knew him to have a horse that did not soon become so pervaded with his spirit that they appeared to be absolutely one in feeling. I was obliged, usually, to submit to some bantering slur on my splendid Custis Lee. Perhaps a dash at first would carry the General and the dogs somewhat in advance. My side had a trick of aching if we started off on a gallop, and I was obliged to keep a tight rein on Custis Lee at first, as he champed at the bit, tossed his impatient head, and showed every sign of ignominious shame. The General, as usual, called out, "Come on, old lady! Hurry up that old plug of yours; I have one orderly; don't want another"—this because the soldier in attendance is instructed to ride at a certaindistance in the rear. After a spurt of tremendous speed, back flew the master to beg me to excuse him; he was ready now to ride slowly till "that side of mine came round to time," which it quickly did, and then I revenged the insult on my swift Lee, and the maligner at last called out, "That's not so bad a nag, after all."
The horses bounded from the springy turf as if they really hated the necessity of touching the sod at all. They were very well matched in speed, and as on we flew were "neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place." Breathless at last, horses, dogs and ourselves made a halt. The orderly with his slow troop horse was a speck in the distance. Of course I had gone to pieces little by little, between the mad speed and rushing through the wind of the Plains. Those were ignominious days for women—thank fortune they are over! Custom made it necessary to disfigure ourselves with the awkward waterfall, and, no matter how luxuriant the hair, it seemed a necessity to still pile up more. With many a wrathful opinion regarding the fashion, the General took the hairpins, net and switch, and thrust them into the breast of his coat, as he said, "to clear the decks for action for another race." It was enough that he offered to carry these barbarities of civilization for me, without my bantering him about his ridiculousness if some accidental opening of his coat in the presence of the officers, who were then strangers, revealed what he scoffingly called "dead women's hair."
A fresh repinning, an ignoring of hairpins this time, re-girthing of saddles, some proud patting of the horses' quiving flanks, passing of the hand over the full veins of their necks, praise of the beautiful distended, blood-red nostrils, and on we started for another race. If spur or whip had been used in speeding our horses, it would have spoiled the sport for me, as the effort and strain looks so cruelly like work; but the animals were as impatient for a run as we were to start them. It must be a rare moment of pleasure to all horse-lovers, to watch an animal flying over the ground,without an incentive save the love of motion born in the beast. When we came to certain smooth stretches on the road, where we were accustomed to give the horses the rein, they grew excited and impatient, and teased for the run if we chanced to be earnestly talking and forgot to take it. How fortunate is one who can ride a mythological Pegasus as well as a veritable horse! There is nothing left for the less gifted but to use others' words for our own enthusiasm:
"Now we're off, like the winds, to the plains whence they came;And the rapture of motion is thrilling my frame!On, on, speeds my courser, scarce printing the sod,Scarce crushing a daisy to mark where we trod;On, on, like a deer when the hounds' early bayAwakes the wild echoes, away and away!Still faster, still farther, he leaps at my cheer,Till the rush of the startled air whirs in my ear!"
Buchanan Read not only made General Sheridan's splendid black horse immortal, but his grateful owner kept that faithful beast, when it was disabled, in a paddock at Leavenworth, and then, when age and old wounds ended his life, he perpetuated his memory by having the taxidermist set him up in the Military Museum at Governor's Island, that the boys of this day, to whom the war is only history, may remember what a splendid part a horse took in those days, when soldiers were not the only heroes. I thank a poet for having written thus for us to whom the horse is almost human:
"I tell thee, stranger, that unto meThe plunge of a fiery steedIs a noble thought—to the brave and freeIt is music, and breath, and majesty—'Tis the life of a noble deed;And the heart and the mind are in spirit alliedIn the charm of a morning's glorious ride."
woman being pulled off horseA SUSPENDED EQUESTRIENNE.
There was a long, smooth stretch of land beyond Fort Riley, where we used to speed our horses, and it even nowseems one of the fair spots of earth, it is so marked by happy hours. In reality it was a level plain without a tree, and the dried buffalo-grass had then scarcely a tinge of green. This neutral-tinted, monotonous surface continued for many unvarying miles. We could do as we chose after we had passed out of sight of the garrison, and our orderly, if he happened to have a decent horse that could overtake us, kept drawing the muscles of his face into a soldierly expression, trying not to be so undignified as to laugh at the gamesomeness, the frolic, of his commanding officer. What a relief for the poor fellow, in his uneventful life, to get a look at these pranks! I can see him now, trying to keep his head away and look unconscious, but his eyes turned in their sockets in spite of him and caught it all. Those eyes were wild with terror one day, when our horses were going full tilt, and the General with one powerful arm, lifted me out of my saddle and held me poised in the air for a moment. Our horses were so evenly matched in speed they were neck and neck, keeping close to each other, seemingly regardless of anything except the delight at the speed with which they left the country behind them. In the brief moment that I found myself suspended between heaven and earth, I thought, with lightning rapidity, that I must cling to my bridle and keep control of my flying horse, and trust to good fortune whether I alighted on his ear or his tail. The moment I was thus held aloft was an hour in uncertainty, but nothing happened, and it taught me to prepare for sudden raids of the commanding officer after that. I read of this feat in some novel, but was incredulous until it was successfully practiced on me. The Custer men were given to what their Maryland father called "toting" us around. I've seen them pick up their mother and carry her over the house as if she weighed fifty instead of one hundred and fifty pounds. There was no chance for dignified anger with them. No matter how indignant I might be, or how loftily I might answer back, or try one of those eloquent silences to which we women sometimes resort in moments of wrath, I was snatched up by either my husband orTom, and had a chance to commune with the ceiling in my airy flight up and down stairs and through the rooms.
