ct of my menage, after
inspecting the bachelor furnishings which had seemed so ample to my
husband. But there was so much to be seen in the way of guard mount,
cavalry drill, and various military functions, besides the drives to
town and the concerts of the string orchestra, that I had little time to
think of the practical side of life.

Added to this, we were enjoying the delightful hospitality of the
Wilhelms, and the Major insisted upon making me acquainted with the
"real old-fashioned army toddy" several times a day,--a new beverage
to me, brought up in a blue-ribbon community, where wine-bibbing and
whiskey drinking were rated as belonging to only the lowest classes.
To be sure, my father always drank two fingers of fine cognac before
dinner, but I had always considered that a sort of medicine for a man
advanced in years.

Taken all in all, it is not to be wondered at if I saw not much in those
few days besides bright buttons, blue uniforms, and shining swords.

Everything was military and gay and brilliant, and I forgot the very
existence of practical things, in listening to the dreamy strains of
Italian and German music, rendered by our excellent and painstaking
orchestra. For the Eighth Infantry loved good music, and had imported
its musicians direct from Italy.

This came to an end, however, after a few days, and I was obliged to
descend from those heights to the dead level of domestic economy.

My husband informed me that the quarters were ready for our occupancy
and that we could begin house-keeping at once. He had engaged a soldier
named Adams for a striker; he did not know whether Adams was much of
a cook, he said, but he was the only available man just then, as the
companies were up north at the Agency.

Our quarters consisted of three rooms and a kitchen, which formed
one-half of a double house.

I asked Jack why we could not have a whole house. I did not think I
could possibly live in three rooms and a kitchen.

"Why, Martha," said he, "did you not know that women are not reckoned
in at all at the War Department? A lieutenant's allowance of quarters,
according to the Army Regulations, is one room and a kitchen, a
captain's allowance is two rooms and a kitchen, and so on up, until a
colonel has a fairly good house." I told him I thought it an outrage;
that lieutenants' wives needed quite as much as colonels' wives.

He laughed and said, "You see we have already two rooms over our proper
allowan