"Our stable-boy is a tiny mulatto, a handsome little fellow, weighing about eighty pounds. Armstrong thinks he is the finest rider he has ever seen. I have just made him a tight-fitting red jacket and a red-white-and-blue skull cap, to ride in at races. We are running out to the stables half our time. Armstrong has the horses exercised on a quarter-of-a-mile track, holds the watch and times them, as we sit round and enjoy their speed."
"When I am so intent on my amateur dressmaking, and perplexed and tired, dear mother, you wouldn't wonder when I tell you that one dress, of which I am in actual need, I cut so that the figure ran one way on the skirt and another on the waist, and caused Armstrong to make some ridiculous remarks that I tried not to notice, but he was so funny, and the dress itself was so very queer when I put it on, I had to give in. Well, when I am so bothered, he comes in and throws my things all over the room, kicks over the lapboard, and picks me up for a tramp to the stable. Then he rubs down the horses' legs, and asks me to notice this or that fine point, which is all Greek to me. The truth is, that I would rather see a fine mane and tail than all the sinew, length of limb, etc. Then we sit down on kegs and boxes, and contemplate our wealth. Custis Lee greets me with a whinny. Dear mother, you would be simply horrified by our back yard. Autie and I march to the stables through a dark cloud of spectators. The negroes are upon us like the locusts of Egypt. It is rumored that our Uncle Charley keeps a flourishing colored boarding-house in the town, from what is decidedly more than the crumbs that fall from his master's table. After all, though, considering our house is filled with company, and we constantly give evening parties, I don't think our mess-bills are very large. Autie teases father Custer, by telling him he is going to brigade the colored troops and make him chaplain. You are well aware how father Custer feels over the 'nigger' question, and how he would regard a chaplaincy. I must not forget to tell you that the wheel of time has rolled around, and among the regiments in Armstrong's command is the Fourth Michigan Infantry. Don't you remember that when he was a second lieutenant, he crossed the Chickahominy with that regiment, and how, having started before dawn, his comrades among whom he had just come, did not know him, till, while they were lying low, he would pop up his head and call out their first names, or their nicknames at school in Monroe, and when it was daylight, and they recognized him, how glad they were to see him?"
"We had a lovely Christmas. I fared beautifully, as some of our staff had been to San Antonio, where the stores have a good many beautiful things from Mexico. Here, we had little opportunity to buy anything, but I managed to get up some trifle for each of our circle. We had a large Christmas-tree, and Autie was Santa Claus, and handed down the presents, making side-splitting remarks as each person walked up to receive his gift. The tree was well lighted. I don't know how so many tapers were gotten together. Of course it would not be us if, with all the substantial gifts, some jokes were not slipped in. You know well father Custer's antipathy to the negro, and everybody gathered round to see him open a box containing a nigger doll baby, while two of his other parcels held a bunch of fire-crackers and a bunch of cards. Lately his sons have spent a good deal of time and argument trying to induce him to play. They, at last, taught him some simple game, easy enough for even me to master. The rogues let him beat at first, but finally he discovered his luck was so persistently bad there must be a screw loose, and those boys up to some rascality. They had put him, with no apparent intention, with his back to the mirror, and, of course, saw his hand, which, like an amateur, he awkwardly held just right to enable them to see all his cards. This ended his lessons, and we will return him to Monroe the same good old Methodist that he left it. Everybody is fond of him, and his real presents were a hat, handkerchief, necktie, pipe and tobacco."
"One of our lieutenants, having just received his brevet as major, had a huge pair of yellow leaves cut out of flannel, as his insignia for the new rank."
"One of the staff, now a teetotaler, was reminded of his past, which I hoped everyone would ignore, by the present of a wooden faucet. No one escapes in such a crowd."
"Tom, who is always drumming on the piano, had a Jew's-harp given him, with an explanatory line from Autie attached, 'to give the piano a rest.' Only our own military family were here, and Armstrong gave us a nice supper, all of his own getting up. We played games, sang songs, mostly for the chorus, danced, and finally the merriest imitated the darkeys by jigs and patting juba, and walk-arounds. The rooms were prettily trimmed with evergreens, and over one door a great branch of mistletoe, about which the officers sang
"Fair mistletoe!
Love's opportunity!
What trees that grow
Give such sweet impunity?"
"But it is too bad that, pretty as two or three of our women are, they belong to some one else. So kissing begins and ends with every man saluting his own wife."