stone, also a telegram, and intrusted them to an officer who was to take passage in the steamer Josephine, and leave about the time we did. It should have reached here several days before we arrived, but I took six troops of cavalry and the engineers, crossed the Yellowstone to this side, and reached Fort Lincoln in eight days.
We took everybody by surprise, and beat the steamer here, so that your letter and telegram are still on the boat somewhere between this point and the stockade. You may rely upon it that no grass grew under our feet on our return march. I knew that my family—consisting of one—was in advance somewhere, and, as the saying is, I just "lit out."[1] I am so comfortably fixed in my large, heavy canvas railroad tent that was given me on the expedition, I am sure that you and I could live comfortably in it all winter.
I am much pleased with the appearance of the citizens who have come across the river from Bismarck to pay their respects and offer congratulations on the summer's campaign. Some of the Yankton gentlemen are here attending court, and they also came over to see me.
I have just had a telegram from General Sheridan: "Welcome home."
Fort Lincoln, September 28, 1873.
. . . When you find that I have just sent the 7th Cavalry band to serenade ——— on his departure, you will say to yourself, "He has been too forgiving again." Well, perhaps I have. I often think of the beautiful expression uttered by President Lincoln at the consecration of the Gettysburg monument, and feel how nearly it expresses my belief, "With malice toward none, with charity for all!" and I hope this will ever be mine to say.[2]
- ↑ Here follows a description of Fort Lincoln. His sanguine temperament made it seem little short of an earthly paradise. He did not seem to realize that the prosaic and plain Government buildings were placed on a treeless and barren plain. In a carefully prepared plan of our house which he had drawn, he gave the dimensions and description of each room, and over the door of his library a triple underlining of his words, "MY ROOM," and the motto, "Who enters here leaves hope behind." He thus began, before we had even occupied the house, playfully to threaten any one who disturbed his writing or studies.
- ↑ The officer to whom reference is made had been a persistent and exasperating enemy of my husband during the summer, and I could not forget or forgive,
