I am glad to have known the army: the soldiers, the line, and the
Staff; it is good to think of honor and chivalry, obedience to
duty and the pride of arms; to have lived amongst men whose
motives were unselfish and whose aims were high; amongst men who
served an ideal; who stood ready, at the call of their country,
to give their lives for a Government which is, to them, the best
in the world.
Sometimes I hear the still voices of the Desert: they seem to be
calling me through the echoes of the Past. I hear, in fancy, the
wheels of the ambulance crunching the small broken stones of the
malapais, or grating swiftly over the gravel of the smooth white
roads of the river-bottoms. I hear the rattle of the ivory rings
on the harness of the six-mule team; I see the soldiers marching
on ahead; I see my white tent, so inviting after a long day's
journey.
But how vain these fancies! Railroad and automobile have
annihilated distance, the army life of those years is past and
gone, and Arizona, as we knew it, has vanished from the face of
the earth.
THE END.
APPENDIX.
NANTUCKET ISLAND, June 1910.
When, a few years ago, I determined to write my recollections of
life in the army, I was wholly unfamiliar with the methods of
publishers, and the firm to whom I applied to bring out my book,
did not urge upon me the advisability of having it electrotyped,
firstly, because, as they said afterwards, I myself had such a
very modest opinion of my book, and, secondly because they
thought a book of so decidedly personal a character would not
reach a sale of more than a few hundred copies at the farthest.
The matter of electrotyping was not even discussed between us.
The entire edition of one thousand copies was exhausted in about
a year, without having been carried on the lists of any
bookseller 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 receive orders for the book from
army officers, and then one day I received orders from people in
Arizona and I awoke to the fact that Arizona was no longer the
land of my memories. I began to receive booklets telling me of
projected railroads, also pictures of wonderful buildings, all
showing progress and prosperity.
And then came letters from some Presidents of railroads whose
lines ran through Arizona, and from bankers and politicians and
business men of Tucson, Phoenix and Yuma City. Photographs
showing shady roads and streets, where once all was a glare and a
sandy waste. Letters from mining men who knew every foot of the
roads we had marched over; pictures of the great Laguna dam on
the Colorado, and of the quarters of the Government Reclamation
Service Corps at Yuma.
These letters and pictures told me of the wonderful contrast
presented by my story to the Arizona of today; and although I had
not spared that country, in my desire to place before my children
and friends a vivid picture of my life out there, all these men
seemed willing to forgive me and even declared that my story
might do as much to advance their interests and the prosperity of
Arizona as anything which had been written with only that object
in view.
