tion, she replied: "Why! dead, of course." A shout of laughter all 

 around the table, in which she couldn't help joining, let her know 

 how irretrievably she had wrecked her philosophy of courage. 



To return to Fort Robinson, Colonel Sumner was very urgent to have 

 me give a lecture to the garrison on the work of the expedition and 

 what it was all about. I was most reluctant to attempt this, having never 

 given a public lecture before, but the Colonel had been so exceedingly 

 kind and helpful to us, that I felt obliged to meet his wishes to the best 

 of my ability. Even had I been an experienced public speaker, I should 

 have hesitated long before undertaking to talk popular science before 

 so heterogeneous an audience of such different grades of education; of- 

 ficers and their families, several hundred enlisted men, civiUan em- 

 ployees, domestic servants, etc. I could not appear on the platform in 

 the shabby and worn garments that I had been wearing all summer and 

 so borrowed from friends among the officers enough civilian garments 

 to make a respectable ensemble and this, with a shave and haircut trans- 

 formed me beyond recognition, though a pair of Quartermaster's 

 brogues struck a very discordant note. 



The lecture was given in the chapel schoolhouse, which was crammed 

 to capacity. Life in those small Western garrisons was very monotonous 

 and, when any sort of change or distraction offered itself, it was eagerly 

 taken advantage of. A speaker, if he has had any experience at all, can 

 always know whether he is holding the interest and attention of his 

 audience and, that evening, though I began in great trepidation, I was 

 soon put at my ease by that unmistakable feeling of rapport with the 

 listeners. That feeling, much more than the complimentary things that 

 were said to me after the lecture, gave me the assurance that I had 

 succeeded in interesting the very heterogeneous crowd. Thereafter I 

 could undertake public lecturing with confidence. 



In the following Christmas vacation I visited, at South Orange, the 

 family of Frank Speir, whose younger brother, Bob, had been a mem- 

 ber of the expedition. Mrs. Speir, who was a great tease, was asking 

 me about that lecture at Fort Robinson, of which her son, Robert, had 

 written her. I was incautious enough to repeat some laudatory remark 

 which an officer had made to me, whereupon she replied: "What a very 

 tactful person he must have been!" which served me right for swag- 

 gering. 



Now, that we were fairly started homeward, we all grew terribly 

 impatient to be gone and have done with the tedious journey. With a 

 brief stop at Fort Laramie, where we enjoyed the renewed hospitality 



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