A cooking-stove and various things were sent over from the Q. M. store-house, and Bowen (the wonder of it!) drove in nails, and hung up my Fort Russell tin-ware, and put up shelves and stood my pans in rows, and polished the stove, and went out and stole a table somewhere (Bowen was invaluable in that way), polished the zinc under the stove, and lo! and behold, my army kitchen! Bowen was indeed a treasure; he said he would like to cook for us, for ten dollars a month. We readily accepted this offer. There were no persons to be obtained, in these distant places, who could do the cooking in the families of officers, so it was customary to employ a soldier; and the soldier often displayed remarkable ability in the way of cooking, in some cases, in fact, more than in the way of soldiering. They liked the little addition to their pay, if they were of frugal mind; they had also their own quiet room to sleep in, and I often thought the family life, offering as it did a contrast to the bareness and desolation of the noisy barracks, appealed to the domestic instinct, so strong in some men's natures. At all events, it was always easy in those days to get a man from the company, and they sometimes remained for years with an officer's family; in some cases attending drills and roll-calls besides. Now came the unpacking of the chests and trunks. In our one diminutive room, and small hall, was no closet, there were no hooks on the bare walls, no place to hang things or lay things, and what to do I did not know. I was in despair; Jack came in, to find me sitting on the edge of a chest, which was half unpacked, the contents on the floor. I was very mournful, and he did not see why. "Oh! Jack! I've nowhere to put things!" "What things?" said this impossible man. "Why, all our things," said I, losing my temper; "can't you see them?'' "Put them back in the chests,--and get them out as you need them," said this son of Mars, and buckled on his sword. "Do the best you can, Martha, I have to go to the barracks; be back again soon." I looked around me, and tried to solve the problem. There was no bureau, nothing; not a nook or corner where a thing might be stowed. I gazed at the motley collection of bed-linen, dust-pans, silver bottles, boot jacks, saddles, old uniforms, full dress military hats, sword-belts, riding-boots, cut glass, window-shades, lamps, work-baskets, and books, and I gave it up in despair. You see, I was not an army girl, and I did not know how to manage.