dams, as it turned out, was not a cook, and I must confess that my
own attention had been more engrossed by the study of German auxiliary
verbs, during the few previous years, than with the art of cooking.

Of course, like all New England girls of that period, I knew how to make
quince jelly and floating islands, but of the actual, practical side of
cooking, and the management of a range, I knew nothing.

Here was a dilemma, indeed!

The eggs appeared to boil, but they did not seem to be done when we took
them off, by the minute-hand of the clock.

I declared the kettle was too large; Adams said he did not understand it
at all.

I could have wept with chagrin! Our first meal a deux!

I appealed to Jack. He said, "Why, of course, Martha, you ought to know
that things do not cook as quickly at this altitude as they do down at
the sea level. We are thousands of feet above the sea here in Wyoming."
(I am not sure it was thousands, but it was hundreds at least.)

So that was the trouble, and I had not thought of it!

My head was giddy with the glamour, the uniform, the guard-mount, the
military music, the rarefied air, the new conditions, the new interests
of my life. Heine's songs, Goethe's plays, history and romance were
floating through my mind. Is it to be wondered at that I and Adams
together prepared the most atrocious meals that ever a new husband had
to eat? I related my difficulties to Jack, and told him I thought
we should never be able to manage with such kitchen utensils as were
furnished by the Q. M. D.

"Oh, pshaw! You are pampered and spoiled with your New England
kitchens," said he; "you will have to learn to do as other army women
do--cook in cans and such things, be inventive, and learn to do with
nothing." This was my first lesson in army house-keeping.

After my unpractical teacher had gone out on some official business, I
ran over to Mrs. Wilhelm's quarters and said, "Will you let me see your
kitchen closet?"

She assented, and I saw the most beautiful array of tin-ware, shining
and neat, placed in rows upon the shelves and hanging from hooks on the
wall.

"So!" I said; "my military husband does not know anything about these
things;" and I availed myself of the first trip of the ambulance over
to Cheyenne, bought a stock of tin-ware and had it charged, and made
no mention of it--because I feared that tin-ware was to be our bone of
contention, and I put off the evil day.

The cooking went