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.
