in and closed the door. I doubt if Mrs. Hunt saw me,
she was so intently watching the man, who kept on upsetting things.
He stopped finally, and then held up on the wood a snake--a dead
rattlesnake! We measured it, and it was over two feet long.

You can see how the house is built by the photograph I sent you, that
there are no chimneys, and that the stovepipes go straight up through
the pole and sod roof. The children insist that the snake came down the
pipe in the liveliest kind of a way, so it must have crawled up the logs
to the roof, and finding the warmth of the pipe, got too close to the
opening and slipped through. However that may be, he got into the room
where the three little children were playing alone. Fortunately, the
oldest recognized the danger at once, and ran screaming to her mother,
the other two following. Mrs. Hunt was almost ill over the affair,
and Major Hunt kept a man on top and around the old house hunting for
snakes, until we began to fear it would be pulled down on our heads.

This country itself is bad enough, and the location of the post is most
unfortunate, but to compel officers and men to live in these old huts
of decaying, moldy wood, which are reeking with malaria and alive with
bugs, and perhaps snakes, is wicked. Officers' families are not obliged
to remain here, of course.

But at dreadful places like this is where the plucky army wife is most
needed. Her very presence has often a refining and restraining influence
over the entire garrison, from the commanding officer down to the last
recruit. No one can as quickly grasp the possibilities of comfort in
quarters like these, or as bravely busy herself to fix them up. She
knows that the stay is indefinite, that it may be for six months, or
possibly six years, but that matters not. It is her army home--Brass
Button's home--and however discouraging its condition may be, for his
sake she pluckily, and with wifely pride, performs miracles, always
making the house comfortable and attractive.

FORT DODGE, KANSAS, January, 1873.

OUR coming here was most unexpected and very unpleasant in every way.
General Phillips and Major Barker quarreled over something, and Major
Barker preferred charges against the general, who is his company
commander, and now General Phillips is being tried here by general court
martial. Faye and I were summoned as witnesses by Major Barker, just
because we heard a few words that were said in front of our window la