One of our rides marked a day with me, for it was the occasion of a very successful exchange of horses. My husband used laughingly to refer to the transaction as unfortunate for him; but as it was at his suggestion, I clung with pertinacity to the bargain. My horse, Custis Lee, being a pacer, my husband felt in the fascination of that smooth, swift gait I might be so wedded to it I could never endure anything else; so he suggested, while we were far out on our evening ride, that we change saddles and try each other's horse. I objected, for though I could ride a spirited horse when I had come to know him, I dreaded the early stages of acquaintance. Besides, Phil was a high-strung colt, and it was a venturesome experiment to try him with a long riding-skirt, loaded with shot, knocking about his legs. At that time the safe fashion of short habits was not in vogue, and the high winds of Kansas left no alternative to loading our skirts. We kept opening the hem and inserting the little shot-bags as long as we lived there. Fortunately for me, I was persuaded into trying the colt. As soon as he broke into a long swinging trot, I was so enchanted and so hilarious with the motion, that I mentally resolved never to yield the honor temporarily conferred upon me. It was the beginning of an eternal vigilance for my husband. The animal was so high-strung, so quick, notwithstanding he was so large, that he sprang from one side of the road to the other on all fours, without the slightest warning. After I had checked him and recovered my breath, we looked about for a cause for this fright, and found only the dark earth where slight moisture had remained from a shower. In order to get the smoothest trotting out of him, I rode with a snaffle, and I never knew the General's eyes to be off him for more than an instant. The officers protested, and implored my husband to change back and give me the pacer. But his pride was up, and he enjoyed seeing the animal quivering with delight at doing his best under a light weight, and he had genuine love for the brute that, thoughso hard to manage in his hands, responded to my lightest touch or to my voice.
As time advanced and our regiment gained better and better horseflesh, it was a favorite scheme to pit Phil against new-comers. We all started out, a gay cavalcade of noisy, happy people, and the stranger was given the post of honor next to the wife of the commanding officer. Of course he thought nothing of this, as he had been at the right of the hostess at dinner. The other officers saw him take his place as if it were the most natural thing in the world, but in reality it was a deep-laid plot. Phil started off with so little effort that our visitor thought nothing of keeping pace for a while, and then he began to use his spurs. As my colt took longer and longer strides, there was triumph in the faces of the officers, and a gleam of delight in the General's eye. Then came the perplexity in my guest's face at a trotter outdoing the most splendid specimen of a loping horse, as he thought. A little glance from my husband, which incited me to give a sign and a low word or two that only Phil and I understood, and off we flew, leaving the mystified man urging his nag in vain. It was not quite my idea of hospitality so to introduce a new-comer to our horses' speed; but then he was not a transient guest, and the sooner he knew all our "tricks and our manners" the better, while it was beyond my power of self-denial to miss seeing the proud triumph in my husband's eyes as he rode up and patted the colt and received the little return of affection from the knowing beast. Phil went on improving in gait and swiftness as he grew in years, and I once had the courage, afterward, to speed him on the Government race-track at Fort Leavenworth, though to this day I cannot understand how I got up to concert pitch; and I could never be induced to try such an experiment again. I suppose I often made as good time, trotting beside my husband's horse, but to go alone was something I was never permitted to do on a roadway. The General and brother Tom connived to get this bit of temporary courage out of me by an offhand conversation, as we rode toward the track, regardingwhat Phil might be made to do under the best circumstances, which I knew meant the snaffle-rein, a light weight, and my hand, which the General had trained to be steady. I tried to beg off and suggest either one of them for the trial; but the curb which they were obliged to use, as Phil was no easy brute to manage with them, made him break his gait, and a hundred and seventy pounds on his back was another obstacle to speed. It ended in my being teased into the experiment, and though I called out, after the first half-mile, that I could not breathe any longer, the air rushed into my lungs so rapidly, they implored and urged by gesture and enthusiastic praise, until I made the mile they had believed Phil equal to in three minutes.
I wish I could describe what delight my husband took in his horse life, what hours of recreation and untiring pleasure he got out of our companionship with Jack Rucker, Phil and Custis Lee. On that day we three and our orderly were alone on the track, and such a merry, noisy, care-forgetting three as we were! the General, with his stop-watch in hand, cheering me, urging the horse wildly, clapping his hands, and hallooing with joy as the animal responded to his expectation. Phil's coming up to their boasts and anticipations was just a little episode in our life that went to prove what a rare faculty he had of getting much out of little, and of how persistently the boy in him cropped out as soon as an opportunity came to throw care aside. It is one of the results of a life of deprivation, that pleasures, when they come, are rarities, and the enjoyment is intensified. In our life they lasted so short a time that we had no chance to learn the meaning of satiety.
One of the hardest trials, in our first winter with the regiment, was that arising from the constantly developing tendency to hard drinking. Some who came to us had held up for a time, but they were not restricted in the volunteer service, as a man who fought well was forgiven much else that came in the rare intervals of peace. In the new state of affairs, as went the first few months of the regiment, so would it go for all time. There was a regiment stationed in NewMexico at that time, the record of which was shameful. We heard of its career by every overland train that came into our post, and from officers who went out on duty. General Sherman said that, with such a set of drunkards, the regiment, officers and all, should be mustered out of the service. Anything, then, rather than let our Seventh follow such a course. But I must not leave the regiment at that point in its history. Eventually it came out all right, ably officered and well soldiered, but it was the terror of the country in 1867. While General Custer steadily fought against drunkenness, he was not remorseless or unjust. I could cite one instance after another, to prove with what patience he strove to reclaim some who were, I fear, hopeless when they joined us. His own greatest battles were not fought in the tented field; his most glorious combats were those waged in daily, hourly fights on a more hotly contested field than was ever known in common warfare. The truest heroism is not that which goes out supported by strong battalions and reserve artillery. It is when a warrior for the right enters into the conflict alone, and dares to exercise his will in defiance of some established custom in which lies a lurking, deadly peril or sin. I have known my husband to almost stand alone in his opinion regarding temperance, in a garrison containing enough people to make a good-sized village. He was thoroughly unostentatious about his convictions, and rarely said much; but he stood to his fixed purpose, purely from horror of the results of drinking. I would not imply that in garrison General Custer was the only man invariably temperate. There were some on pledge; some temperate because they paid such a physical penalty by actual illness that they could not drink; some restrained because their best-loved comrade, weak in his own might, "swore off" on consideration that the stronger one of the two backed him up; some (God bless them!) refused because the woman they loved grieved, and was afraid of even one friendly glass. What I mean is, that the general custom, against which there is little opposition in any life, is, either to indulge in the social glass,or look leniently upon the habit. Without preaching or parading his own strength in having overcome the habit, General Custer stood among the officers and men as firm an advocate of temperance as any evangelist whose life is devoted to the cause.
