r or
advertised in any way except through some circulars sent by myself to
personal friends, and through several excellent reviews in prominent
newspapers.

As the demand for the book continued, I have thought it advisable to
re-issue it, adding a good deal that has come into my mind since its
publication.

*****

It was after the Colonel's retirement that we came to spend the summers
at Nantucket, and I began to enjoy the leisure that never comes into the
life of an army woman during the active service of her husband. We were
no longer expecting sudden orders, and I was able to think quietly over
the events of the past.

My old letters which had been returned to me really gave me the
inspiration to write the book and as I read them over, the people and
the events therein described were recalled vividly to my mind--events
which I had forgotten, people whom I had forgotten--events and people
all crowded out of my memory for many years by the pressure of family
cares, and the succession of changes in our stations, by anxiety during
Indian campaigns, and the constant readjustment of my mind to new scenes
and new friends.

And so, in the delicious quiet of the Autumn days at Nantucket, when the
summer winds had ceased to blow and the frogs had ceased their pipings
in the salt meadows, and the sea was wondering whether it should keep
its summer blue or change into its winter grey, I sat down at my desk
and began to write my story.

Looking out over the quiet ocean in those wonderful November days, when
a peaceful calm brooded over all things, I gathered up all the threads
of my various experiences and wove them together.

But the people and the lands I wrote about did not really exist for
me; they were dream people and dream lands. I wrote of them as they had
appeared to me in those early years, and, strange as it may seem, I did
not once stop to think if the people and the lands still existed.

For a quarter of a century I had lived in the day that began with
reveille and ended with "Taps."

Now on this enchanted island, there was no reveille to awaken us in the
morning, and in the evening the only sound we could hear was the "ruck"
of the waves on the far outer shores and the sad tolling of the bell
buoy when the heaving swell of the ocean came rolling over the bar.

And so I wrote, and the story grew into a book which was published and
sent out to friends and family.

As time passed on, I began to recei