relations were of the friendliest, and, as they explained, they felt
"as if I was a father" to them. The manifestations of this feeling were
sometimes less attractive than the phrase sounded, as it was chiefly
used by the few who were behaving like very bad children indeed. The
great majority of the men when the regiment disbanded took up the
business of their lives where they had dropped it a few months
previously, and these men merely tried to help me or help one another
as the occasion arose; no man ever had more cause to be proud of his
regiment than I had of mine, both in war and in peace. But there was
a minority among them who in certain ways were unsuited for a life of
peaceful regularity, although often enough they had been first-class
soldiers.

It was from these men that letters came with a stereotyped opening which
always caused my heart to sink--"Dear Colonel: I write you because I am
in trouble." The trouble might take almost any form. One correspondent
continued: "I did not take the horse, but they say I did." Another
complained that his mother-in-law had put him in jail for bigamy. In
the case of another the incident was more markworthy. I will call him
Gritto. He wrote me a letter beginning: "Dear Colonel: I write you
because I am in trouble. I have shot a lady in the eye. But, Colonel,
I was not shooting at the lady. I was shooting at my wife," which he
apparently regarded as a sufficient excuse as between men of the world.
I answered that I drew the line at shooting at ladies, and did not hear
any more of the incident for several years.

Then, while I was President, a member of the regiment, Major Llewellyn,
who was Federal District Attorney under me in New Mexico, wrote me a
letter filled, as his letters usually were, with bits of interesting
gossip about the comrades. It ran in part as follows: "Since I last