I scarcely think I would have realized the constantly recurring temptations of my husband's life, had I not been beside him when he fought these oft-repeated battles. The pleasure he had in convivial life, the manner in which men and women urged him to join them in enjoyment of the sparkling wine, was enough to have swept every resolution to the winds. Sometimes the keen blade of sarcasm, though set with jewels of wit and apparent badinage, added a cut that my ears, so quickened to my husband's hard position, heard and grieved over. But he laughed off the carefully concealed thrust. When we were at home in our own room, if I asked him, blazing anew with wrath at such a stab, how he kept his temper, he replied, "Why notice it? Don't I know what I've been through to gain my victory? That fellow, you must remember, has fought and lost, and knows in his soul he'll go to the dogs if he doesn't hold up, and, Libbie, he can't do it, and I am sorry for him." Our brother Tom was less patient, less forbearing, for in one of his times of pledge, when the noble fellow had given his word not to taste a drop for a certain season if a man he loved, and about whom he was anxious, would do the same, he was sneered at by a brother officer, with gibes at his supposed or attempted superiority. Tom leaped across the table in the tent where they sat at dinner, and shook up his assailant in a very emphatic way. I laugh in remembrance of his choler, and am proud of it now. I, as "gentlewoman," descended from a line of decorous gentlemen and ladies, ought to be horrified at one man's seizing another by the collar and pouncing upon him, regardless of the Marquis of Queensbury rules. But I know that circumstances alter cases, and in our life an occasional good shaking was better than the slow justice of a tedious court-martial.
The General would not smile, but there was a noticeable twisting of his mustache, and he took himself out of the way to conceal his feelings, when I pointed my discerning finger at him and said, "You're laughing, your own self, and you think Tom was right, even if you don't say a word, and look so dreadfully commandery-officery at both of us!" The General did not keep himself aloof, and sometimes, in convivial scenes, when he joined in the increasing hilarity, was so infused with the growing artificial joviality, and grew jollier and jollier, that he was accused himself of being the wildest drinker of them all. But some one was sure to speak up and say, as the morning approached, "I have sat beside Custer the night through, and if he's intoxicated it's over water, for he has not tasted a drop of wine—more loss to him, I say."
Only a short time before the final battle, he dined in New York, at a house where General McDowell was also a guest. When no one else could hear, he told me, with a warning not to talk of it, that he had some one to keep him company, and described the bowl of ice that stood in the midst of the untouched semicircle of glasses before General McDowell, and how the ice seemed just as satisfactory as any of the rare beverages. We listened once to John B. Gough, and the General's enthusiasm over his earnestness and his eloquence was enhanced by the well-known fact of his failures, and the plucky manner in which he started anew. Everybody cries over Jefferson'sRip Van Winkle, even if they have never encountered drunkenness, and my husband wept like a child because of his intense sympathy for the weakness of the poor tempted soul, harrowed as he was by a Xantippe.
If women in civil life were taken among men, as army women are, in all sorts of festivities, they would get a better idea of what strength of purpose it requires to carry out a principle. At some army posts the women go to the sutler's store with their husbands, for billiards or amusements. There is a separate room for the soldiers, so we see nothing of those poor fellows who never can stay sober. The sutler's is not only the store, but it is the club-house for the garrison,and I have known posts where the officers were so guarded about their drinking, that women could go among them and join in any amusement without being liable to the distress that the sight of an intoxicated man invariably gives to a sensitive woman. If I saw drunken soldiers reeling off after pay-day, it was the greatest possible relief to me to know, that out of hundreds only a few were married, as but a certain number of the laundresses were allowed to a company. So no woman's heart was going to be wrung by unsteady steps approaching her door, and the sight of the vacant eyes of a weak husband. It took away half the sting and shock, to know that a soldier's spree was not one that recoiled on an innocent woman.
As I look back upon our life, I do not believe there ever was any path so difficult as those men on the frontier trod. Their failures, their fights, their vacillations, all were before us, and it was an anxious life to be watching who won and who lost in those moral warfares. You could not separate yourself from the interests of one another. It was a network of friendships that became more and more interwoven by common hardships, deprivations, dangers, by isolation and the daily sharing of joys and troubles. I am thankful for the certainty that there is some one who scores all our fights and all our victories; for on His records will be written the story of the thorny path over which an officer walked if he reached the goal.
Women shielded in homes, supported by example, unconscious of any temptation save the mildest, will realize with me what it was to watch the quivering mouth of a man who voluntarily admitted that until he was fifty he knew he was in hourly peril of being a drunkard. The tears blind me as I go back in retrospection and think over the men that warred against themselves.
In one respect, there never was such a life as ours; it was eminently one of partings. How natural, then, that the last act before separation be one of hospitable generosity! How little we had to offer! It was often almost an impossibilityto get up a good dinner. Then we had so many coming to us from a distance, that our welcome could not be followed up by any entertainment worthy of the name. Besides, there were promotions to celebrate, an occasional son and heir to toast, birthdays occurring so often, and nothing in the world that answered for an expression of hospitality and good feeling but an old straw demijohn behind the door. It was surprising what pertinacious lives the demijohns of the garrison had. The driver of the wagon containing the few appointments of an officer's outfit, was just as careful of the familiar friend as one could wish servants to be with the lares and penates of an æsthetic household. If he was rewarded with a drink from the sacred demijohn, after having safely preserved it over muddy roads, where the mules jerked the prairie-schooner out of ruts, and where, except for a protecting hand, the contents would have saturated the wagon, he was thankful. But such was his reverence for what he considered the most valuable possession of the whole wagon, virtue alone would have been sufficient reward. When in the regimental movings the crockery (the very heaviest that is made) was smashed, the furniture broken, carpets, curtains, clothes and bedding mildewed and torn, the old demijohn neither broke, spilled nor suffered any injury by exposure to the elements. It was, in the opinion of our lovers of good whiskey, a "survival of the fittest."
