pany, whose wife held the appointment of laundress. These women were at the ball in full force, and each one brought her baby. When we removed our wraps in the room of the first-sergeant we usually found his bed quite full of curly-headed infants sleeping, while the laundress mothers danced. The toilets of these women were something marvellous in construction. In low neck and short sleeves, their round, red arms and well-developed figures wheeled around the barracks all night long. Even the tall Mexican laundress, hereafter specially mentioned, would deck herself in pink tarletan and false curls, and notwithstanding her height and colossal anatomy, she had constant partners.
The little Dutch woman, who loved her husband more devotedly after each beating, and did not dance with any one else, was never absent from the balls. Her tiny little figure was suspended between heaven and earth while her tall soldier whirled her around the long hall in the endless German waltz. Some officer would whisper slyly in my ear, as she bowed and smiled in passing, "Do you see the get-up of 'Old Trooble Agin?'" She had long before earned this sobriquet, when coming to me for help out of her misfortunes, beginning each story of woe with "Trooble agin." Wherever we were, when the orders were issued for a campaign, she soon appeared claiming sympathy. No one could feel at such a time more than I the truth of her preface, for if we were to be left behind, it was, indeed, "Trouble again."
The pack of hounds were an endless source of delight to the general. We had about forty: the stag-hounds
