He had grown grey in Indian campaigns, and
it looked as if the frontier might always be the home of the
senior lieutenant of the old Eighth. Promotion in that regiment
had been at a standstill for years.
Being in Washington for a short time towards mid-winter enjoying
the social side of military life at the Capital, an opportunity
came to me to meet President Cleveland, and although his
administration was nearing its close, and the stress of official
cares was very great, he seemed to have leisure and interest to
ask me about my life on the frontier; and as the conversation
became quite personal, the impulse seized me, to tell him just
how I felt about the education of our children, and then to tell
him what I thought and what others thought about the unjust way
in which the promotions and retirements in our regiment had been
managed.
He listened with the greatest interest and seemed pleased with my
frankness. He asked me what the soldiers and officers out there
thought of "So and So." "They hate him," I said.
Whereupon he laughed outright and I knew I had committed an
indiscretion, but life on the frontier does not teach one
diplomacy of speech, and by that time I was nerved up to say just
what I felt, regardless of results.
"Well," he said, smiling, "I am afraid I cannot interfere much
with those military matters;" then, pointing with his left hand
and thumb towards the War Department, "they fix them all up over
there in the Adjutant General's office," he added.
Then he asked me many more questions; if I had always stayed out
there with my husband, and why I did not live in the East, as so
many army women did; and all the time I could hear the dull thud
of the carpenters' hammers, for they were building even then the
board seats for the public who would witness the inaugural
ceremonies of his successor, and with each stroke of the hammer,
his face seemed to grow more sad.
I felt the greatness of the man; his desire to be just and good:
his marvellous personal power, his ability to understand and to
sympathize, and when I parted from him he said again laughingly,
"Well, I shall not forget your husband's regiment, and if
anything turns up for those fine men you have told me about, they
will hear from me." And I knew they were the words of a man, who
meant what he said.
In the course of our conversation he had asked, "Who are these
men? Do they ever come to Washington? I rarely have these things
explained to me and I have little time to interfere with the
decisions of the Adjutant General's office."
I replied: "No, Mr. President, they are not the men you see
around Washington. Our regiment stays on the frontier, and these
men are the ones who do the fighting, and you people here in
Washington are apt to forget all about them."
"What have they ever done? Were they in the Civil War?" he asked.
"Their records stand in black and white in the War Department," I
replied, "if you have the interest to learn more about them."
"Women's opinions are influenced by their feelings," he said.
"Mine are based upon what I know, and I am prepared to stand by
my convictions," I replied.
Soon after this interview, I returned to New York and I did not
give the matter very much further thought, but my impression of
the greatness of Mr. Cleveland and of his powerful personality
has remained with me to this day.
A vacancy occurred about this time in the Quartermaster's
Department, and the appointment was eagerly sought for by many
Lieutenants of the army. President Cleveland saw fit to give the
appointment to Lieutenant Summerhayes, making him a Captain and
Quartermaster, and then, another vacancy occurring shortly after,
he appointed Lieutenant John McEwen Hyde to be also a Captain and
Quartermaster.
Lieutenant Hyde stood next in rank to my husband and had grown
grey in the old Eighth Infantry. So the regiment came in for its
honor at last, and General Kautz, when the news of the second
appointment reached him, exclaimed, "Well! well! does the
President think my regiment a nursery for the Staff?"
The Eighth Foot and the Ninth Horse at Niobrara gave the new
Captain and Quartermaster a rousing farewell, for now my husband
was leaving his old regiment forever; and, while he appreciated
fully the honor of his new staff position, he felt a sadness at
breaking off the associations of so many years - a sadness which
can scarcely be understood by the young officers of the present
day, who are promoted from one regiment to another, and rarely
remain long enough with one organization to know even the men of
their own Company.
There were many champagne suppers, dinners and card-parties given
for him, to make the good-bye something to be remembered, and at
the end of a week's festivities, he departed by a night train
from Valentine, thus eluding the hospitality of those generous
but wild frontiersmen, who were waiting to give him what they
call out there a "send-off."
For Valentine was like all frontier towns; a row of stores and
saloons. The men who kept them were generous, if somewhat rough.
One of the officers of the post, having occasion to go to the
railroad station one day at Valentine, saw the body of a man
hanging to a telegraph pole a short distance up the track. He
said to the station man: "What does that mean?" (nodding his head
in the direction of the telegraph pole).
"Why, it means just this," said the station man, "the people who
hung that man last night had the nerve to put him right in front
of this place, by G - . What would the passengers think of this
town, sir, as they went by?