It never came to be an old story with me, that in this constant, familiar association with drinking, the General and those of his comrades who abstained could continue to exercise a marvelous self-control. I could not help constantly speaking to my husband of what he went through; and it seemed to me that no liberty could be too great to extend to men who, always keeping their heads, were clear as to what they were about. The domestic lariat of a cavalryman might well be drawn in, if the women waiting at home were uncertain whether the brains of their liege lords would be muddled when absent from their influence.
A MEDLEY OF OFFICERS AND MEN.
Itwas well we had our horses at Fort Riley for recreation, as walking was almost out of the question in autumn. The wind blew unceasingly all the five years we were in Kansas, but it seemed to do its wildest work in autumn. No one had told us of its incessant activity, and I watched for it to quiet down for days after our arrival, and grew restless and dull for want of exercise, but dared not go out. As the post was on a plateau, the wind from the two river valleys swept over it constantly. The flag was torn into ribbons in no time, and the storm-flag, made smaller, and used in rainy weather, had to be raised a good deal, while the larger and handsomer one was being mended. We found that the other women of the garrison, who were there when we arrived, ventured out to see one another, and even crossed the parade-ground, when it was almost impossible to keep on one's feet. It seems to date very far back, when I recall that our dresses then measured five yards around, and were gathered as full as could be pressed into the waistband. These seven breadths of skirt flew out in advance of us, if they did not lift themselves over our heads. My skirts wrapped themselves around my husband's ankles, and rendered locomotion very difficult for us both, if we tried to take our evening stroll. He thought out a plan, which he helped me to carry into effect, by cutting bits of lead in small strips, and these I sewed into the hem. Thus loaded down, we took our constitutional about the post, and outwitted the elements, which at first bade fair to keep us perpetually housed.
There was very little social life in garrison that winter. Theofficers were busy studying tactics, and accustoming themselves to the new order of affairs, so very different from their volunteer experience. Had not everything been so novel, I should have felt disappointed in my first association with the regular army in garrison. I did not then consider that the few old officers and their families were really the regular army, and so was somewhat disheartened regarding our future associates. As fast as our own officers arrived, a part of the regiment that had garrisoned Fort Riley before we came went away; but it soon became too late in the season to send the remainder. The post was therefore crowded. The best manners with which all had made their début wore off, and some jangling began. Some drank too freely, and were placed under arrest, or released if they went on pledge. Nothing was said, of course, if they were sober enough for duty; but there were some hopeless cases from the first. For instance, a new appointee made his entrance into our parlor, when paying the visit that military etiquette requires, by falling in at the door, and after recovering an upright position, proceeded to entangle himself in his sword again, and tumble into a chair. I happened to be alone, and was, of course, very much frightened. In the afternoon the officers met in one of their quarters, and drew up resolutions that gave the new arrival the choice of a court-martial or his resignation before night; and by evening he had written out the papers resigning his commission. Another fine-looking man, whom the General worked long and faithfully to make a sober officer, had really some good instincts. He was so glad to get into our home circle, and was so social, telling the drollest stories of far Western life, where he had lived formerly, that I became greatly interested in his efforts at reformation. He was almost the first to be court-martialed for drunkenness on duty, and that was always a grief to us; but in those early days of our regiment's history, arrest, imprisonment and trial had to go on much of the time. The officer to whom I refer was getting into and out of difficulty incessantly. He repented in such a frank, regretful sort ofway that my husband kept faith in his final reformation long after it seemed hopeless. One day I asked him to dinner. It was Thanksgiving, and on those days we tried to select the officers that talked most to us of their homes and parents. To my dismay, our reprobate came into the room with very uncertain gait. The other men looked anxiously at him. My husband was not in the parlor. I thought of other instances where these signs of intoxication had passed away in a little while, and tried to ignore his condition. He was sober enough to see the concerned look in his comrades' faces, and brought the tears to my eyes by walking up to me and saying, "Mrs. Custer, I'm sorry, but I think it would be best for me to go home." Who could help being grieved for a man so frank and humble over his failings? There were six years of such vicissitudes in this unfortunate man's life, varied by brave conduct in the Indian campaigns, before the General gave him up. He violated, at last, some social law that was considered an outrage beyond pardon, which compelled his departure from the Seventh. That first winter, while the General was trying to enforce one fact upon the new-comers, that the Seventh must be a sober regiment, it was a difficult and anything but pleasant experience.
Custer sitting at a desk with his chin on his hand and a dog at his feetGENERAL CUSTER AT HIS DESK IN HIS LIBRARY.
Very few of the original appointments remained after a few years. Some who served on to the final battle of 1876, went through many struggles in gaining mastery of themselves. The General believed in them, and they were such splendid fighters, and such fine men when there was anything to occupy them, I know that my husband appreciated with all his soul what trials they went through in facing the monotony of frontier life. Indeed, he was himself enduring some hours of torture from restlessness and inactivity. It is hard to imagine a greater change than from the wild excitement of the Virginia campaigns, the final scenes of the war, to the dullness of Fort Riley. Oh! how I used to feel when my husband's morning duties at the office were over, and he walked the floor of our room, saying, "Libbie, what shall I do?" There were no books to speak of, for the Seventh wasthen too new a regiment to purchase company libraries, as we did later. . . . My husband never cared much for current novels, and these were almost the sole literature of the households at that time. At every arrival of the mail, there was absolute contentment for a while. The magazines and newspapers were eagerly read, and I used to discover that even the advertisements were scanned. If the General was caught at this, and accused of it, he slid behind his paper in mock humility, peeping roguishly from one side when a voice, pitched loftily, inquired whether reading advertisements was more profitable than talking with one's wife? It was hard enough, though, when the heaps of newspapers lay on the floor, all devoured, and one so devoted to them as he was condemned to await the slow arrival of another mail. TheHarper's Bazarfashion-pages were not scorned in that dearth of reading, by the men about our fireside. We had among us a famous newspaper-reader; the men could not outstrip her in extracting everything that the paper held, and the General delighted in hunting up accounts of "rapscallions" from her native State, cutting out the paragraphs, and sending them to her by an orderly. But his hour of triumph was brief, for the next mail was sure to contain an account of either a Michigan or Ohio villain, and the promptness with which General Custer was made aware of the vagabondage of his fellow-citizens was highly appreciated by all of us. He had this disadvantage: he was a native of Ohio, and appointed to the Military Academy from there, and that State claimed him, and very proud we were to have them do so; but Michigan was the State of his adoption during the war, he having married there, and it being the home of his celebrated "Michigan brigade." . . . He was enabled, by that bright woman's industry, to ascertain what a large share of the population of those States were adepts in crime, as no trifling account, or even a pickpocket was overlooked. I remember how we laughed at her one day. This friend of ours was not in the least sensational, she was the very incarnation of delicate refinement. All her reading (aside fromthe search for Ohio and Michigan villains in the papers) was of the loftiest type; but the blood rose in wild billows over her sweet face when her son declared his mother such a newspaper devotee that he had caught her reading the "personals." We knew it was a fib; but it proves to what lengths a person might go from sheer desperation, when stranded on the Plains.
