"Well," he said, smiling, "I am afraid I cannot interfere much with those military matters;" then, pointing with his left hand and thumb towards the War Department, "they fix them all up over there in the Adjutant General's office," he added. Then he asked me many more questions; if I had always stayed out there with my husband, and why I did not live in the East, as so many army women did; and all the time I could hear the dull thud of the carpenters' hammers, for they were building even then the board seats for the public who would witness the inaugural ceremonies of his successor, and with each stroke of the hammer, his face seemed to grow more sad. I felt the greatness of the man; his desire to be just and good: his marvellous personal power, his ability to understand and to sympathize, and when I parted from him he said again laughingly, "Well, I shall not forget your husband's regiment, and if anything turns up for those fine men you have told me about, they will hear from me." And I knew they were the words of a man, who meant what he said. In the course of our conversation he had asked, "Who are these men? Do they ever come to Washington? I rarely have these things explained to me and I have little time to interfere with the decisions of the Adjutant General's office." I replied: "No, Mr. President, they are not the men you see around Washington. Our regiment stays on the frontier, and these men are the ones who do the fighting, and you people here in Washington are apt to forget all about them." "What have they ever done? Were they in the Civil War?" he asked. "Their records stand in black and white in the War Department," I replied, "if you have the interest to learn more about them." "Women's opinions are influenced by their feelings," he said. "Mine are based upon what I know, and I am prepared to stand by my convictions," I replied. Soon after this interview, I returned to New York and I did not give the matter very much further thought, but my impression of the greatness of Mr. Cleveland and of his powerful personality has remained with me to this day. A vacancy occurred about this time in the Quartermaster's Department, and the appointment was eagerly sought for by many Lieutenants of the army. President Cleveland saw fit to give the appointment to Lieutenant Summerhayes, making him a Captain and Quartermaster, and then, another vacancy occurring shortly after, he appointed Lieutenant John McEwen Hyde to be also a Captain and Quartermaster. Lieutenant Hyde stood next in rank to my husband and had grown grey in the old Eighth Infantry. So the regiment came in for its honor at last, and General Kautz, when the news of the second appointment reached him, exclaimed, "Well! well! does the President think my regiment a nursery for the Staff?"