There were several bathing enthusiasts amongst us; we had a pretty fair little stretch of beach which was set apart for the officers' families, and now what bathing parties we had! Kemble, the illustrator, joined our ranks--and on a warm summer morning the little old Tug Hamilton was gay with the artists and their families, the players and writers of plays, and soon you could see the little garrison hastening to the beach and the swimmers running down the long pier, down the run-way and off head first into the clear waters of the Sound.

What a company was that! The younger and the older ones all together, children and their fathers and mothers, all happy, all well, all so gay, and we of the frontier so enamored of civilization and what it brought us! There were no intruders and ah! those were happy days.

Uncle Sam seemed to be making up to us for what we had lost during all those long years in the wild places.
Then Augustus Thomas wrote the play of "Arizona" and we went to New York to see it put on, and we sat in Mr.Thomas' box and saw our frontier life brought before us with startling reality.
And so one season followed another.

Each bringing its pleasures, and then came another lovely wedding, for my brother Harry gave up his bachelor estate and married one of the nicest and handsomest girls in Westchester County, and their home in New Rochelle was most attractive.
My son was at the Stevens Institute and both he and Katharine were able to spend their vacations at David's Island, and altogether, our life there was near to perfection.
We were doomed to have one more tour in the West, however, and this time it was the Middle West.
For in the autumn of '96, Jack was ordered to Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, on construction work.
Jefferson Barracks is an old and historic post on the Mississippi River, some ten miles south of St.Louis.I could not seem to take any interest in the post or in the life there.

I could not form new ties so quickly, after our life on the coast, and I did not like the Mississippi Valley, and St.Louis was too far from the post, and the trolley ride over there too disagreeable for words.