Fortunately, I was not called much from home, as there were few social duties that winter, and we devised all sorts of trumpery expedients to vary our life. There was usually a wild game of romps before the day was ended. We had the strangest neighbors. A family lived on each floor, but the walls were not thick, as the Government had wasted no material in putting up our plain quarters. We must have set their nerves on edge, I suppose, for while we tore up stairs and down, using the furniture for temporary barricades against each other, the dogs barking and racing around, glad to join in the fracas, the din was frightful.
The neighbors—not belonging to our regiment, I am thankful to say, having come from a circle where the husband brings the wife to terms by brute force—in giving a minute description of the sounds that issued from our quarters, accounted for the mêlée to those of the garrison they could get to listen, by saying that the commanding officer was beating his wife. While I was inclined to resent such accusations, they struck the General very differently. He thought it was intensely funny, and the gossip passed literally in at one ear and out at the other, though it dwelt with him long enough to suggest something about the good discipline a manmighthave if the Virginia law, never repealed, were now in vogue. I felt sure it would fare badly with me; for, though the dimensions of the stick with which a man is permitted to beat his wife are limited to the size of the husband's finger, my husband's hands, though in good proportion, had fingers the bones of which were unusually large. These strange fingers were not noticeable until one took hold of them; but if they were carefully studied, with the old English law of Virginiain mind, there well might be a family mutiny. I tried to beg off from further visits to certain families of this stamp, but never succeeded; the General insisted on my going everywhere. One of the women asked me one day if I rose early. Not knowing why she asked, I replied that I feared it was often 9 o'clock before we awoke, whereupon she answered, in an affected voice, that "she never rose early—it was so plebeian."
It was very discouraging, this first encounter with what I supposed would be my life-long associates. There were many political appointments in the army then. Each State was entitled to its quota, and they were frequently given for favoritism, regardless of soldierly qualities. There were also a good many non-commissioned officers, who, having done good service during the war, were given commissions in the new regiments. For several years it was difficult to arrange everything so satisfactorily in social life that no one's feelings would be hurt. The unvarying rule, which my husband considered should not be violated by any who truly desired harmony, was to visit every one in their circle, and exclude no one from invitations to our house, unless for positively disgraceful conduct.
We heard, from other posts, of the most amusing and sometimes the most uncomfortable of experiences. If I knew any one to whom this incident occurred, I should not venture to make use of it as an example of the embarrassing situations in the new order of affairs in the reorganized army. The story is true; but the names, if I ever knew them, have long since faded out of memory. One of the Irish laundresses at a Western post was evidently infatuated with army life, as she was the widow of a volunteer officer—doubtless some old soldier of the regular army, who held a commission in one of the regiments during the war—and the woman drew the pension of a major's widow. Money, therefore, could not have been the inducement that brought her back to a frontier post. At one time she left her fascinating clothes-line and went into the family of an officer, to cook, but wasobliged to leave, from illness. Her place was filled satisfactorily, and when she recovered and came back to the officer's wife, she was told that the present cook was entirely satisfactory, but she might yet find a place, as another officer's wife (whose husband had been an enlisted man, and had lately been appointed an officer in the regular regiment stationed there) needed a cook. It seems that this officer's wife also had been a laundress at one time, and the woman applying for work squared herself off in an independent manner, placed her arms akimbo, and announced her platform: "Mrs. Blank, I ken work for a leddy, but I can't go there; there was a time when Mrs. —— and I had our toobs side by side."
How often, in that first winter, I thought of my father's unstinted praise of the regular army, as he had known it at Sackett's Harbor and at Detroit, in Michigan's early days. I could not but wonder what he would think, to be let down in the midst of us. He used to say, in reference to my future, "Daughter, marrying into the army, you will be poor always; but I count it infinitely preferable to riches with inferior society. It consoles me to think you will be always associated with people of refinement." Meanwhile, the General was never done begging me to be silent about any new evidences of vulgarity. There were several high-bred women at Fort Riley; but they were so discreet I never knew but that they had been accustomed to such associations, until after the queer lot had departed and we dared to speak confidentially to one another.
