else, and put off lighting it as long as he possibly could. That was a memorable night, and I shall never sufficiently thank Captain Ellis for that cigar, and for showing me how little we of the East appreciate the little things we have always with us, and which become so important when they are taken away. [Illustration: FORT HOUSTON, AT SAN ANTONIO--OFFICERS’ QUARTERS] Fort Sill is really a summer resort; at least, that is what the officers say. I was not there in summer, but it made a most delightful winter resort. There is really no reason at all why people should not go to these interior army posts, as well as to the one at Point Comfort, and spend the summer or winter there, either for their health or for their pleasure. They can reach Fort Sill, for instance, in a three-days’ journey from New York, and then there are two days of staging, and you are in a beautiful valley, with rivers running over rocky beds, with the most picturesque Indians all about you, and with red and white flags wigwagging from the parade to the green mountain-tops, and good looking boy-officers to explain the new regulations, and the best of hunting and fishing. [Illustration: THE BARRACKS, FORT HOUSTON] I do not know how the people of Fort Sill will like having their home advertised in this way, but it seems a pity others should not enjoy following Colonel Jones over the prairie after jack-rabbits. We started four of them in one hour, and that is a very good sport when you have a field of twenty men and women and a pack of good hounds. The dogs of Colonel Jones were not as fast as the rabbits, but they were faster than the horses, and so neither dogs nor rabbits were hurt; and that is as it should be, for, as Colonel Jones says, if you caught the rabbits, there would be no more rabbits to catch. Of the serious side of the life of an army post, of the men and of the families of the men who are away on dangerous field service, I have said nothing, because there was none of it when I was there, nor of the privations of those posts up in the far Northwest, where snow and ice are almost a yearly accompaniment, and where the mail and the papers, which are such a mockery as an exchange for the voices of real people, come only twice a month.