Strange complications arise. A young officer fell in love with a sergeant's daughter, and married her, as I learned from a well-known officer at the Army and Navy Club. This was serious enough, as there could be no intimacy between a commissioned and non-commissioned officer. The young man and his bride were ordered to a distant post, where the story of course followed them. All went well for a time. The bride sank her social inferiority in the rank of her husband, and the ladies of the post called on her, not as the sergeant's daughter but as the officer's wife. The mother of the bride finally decided to visit her, and thus became the guest of the officer, who was a lieutenant. Under ordinary circumstances it was the duty of all the ladies to call on the mother of the lieutenant's wife; but it so happened that she was the wife of a sergeant, and hence to call was impossible. No one did so. The young wife felt herself insulted, and the ubiquitous reporter seized upon the situation, until it was taken up by every paper in the country. The pictures of mother, daughter, and sergeant were shown, and columns were written on the subject. Almost to a man the editors denounced what they termed the snobbishness of the army, and denounced West Point for producing snobs, claiming that the ladies of the post, had they been real ladies, would have called on a respectable laundress even if she had been the sergeant's wife. I refer to this to show the intricacies of American etiquette. The point is that nearly all the editors who knew anything, believed that the ladies were right, but did not dare to say so on account of the fact that the majority of their readers felt themselves the equals of the army officer; hence the cry of snobbery that went whistling over the land. The lieutenant committed a gross mistake in marrying the girl; he married out of his class. But in America I am told there are no classes, and I am constantly forgetting this. In the army there are several black regiments (negroes). They have black chaplains, and attempts have been made to find black officers, but the social difficulties make this impossible, though the blacks are free and independent citizens and help pay the salaries of the white men. It would be impossible to force white soldiers to admit to their regiment black soldiers. No white man would permit a black officer to be placed over him, even by inference.