Soon after the officers began to arrive in the autumn, an enlisted man, whom the General had known about in the regular army, reported for duty. He had reënlisted in the Seventh, hoping ultimately for a commission. He was soldierly in appearance, from his long experience in military life, and excellently well versed in tactics and regimental discipline. On this account he was made sergeant-major, the highest non-commissioned officer of a regiment; and, at his request, the General made application almost at once for his appointment as a lieutenant in the Seventh Cavalry. Theapplication was granted, and the sergeant-major went to Washington to be examined. The examining board was composed of old and experienced officers, who were reported to be opposed to the appointment of enlisted men. At any rate, the applicant was asked a collection of questions that were seemingly unanswerable. I only remember one, "What does a regiment of cavalry weigh?" Considering the differences in the officers, men and horses, it would seem as if a correct answer were impossible. The sergeant-major failed, and returned to our post with the hopelessness before him of five years of association with men in the ranks; for there is no escaping the whole term of enlistment, unless it is found that a man is under age. But the General did not give up. He encouraged the disappointed man to hope, and when he was ordered before the board himself, he went to the Secretary of War and made personal application for the appointment. Washington was then full of men and their friends, clamoring for the vacancies in the new regiments; but General Custer was rarely in Washington, and was guarded in not making too many appeals, so he obtained the promise, and soon afterward the sergeant-major replaced the chevrons with shoulder-straps. Then ensued one of those awkward situations, that seem doubly so in a life where there is such marked distinction in the social standing of an officer and a private; and some of the Seventh Cavalry made the situation still more embarrassing by conspicuous avoidance of the new lieutenant, carefully ignoring him except where official relations existed. This seemed doubly severe, as they knew of nothing in the man's conduct, past or present, to justify them in such behavior. He had borne himself with dignity as sergeant-major, living very much to himself, and performing every duty punctiliously. Shortly before, he had been an officer like themselves in the volunteer service, and this social ostracism, solely on account of a few months of service as an enlisted man, was absurd. They went back to his early service as a soldier, determined to show him that he was not "to the manner born." The single men had established a mess, andeach bachelor officer who came was promptly called upon and duly invited to join them at table. There was literally no other place to be fed. There were no cooks to be had in that unsettled land, and if there had been servants to hire, the exorbitant wages would have consumed a lieutenant's pay. There were enough officers in the bachelors' mess to carry the day against the late sergeant-major. My husband was much disturbed by this discourteous conduct; but it did not belong to the province of the commanding officer, and he was careful to keep the line of demarkation between social and official affairs distinct. Yet it did not take long for him to think a way out of the dilemma. He came to me to ask if I would be willing to have him in our family temporarily, and, of course, it ended in the invitation being given. In the evening, when our quarters filled up with the bachelor officers, they found the lieutenant whom they had snubbed established as one of the commanding officer's family. He remained as one of us until the officers formed another mess, as their number increased, and the new lieutenant was invited to join them. This was not the end of General Custer's marked regard for him, and as long as he lived he showed his unswerving friendship, and, in ways that the officer never knew, kept up his disinterested loyalty, making me sure, as years advanced, that he was worthy of the old adage, "Once a friend, always a friend." Until he was certain that there was duplicity and ingratitude, or that worst of sins, concealed enmity, he kept faith and friendships intact. At that time there was every reason in the world for an officer whose own footing was uncertain, and who owed everything to my husband, to remain true to him.
Many of the officers were learning to ride, as they had either served in the infantry during the war, or were appointed from civil life, and came from all sorts of vocations. It would seem that hardly half of the number then knew how to sit or even to mount a horse, and the grand and lofty tumbling that winter kept us in a constant state of merriment. It was too bad to look on and laugh; but for the life of me I couldnot resist every chance I had to watch them clambering up their horses' sides, tying themselves hopelessly in their sabres, and contorting their heels so wildly that the restive animal got the benefit of a spur in unexpected places, as likely in his neck as in his flank. One officer, who came to us from the merchant marine, used to insist upon saying to his brother officers, when off duty and experimenting with his steed, "If you don't think I am a sailor, see me shin up this horse's foreleg."
Some grew hot and wrathy if laughed at, and that increased our fun. Others were good-natured, even coming into the midst of us and deliberately narrating the number of times the horse had either slipped from under them, turned them off over his head, or rubbed them off by running against a fence or tree-trunk. Occasionally somebody tried to hide the fact that he had been thrown, and then there was high carnival over the misfortune. The ancient rule, that had existed as far back as the oldest officer could remember, was, that a basket of champagne was the forfeit of a first fall. Many hampers were emptied that winter; but as there were so many to share the treat (and I am inclined to think, also, it was native champagne, from St. Louis), I don't remember any uproarious results, except the natural wild spirits of fun-loving people. After the secret was out and the forfeit paid, there was much more courage among the officers in letting the mishaps be known. They did not take their nags off into gullys where they were hidden from the post, and have it out alone, but tumbled off in sight of the galleries of our quarters, and made nothing of a whole afternoon of voluntary mounting and decidedly involuntary dismounting. One of the great six-footers among us told me his beast had tossed him off half a dozen times in one ride, but he ended by conquering. He daily fought a battle with his horse, and, in describing the efforts to unseat him, said that at last the animal jumped into the creek. How I admired his pluck and the gleam in his eye; and what a glimpse that determination to master gave of his successful future! for he won in resistingtemptation, and conquered in making himself a soldier, and his life, though short, was a triumph.
I am obliged to confess that to this day I owe a basket of champagne, for I belonged to those that went off the horse against their will and then concealed the fact. My husband and one of his staff were riding with me one day, and asked me to go on in advance, as they wanted to talk over something that was not of interest to me. I forgot to keep watch of my fiery steed, and when he took one of those mad jumps from one side of the road to the other, at some imaginary obstacle, not being on guard I lost balance, and found myself hanging to the saddle. There was nothing left for me but an ignominious slide, and I landed in the dust. The General found Phil trotting riderless toward him, was terribly frightened, and rode furiously toward where I was. To save him needless alarm, I called out, "All right!" from my lowly position, and was really quite unharmed, save my crushed spirits. No one can serve in the cavalry and not feel humiliated by a fall. I began to implore the two not to tell, and in their relief at my escape from serious hurt they promised. But for weeks they made my life a burden to me, by direct and indirect allusions to the accident when a group of us were together. They brought little All Right, the then famous Japanese acrobat, into every conversation, and the General was constantly wondering, in a seemingly innocent manner, "how an old campaignercouldbe unseated, under any circumstances." It would have been better to confess and pay the penalty, than to live thus under the sword of Damocles. Still, I should have deprived my husband of a world of amusement, and every joke counted in those dull days, even when one was himself the victim.
The Board in Washington then examining the officers of the new regiments, called old and new alike; but in the General's case, as in that of most of the officers who had seen service before the war, or were West Point graduates, it was but a form, and he was soon back in our post.
He began then a fashion that he always kept up afterward,of having regular openings of his trunk for my benefit. I was as interested in the contents as any child. First putting me under promise to remain in one spot without "peeking," as the children say, he took out from the trunk in our room article after article for me. They comprised everything a woman could wear, from gowns to stockings, with ribbons and hats. If all the gowns he brought were not made, he had dress-materials and stored-up recollections of the new modes of trimming. He enjoyed jokes on himself, and gave us all a laughable description of his discovering in the city some fashion that he had especially liked, when, turning in the crowded street, he followed at a respectful distance the woman wearing it, in order to commit to memory the especial style. Very naturally, he also took in the gait and figure of the stylish wearer, even after he had fixed the cut of her gown in his mind that he might eventually transfer it to me. Ah, how we tormented him when he described his discomfiture, and the sudden termination of his walk, when a turn in the street revealed the face of a negress!
