She replied, "Five feet, three."
"Just tall enough to enter the army," I answered.
Immediately the girls below began to giggle, and during the rest of the day and the journey home one would occasionally cry out, "Just tall enough to enter the army." I did not hear the last of the incident for some time.
Shortly after, our engagement was announced, and the date of the ceremony set for October 13th.
My leave being about to expire, I returned to Fort Sedgwick, but applied for another leave the first of October, expressing my purpose of getting married.
I had accumulated three thousand dollars in the bank, which I took with me. Miss Cassel and I spent this money together in the stores for such household equipment as we concluded would be necessary. We had our photographs taken the day before we were married.
On the 13th of October we were duly united. We had a very simple wedding, with only relatives and close personal friends of the family present. I remember the venerable Mr. Cushing, a friend of the family, who was then in his eighties. When he came to bid the bride good-bye, he remarked, "Hannah, I am going to kiss you, for this is perhaps the last time I shall ever see you," and it was.
As Miss Cassel in her family and among her intimate friends was always "Nannie," and as I always spoke of her and addressed her by that name after we were married, I shall hereafter refer to her so, thinking it unsuitable in so intimate a reminiscence as this to be too formal.
Earlier I have referred at length to my forebears and the history of my family. Nannie's family is equally as well rooted in American history as mine.
Her father, William Culbertson Cassel, was born in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, in 1817, and was the son of Jacob Cassel, who was born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 1775. His father was born off the coast of Ireland on a vessel which was wrecked there, and on which his parents (Nannie's great-great-grandparents) were coming from Germany to this country.