None of us know how much the good-nature that we possess is due to the fact that we can take refuge in our homes or in flight, sometimes, from people who rasp and rub us up the wrong way.
Our regiment was then a medley of incongruous elements, and might well have discouraged a less persevering man, in the attempt to mould such material into an harmonious whole. From the first, the effort was to establish among the better men, who had ambition, the proper esprit de corps regarding their regiment. The General thought over carefully the future of this new organization, and worked constantly from the first days to make it the best cavalry regiment in the service. He assured me, when occasionally I mourned the inharmonious feeling that early began to crop out, that I must neither look for fidelity nor friendship, in its best sense, until the whole of them had been in a fight together; that it was on the battle-field, when all faced death together, where the truest affection was formed among soldiers. I could not help noting, that first year, the change from the devotion of my husband's Division of cavalry in the Army of the Potomac, to these new officers, who, as yet, had no affection for him, nor even for their regiment. He often asked me to have patience, not to judge too quickly of those who were to be our companions, doubtless for years to come, and reminded me that, as yet, he had done nothing to win their regard or command their respect; he had come among officers and men as an organizer, a disciplinarian, and it was perfectly natural they should chafe under restraints they had never known before. It was a hard place for my husband to fill, and a most thankless task, to bring that motley crowd into military subjection. The mischief-makers attempted to report unpleasant criticisms, and it was difficult to keep in subjection the jealousy that existed between West Point graduates, volunteer officers, and civil appointees. Of course a furtive watch was kept on the graduates of the Military Academy for any evidences of assumed superiority on their part, or for the slightest dereliction of duty. The volunteer, no matter how splendid a record he had made during the war, was excessively sensitive regarding the fact that he was not a graduated officer. My husband persistently fought against any line of demarkation between graduates and non-graduates. He argued personally, and wrote for publication, that the war had proved the volunteer officers did just as good service as, and certainly were not one whit less brave than, West Pointers. I remember how every little slip of a West Pointer was caught at by the others. One morning a group of men were gathered about the flag-staff at guard-mount, making the official report as officer of the day and officer of the guard, when a West Pointer joined them in the irreproachable uniform of a lieutenant, walking as few save graduates ever do walk. He gravely saluted, but, instead of reporting for duty, spoke out of the fullness of his heart, "Gentlemen, it's a boy." Of course, not a man among them was insensible to the honor of being the father of a first son and heir, and all suspended military observances belonging to the morning duties, and genuinely rejoiced with the new-made parent; but still they gloated over the fact that there had been, even in such a moment of excitement, this lapse of military dignity in one who was considered a cut-and-dried soldier.
An embarrassing position for General Custer was, that he had under him officers much older than himself. He was then but twenty-seven years of age, and the people who studied to make trouble (and how rarely are they absent from any community!) used this fact as a means of stirring up dissension. How thankful I was that nothing could draw him into difficulty from that question, for he either refused to listen, or heard only to forget. One day he was deeply moved by the Major of our regiment, General Alfred Gibbs, who had commanded the brigade of regular cavalry in the Army of the Potomac during the war, and whose soul was so broad and his heart so big that he was above everything petty or mean. My husband called me into our room and shut the door, in order to tell me, quietly, that some gossip had endeavored to spread a report that General Gibbs was galled by his position, and unwilling to submit to the authority of so young a man. On hearing this, he came straightway to General Custer—ah, what worlds of trouble we would be saved if there were courage to inquire into slander!—and in the most earnest, frank manner assured him that he had never expressed such sentiments, and that their years of service together during the war had established an abiding regard for his soldierly ability that made it a pleasure to be in his regiment. This, from an officer who had served with distinction in the Mexican War, as well as done gallant service in an Indian campaign before the Civil War, was a most grateful compliment to my husband. General Gibbs was a famous disciplinarian, and he had also the quaintest manner of fetching every one to the etiquettical standard he knew to be necessary. He was witty, and greatly given to joking, and yet perfectly unswerving in the performance of the most insignificant duty. We have exhausted ourselves with laughter as he described, by contortions of feature and really extraordinary facial gymnastics, his efforts to dislodge a venturesome and unmilitary fly, that had perched on his nose when he was conducting a dress-parade. To lift his hand and brush off the intruder, with a long line of soldiers facing him, was an example he would scarcely like them to follow; and yet the tantalizing tickling of those fly-legs, slowly traveling over his moist and heated face, was almost too exasperating to endure. If General Gibbs felt the necessity of reminding any one of carelessness in dress, it was managed in so clever a manner that it gave no lasting offense. My husband, absorbed in the drilling, discipline, and organization of the regiment, sometimes overlooked the necessity for social obligations, and immediately came under the General's witty criticisms. If a strange officer visited our post, and any one neglected to call, as is considered obligatory, it was remarked upon by our etiquettical mentor. If the officers were careless in dress, or wore semi-military clothes, something quite natural in young fellows who wanted to load on everything that glittered, our General Etiquette made mention of it. One wore an English forage-cap with a lot of gilt braid on top, instead of the plain visored cap of the regulations. The way he came to know that this innovation must be suppressed, was by a request from General Gibbs to purchase it for his bandmaster. He himself was so strictly military that he could well afford to hold the others up to the mark. His coats were marvelous fits, and he tightly buckled in his increasing rotundity with a superb belt and clasp that had belonged to his grandfather, a Wolcott in the Revolutionary War.
Most women know with what obstinate determination and adoring fondness a man clings to some shabby article of wearing apparel. There was in our family an ancient dressing-gown, not the jaunty smoking-jacket that I fortunately learned afterward to make; but a long, clumsy, quilted monstrosity that I had laboriously cobbled out with very ignorant fingers. My husband simply worshiped it. The garment appeared on one of his birthdays, and I was praised beyond my deserts for having put in shape such a success, and he could hardly slide out of his uniform, when he came from the office, quickly enough to enable him to jump into this soft, loose abomination. If he had vanity, which it is claimed is lodged somewhere in every human breast, it was spasmodic, for he not only knew that he looked like a fright, but his family told him this fact, with repeated variations of derision. When at last it became not even respectable, it was so ragged, I attempted to hide it, but this did no earthly good. The beloved possession was ferreted out, and he gaily danced up and down in triumph before his discomfited wife, all the rags and tags flaunting out as he moved. In vain General Gibbs asked me why I allowed such a disgraceful "old man's garment" about. The truth was, there was not half the discipline in our family that there might have been had we been citizens. A woman cannot be expected to keep a man up to the mark in every little detail, and surely she may be excused if she do a little spoiling when, after months of separation, she is returned to the one for whom her heart has been wrung with anxiety. No sooner are you together than there comes the ever-present terror of being divided again.
General Gibbs won at last in suppressing the old dressing-gown, for he begged General Custer to picture to himself the appearance of his entire regiment clad in long-tailed, ragged gowns modeled after that of their commanding officer! In dozens of ways General Gibbs kept us up to the mark socially. He never drew distinctions between the old army and the new, as some were wont to do, and his influence in shaping our regiment in social as well as military affairs was felt in a marked manner, and we came to regard him as an authority, and to value his suggestions.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE.
Soon after my husband returned from Washington, he found that Ristori was advertised in St. Louis, and as he had been delighted with her acting when in the East, he insisted upon my going there, though it was a journey of several hundred miles. The young officers urged, and the pretty Diana looked volumes of entreaty at me, so at last I consented to go, as we need be absent but a few days. At that time the dreaded campaign looked far off, and I was trying to cheat myself into the belief that there might possibly be none at all.