I shall have to ask that a thought be given to our surroundings, to make clear what an immense pleasure a trunkful of finery was at that time. There were no shops nearer than Leavenworth, and our faces were set westward, so there seemed to be no prospect of getting such an outfit for years. There was no one in that far country to prevent the screams of delight with which each gift was received, and it is impossible to describe how jubilant the donor was over the success of his purchases. Brother Tom made a time always, because his name was left out, but he noted carefully if the General's valise held a new supply of neckties, gloves, etc., and by night he had usually surreptitiously transferred the entire contents to his own room. The first notification would be his appearance next morning at the breakfast-table wearing his brother's new things, his face perfectly solemn and innocent, as if nothing peculiar was going on. This sort of game never grew old, and it seemed to give them much more amusement than if the purchases were formally presented.My husband confided to me that, knowing Tom would take all he could lay his hands on, he had bought twice as many as he needed. The truth is, it was only for the boyish fun they got out of it, for he always shared everything he had with his brother.
At some point in the journey East, the General had fallen into conversation with an officer who, in his exuberance of spirits at his appointment to the Seventh, had volunteered every detail about himself. He was coming from his examination at Washington, and was full of excitement over the new regiment. He had not the slightest idea who my husband was, only that he was also an officer, but in the course of conversation brought his name up, giving all the accounts he had heard of him from both enemies and friends, and his own impressions of how he should like him. The General's love of mischief, and curiosity to hear himself so freely discussed, led the unsuspecting man to ramble on and on, incited by an occasional query or reflection regarding the character of the Lieutenant-colonel of the Seventh. The first knowledge the Lieutenant had with whom he had been talking was disclosed to him when he came to pay the customary call on the return of the commanding officer at Fort Riley. His face was a study; perplexity and embarrassment reddened his complexion almost to a purple, and he moved about uneasily in his chair, abashed to think he had allowed himself to speak so freely of a man to that person's very face. My husband left him but a moment in this awkward predicament, and then laughed out a long roll of merriment, grasping the man's hand, and assured him that he must remember his very freely expressed views were the opinions of others, and not his own. It was a great relief to the Lieutenant, when he reached his quarters, to find that he had escaped some dire fate, either long imprisonment or slow torture; for at that time the volunteer officers had a deeply fixed terror of the stern, unflinching severity of regular officers. Again he became confidential, and told the bachelor mess. This was too good a chance to lose; they felt that some more funcould still be extracted, and immediately planned a sham trial. The good-natured man said his stupidity merited it, and asked for counsel. The case was spun out as long as it could be made to last. We women were admitted as audience, and all the grave dignity of his mock affair was a novelty.
The court used our parlor as a Hall of Justice. The counsel for the prisoner was as earnest in his defense as if great punishment was to be averted by his eloquence. In the daytime he prepared arguments, while at the same time the prosecuting attorney wrinkled his brows over the most convincing assaults on the poor man, who, he vehemently asserted, ought not to go at large laden with such unpardonable crime. The judge addressed the jury, and that solemn body of men disappeared into our room, perching on the trunks, the bed, the few chairs, to seriously discuss the ominous "guilty" or "not guilty." The manner of the grave and dignified judge, as he finally addressed the prisoner, admonishing him as to his future, sorrowfully announcing the decision of the jury as guilty, and condemning him to the penalty of paying a basket of champagne, was worthy of the chief executor of an Eastern court.
We almost regretted that some one else would not, by some harmless misdemeanor, put himself within the reach of such a court. This affair gave us the first idea of the clever men among us, for all tried to acquit themselves at their best, even in the burlesque trial.
Little by little it came out what varied lives our officers had led heretofore. Some frankly spoke of the past, as they became acquainted, while others, making an effort to ignore their previous history, were found out by the letters that came into the post every mail, or by some one arriving who had known them in their other life. The best bred among them—one descended from a Revolutionary colonel and Governor of a State, the other from Alexander Hamilton—were the simplest and most unaffected in manner. The boaster and would-be aristocrat of our number had the misfortune tocome face to face with a townsman, who effectually silenced further reference to his gorgeous past. There were men who had studied law; there was one who had been a stump-speaker in Montana politics, and at last a judge in her courts; another who had been a sea-captain, and was distinguished from a second of his name in the regiment by being called always thereafter "Salt Smith," while the younger was "Fresh Smith," or, by those who were fond of him, "Smithie." There was also a Member of Congress, who, having returned to his State after the war, had found his place taken and himself quite crowded out. When this officer reported for duty, I could not believe my eyes. But a few months before, in Texas, he had been such a bitter enemy of my husband's, that, with all the caution observed to keep official matters out of my life, it could not be hidden from me. The General, when this officer arrived, called me into our room and explained that, finding him without employment in Washington when he went before the Board, he could not turn away from his appeal for a commission in the service, and had applied, without knowing he would be sent to our regiment. "And now, Libbie, you would not hurt my feelings by showing animosity and dislike to a man whose hair is already gray!" There was no resisting this appeal, and no disguising my appreciation of the manner in which he treated his enemies, so his words brought me out on the gallery with extended hand of welcome, though I would sooner have taken hold of a tarantula. I never felt a moment's regret, and he never forgot the kindness, or that he owed his prosperity, his whole future, in fact, to the General, and he won my regard by his unswerving fidelity to him from that hour to this.
