But how vain these fancies! Railroad and automobile have annihilated distance, the army life of those years is past and gone, and Arizona, as we knew it, has vanished from the face of the earth. THE END. APPENDIX. NANTUCKET ISLAND, June 1910. When, a few years ago, I determined to write my recollections of life in the army, I was wholly unfamiliar with the methods of publishers, and the firm to whom I applied to bring out my book, did not urge upon me the advisability of having it electrotyped, firstly, because, as they said afterwards, I myself had such a very modest opinion of my book, and, secondly because they thought a book of so decidedly personal a character would not reach a sale of more than a few hundred copies at the farthest. The matter of electrotyping was not even discussed between us. The entire edition of one thousand copies was exhausted in about a year, without having been carried on the lists of any bookseller or advertised in any way except through some circulars sent by myself to personal friends, and through several excellent reviews in prominent newspapers. As the demand for the book continued, I have thought it advisable to re-issue it, adding a good deal that has come into my mind since its publication. ***** It was after the Colonel's retirement that we came to spend the summers at Nantucket, and I began to enjoy the leisure that never comes into the life of an army woman during the active service of her husband. We were no longer expecting sudden orders, and I was able to think quietly over the events of the past. My old letters which had been returned to me really gave me the inspiration to write the book and as I read them over, the people and the events therein described were recalled vividly to my mind--events which I had forgotten, people whom I had forgotten--events and people all crowded out of my memory for many years by the pressure of family cares, and the succession of changes in our stations, by anxiety during Indian campaigns, and the constant readjustment of my mind to new scenes and new friends. And so, in the delicious quiet of the Autumn days at Nantucket, when the summer winds had ceased to blow and the frogs had ceased their pipings in the salt meadows, and the sea was wondering whether it should keep its summer blue or change into its winter grey, I sat down at my desk and began to write my story. Looking out over the quiet ocean in those wonderful November days, when a peaceful calm brooded over all things, I gathered up all the threads of my various experiences and wove them together. But the people and the lands I wrote about did not really exist for me; they were dream people and dream lands. I wrote of them as they had appeared to me in those early years, and, strange as it may seem, I did not once stop to think if the people and the lands still existed. For a quarter of a century I had lived in the day that began with reveille and ended with "Taps."