Sandy had thrown off the yoke, and those
who were joining for the first time had been unmistakably cautioned by
the determined Amazons of the homeward march. Courtesy, civility, and a
certain degree of cordiality when in their social gatherings, the ladies
were willing to extend to the colonel's wife, but the declaration of
independence had been signed and sealed,--they would have no more of her
dominion.

To a woman of her character garrison life was no longer tolerable to
Mrs. Pelham; the colonel, too, was getting tired of it, was aging
rapidly and no longer able to take his morning gallops. Then, too, he
was utterly lonely; his one daughter, the light of his old eyes, had
married the man of her choice during the previous year; his sons were
scattered in their own avocations, and the complaints and peevishness of
his wife were poor companions for his fireside. The officers welcomed
him to their club-room, and gladly strove to interest him in billiards
or whist, to the exclusion of the Gleason clique and concomitant poker,
which was never played in the colonel's presence; but even this solace
was denied him by his wife. She was just as lonely at home, poor lady,
and she had to have some one to listen to her long accumulation of
feminine trials and grievances, otherwise the overcharged bosom would
burst. We claim it an attribute of manhood that "to suffer and be
strong" is an every-day affair; but the best of men feel infinite relief
in having some trusted friend who will listen in patience to the
oft-told story of their struggle. To suffer, be strong, and be silent
is a task for the stoutest of our sex, but woman triumphs over nature
itself in accomplishing the triple feat, and undergoes a torture that
outrivals martyrdom. Suffer Mrs. Pelham could and did, if her voluble
lamentations could be credited; strong she deemed herself beyond all
question, in not having succumbed to the privations and asperities of
Western life, but silent? ah, no! Poor old Pelham's life had become a
perennial curtain-lecture, so Lieutenant Blake expressed it, and when
January came, and with it an opportunity to accept a pleasant detail in
the East, the colonel lost no time in taking his departure. He left the
--th with a sorrowful heart, for officers and men were strongly attached
to the old soldier who had for years past shared every exile with them,
but they could not bear his domineering wife, and many a fellow who
hadn't told an apprecia