There were some lieutenants fresh from West Point, and some clerks, too, who had tried to turn themselves into merchants, and groaned over the wretched hours they had spent, since the close of the war, in measuring tape. We had several Irish officers—reckless riders, jovial companions. One had served in the Papal army, and had foreign medals.There was an Italian who had a long, strange career to draw upon for our amusement, and numbered, among his experiences, imprisonment for plotting the life of his king. There were two officers who had served in the Mexican War, and the ears of the subalterns were always opened to their stories of those days when, as lieutenants, they followed Gen. Scott in his march over the old Cortez highway to his victories and conquests. There was a Prussian among the officers, who, though expressing his approval of the justice and courtesy that the commanding officer showed in his charge of the garrison, used to infuriate the others by making invidious distinctions regarding foreign service and our own. We had an educated Indian as an officer. He belonged to the Six Nations, and his father was a Scotchman; but there was no Scotch about him, except that he was loyal to his trusts and a brave soldier, for he looked like any wild man of the Plains; and one of his family said to him, laughingly, "Dress you up in a blanket, and you couldn't be told from a Cheyenne or Arrapahoe." There was a Frenchman to add to the nationalities we represented, and in our heterogeneous collection one company might have its three officers with parentage from three of the four corners of the earth.
The immense amount of rank these new lieutenants and captains carried was amusing, for those who had served in the war still held their titles when addressed unofficially, and it was, to all appearances, a regiment made up of generals, colonels and majors. Occasionally, an officer who had served in the regular army many years before the war arrogantly lorded it over the young lieutenants. One especially, who saw nothing good in the service as it now was, constantly referred to "how it was done in the old First." Having a young fellow appointed from civil life as his lieutenant, who knew nothing of army tactics or etiquette, he found a good subject over whom to tyrannize. He gave this lad to understand that whenever the captain made his appearance he must jump up, offer him a chair, and stand attention. It was, in fact, a servile life he was mapping out for his subordinate.If the lad asserted himself in the slightest way, the captain straightened up that Prussian backbone, tapped his shoulder-strap, and grandiloquently observed, "Remember the goolf" [gulf], meaning the great chasm that intervened between a shoulder-strap with two bars and one with none. Even one knowing little of military life is aware that the "goolf" between a captain and a second lieutenant is not one of great magnitude. At last the youth began to see that he was being imposed upon, and that other captains did not so hold themselves toward their inferiors in rank, and he confidentially laid the case before a new arrival who had seen service, asking him how much of a stand he might make for his self-respect without infringing on military rules. The reply was, "When next he tries that game on you, tell him to go to h— with his gulf." The young fellow, not lacking in spirit, returned to his captain well primed for the encounter, and when next the gulf was mentioned, he stretched up his six feet of admirable physique, and advised the captain to take the journey "with his gulf," that had been previously suggested by his friend.
This same young fellow was a hot-headed youth, though a splendid soldier, and had a knack of getting into little altercations with his brother-officers. On one occasion at our house during a garrison hop, he and another officer had some dispute about dancing with a young lady, and retired to the coat-room, too courteous to enter into a discussion in the presence of women. It occurred to them, as words grew hotter and insufficient for the gravity of the occasion, that it would be well to interview the commanding officer, fearing that they might be placed in arrest. One of them descended to the dancing-room, called the General one side, told the story, and asked permission to pound his antagonist, whom he considered the aggressor. The General, knowing well how it was himself, having, at West Point, been known as the cadet who said, "Stand back, boys, and let's have a fair fight!" gave his permission. The door of the coat-room closed on the contestants for the fair lady's favor, and theyhad it out alone. It must not, from this incident, be inferred that our officers belonged to a class whose idea of justice was "knocking down and dragging out," but, in the newness of our regiment, there seemed to be occasions when there was no recourse for impositions or wrongs, except in the natural way. The mettle of all was being tested with a large number of men turned suddenly from a free life into the narrow limits of a garrison. Where everybody's elbow knocked his neighbor's, and no one could wholly escape the closest sort of intercourse, it was the most natural consequence that some jarring and grating went on.
None of us know how much the good-nature that we possess is due to the fact that we can take refuge in our homes or in flight, sometimes, from people who rasp and rub us up the wrong way.
Our regiment was then a medley of incongruous elements, and might well have discouraged a less persevering man, in the attempt to mould such material into an harmonious whole. From the first, the effort was to establish among the better men, who had ambition, the properesprit de corpsregarding their regiment. The General thought over carefully the future of this new organization, and worked constantly from the first days to make it the best cavalry regiment in the service. He assured me, when occasionally I mourned the inharmonious feeling that early began to crop out, that I must neither look for fidelity nor friendship, in its best sense, until the whole of them had been in a fight together; that it was on the battle-field, when all faced death together, where the truest affection was formed among soldiers. I could not help noting, that first year, the change from the devotion of my husband's Division of cavalry in the Army of the Potomac, to these new officers, who, as yet, had no affection for him, nor even for their regiment. He often asked me to have patience, not to judge too quickly of those who were to be our companions, doubtless for years to come, and reminded me that, as yet, he had done nothing to win their regard or command their respect; he had come among officersand men as an organizer, a disciplinarian, and it was perfectly natural they should chafe under restraints they had never known before. It was a hard place for my husband to fill, and a most thankless task, to bring that motley crowd into military subjection. The mischief-makers attempted to report unpleasant criticisms, and it was difficult to keep in subjection the jealousy that existed between West Point graduates, volunteer officers, and civil appointees. Of course a furtive watch was kept on the graduates of the Military Academy for any evidences of assumed superiority on their part, or for the slightest dereliction of duty. The volunteer, no matter how splendid a record he had made during the war, was excessively sensitive regarding the fact that he was not a graduated officer. My husband persistently fought against any line of demarkation between graduates and non-graduates. He argued personally, and wrote for publication, that the war had proved the volunteer officers did just as good service as, and certainly were not one whit less brave than, West Pointers. I remember how every little slip of a West Pointer was caught at by the others. One morning a group of men were gathered about the flag-staff at guard-mount, making the official report as officer of the day and officer of the guard, when a West Pointer joined them in the irreproachable uniform of a lieutenant, walking as few save graduates ever do walk. He gravely saluted, but, instead of reporting for duty, spoke out of the fullness of his heart, "Gentlemen, it's a boy." Of course, not a man among them was insensible to the honor of being the father of a first son and heir, and all suspended military observances belonging to the morning duties, and genuinely rejoiced with the new-made parent; but still they gloated over the fact that there had been, even in such a moment of excitement, this lapse of military dignity in one who was considered a cut-and-dried soldier.