For a month or more I was in the officers' mess, consisting only of single men or those whose families were away. The meals were rather stately affairs and to me seemed a little tinged with the ridiculous in that far-away place. There was a colored man standing behind each officer's chair dressed in the proper toggery to do his duty and to give him every attention. I never saw any more perfect service at any hotel and the table was the best the commissary department and the surrounding country would provide. Prices outside the commissary were much higher than we had then in Iowa. Eggs were fifty cents a dozen; butter a dollar and a quarter a pound. I paid these prices regularly when I started my own mess. I had what was called a student's lamp in those days and paid five dollars a gallon for coal oil, as it was then called. Of course that was before oil tanks were known and it was carried across the plains in barrels, maybe in hot weather, and on slow moving ox trains, being months on the way. The evaporation would necessarily be very great, and by the time the sutler's store got its percent of profit (probably one hundred percent or more) one could easily see that fifty cent oil in Iowa could easily be five dollars in New Mexico. Some years later at Fort McRae, further down the river, we got it for two dollars and a half per gallon by sending a five gallon can to Santa Fe to be filled. Thinking that I was a fixture at Fort Craig for some time I wrote my wife and asked her to join me after her visit in the East was over. In view of her coming I started a mess of my own and had a little colored drummer boy detailed as servant and cook. He was as black as night and I called him Sandy. To start with I laid in a pretty good supply of commissaries, among them ten pounds of cut loaf sugar. I had my first dinner on Saturday and the following Monday morning I asked Sandy if anything was needed. "Yas sah, Doctor, we needs some moah sugar." Why Sandy, I said, we got ten pounds of each kind on Saturday, which kind do you want? "We needs some moah cut loaf sugar, sah," he said. What, cut loaf sugar? "Yas sah, Doctor, it takes a powerful sight 'o sugar for deserts." Well all right Sandy, I said, I'll see about it. I thought it was going pretty fast for only two dinners so I stopped on my way back from the hospital at Major Sweet's quarters and asked Mrs. Sweet how much cut loaf sugar they used. She was bright and quick as a flash, and wished to know, while trying to look serious, why I asked such a question. Finally she broke out into a jolly rippling laugh and said, "I know what's the matter, Sandy has been carrying your sugar off to the laundresses." I told Sandy when I returned to my quarters that I did not mind his having all the sugar he wanted himself but I did not want to feed all the laundresses at the post on cut loaf sugar. He did better afterwards but I still think the laundresses got some sugar.