Francis Wilson, Known To The World At Large, First As A Singer In
Comic Opera, And Now As An Actor And Author, Also Lived In New
Rochelle, And We Came To Have The Honor Of Being Numbered
Amongst His Friends.
A devoted husband and kind father, a man of
letters and a book lover, such is the man as we knew him in his
home and with his family.
And now came the delicious warm summer days. We persuaded the
Quartermaster to prop up the little row of old bathing houses
which had toppled over with the heavy winter gales. There were
several bathing enthusiasts amongst us; we had a pretty fair
little stretch of beach which was set apart for the officers'
families, and now what bathing parties we had! Kemble, the
illustrator, joined our ranks - and on a warm summer morning the
little old Tug Hamilton was gay with the artists and their
families, the players and writers of plays, and soon you could
see the little garrison hastening to the beach and the swimmers
running down the long pier, down the run-way and off head first
into the clear waters of the Sound. What a company was that! The
younger and the older ones all together, children and their
fathers and mothers, all happy, all well, all so gay, and we of
the frontier so enamored of civilization and what it brought us!
There were no intruders and ah! those were happy days. Uncle Sam
seemed to be making up to us for what we had lost during all
those long years in the wild places.
Then Augustus Thomas wrote the play of "Arizona" and we went to
New York to see it put on, and we sat in Mr. Thomas' box and saw
our frontier life brought before us with startling reality.
And so one season followed another. Each bringing its pleasures,
and then came another lovely wedding, for my brother Harry gave
up his bachelor estate and married one of the nicest and
handsomest girls in Westchester County, and their home in New
Rochelle was most attractive. My son was at the Stevens Institute
and both he and Katharine were able to spend their vacations at
David's Island, and altogether, our life there was near to
perfection.
We were doomed to have one more tour in the West, however, and
this time it was the Middle West.
For in the autumn of '96, Jack was ordered to Jefferson
Barracks, Missouri, on construction work.
Jefferson Barracks is an old and historic post on the Mississippi
River, some ten miles south of St. Louis. I could not seem to
take any interest in the post or in the life there. I could not
form new ties so quickly, after our life on the coast, and I did
not like the Mississippi Valley, and St. Louis was too far from
the post, and the trolley ride over there too disagreeable for
words. After seven months of just existing (on my part) at
Jefferson Barracks, Jack received an order for Fort Myer, the
end, the aim, the dream of all army people.
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