About an hour before I was to leave I saw the members of the string orchestra filing across the parade ground, coming directly towards our quarters. My heart began to beat faster, as I realized that Mrs. Kautz had planned a serenade for me. I felt it was a great break in my army life, but I did not know I was leaving the old regiment forever, the regiment with which I had been associated for so many years. And as I listened to the beautiful strains of the music I loved so well, my eyes were wet with tears, and after all the goodbye's were said, to the officers and their wives, my friends who had shared all our joys and our sorrows in so many places and under so many conditions, I ran out to the stable and pressed my cheek against the soft warm noses of our two saddle horses. I felt that life was over for me, and nothing but work and care remained. I say I felt all this. It must have been premonition, for I had no idea that I was leaving the line of the army forever. The ambulance was at the door, to take us to Valentine, where I bade Jack good bye, and took the train for the East. His last promise was to visit us once a year, or whenever he could get a leave of absence. My husband had now worn the single bar on his shoulder-strap for eleven years or more; before that, the straps of the second lieutenant had adorned his broad shoulders for a period quite as long. Twenty-two years a lieutenant in the regular army, after fighting, in a volunteer regiment of his own state, through the four years of the Civil War! The "gallant and meritorious service" for which he had received brevets, seemed, indeed, to have been forgotten. He had grown grey in Indian campaigns, and it looked as if the frontier might always be the home of the senior lieutenant of the old Eighth. Promotion in that regiment had been at a standstill for years. Being in Washington for a short time towards mid-winter enjoying the social side of military life at the Capital, an opportunity came to me to meet President Cleveland, and although his administration was nearing its close, and the stress of official cares was very great, he seemed to have leisure and interest to ask me about my life on the frontier; and as the conversation became quite personal, the impulse seized me, to tell him just how I felt about the education of our children, and then to tell him what I thought and what others thought about the unjust way in which the promotions and retirements in our regiment had been managed. He listened with the greatest interest and seemed pleased with my frankness. He asked me what the soldiers and officers out there thought of "So and So." "They hate him," I said. Whereupon he laughed outright and I knew I had committed an indiscretion, but life on the frontier does not teach one diplomacy of speech, and by that time I was nerved up to say just what I felt, regardless of results.