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.
