than one congressman in York State. The Honorable Mr.
Cadger, of the Military Committee, couldn't 'a been renominated if it
hadn't been for him, and he didn't want me round home any more. He got
me kept on bureau work long after all but a few volunteers were
mustered out and shoved me down to New Orleans, where I'd often been
steamboating before the war. I had the fever there when I was only
twenty. Perhaps he thought I could get it again, and that would be the
end of me. If there's a worse place for a young officer to start in than
that infernal town was just after the war it ain't on the map o' these
United States. I had the luck and the opportunities of the devil for
nigh onto a year. I got more money and learned more ways of getting it
than I knew how to use, and then I got married. A homeless woman, a
woman with brains and good looks and education, married me for the
position I could give her, I suppose. They told me afterward she did it
out of spite or desperation; that she was a Northern girl who had been
employed as governess in an old Southern family that was ruined by the
war; that she had a younger sister in New York whom she was educating, a
girl who had a magnificent voice and wanted to go on the stage, and all
the money she could save went to her. She got employment when Ben Butler
took command, for she knew all the Southern families, and who had money
and plate and jewels, and who had nothing but niggers. She fell in love,
they told me afterward, with a swell colonel who came there on staff
duty, for he cut a dash and made desperate love to her until his wife
got wind of it and came down there all of a sudden just after the
smash-up of the Confederacy, and put a stop to his fun. That was in May,
and I got there in July. We were married that winter, and I loaded her
with the best I could buy and gave her all she could spend on her sister
until she found out how my money was made there--in cotton and cards.
She thought, and I'd let her think so, that I had big property in the
North. It was another woman gave her the tip, and then the trouble
began. She swore we must give up the house we lived in, the horses and
carriage, and go to a cheap boarding-house. She got the jewelers to take
back the watch and every trinket I'd given her--at their own valuation,
about a quarter of what they cost me. She argued and pleaded and prayed,
and swore she'd confess the whole thing to General Sheridan, who came
there right aft