I remember one of them who appeared at Washington one
day just before lunch, a huge powerful man, who, when I knew him,
had been distinctly a fighting character. It happened that on that
day another old friend, the British Ambassador, Mr. Bryce, was
among those coming to lunch. Just before we went in I turned to my
cow-puncher friend and said to him with great solemnity,
'Remember, Jim, that if you shot at the feet of the British
Ambassador to make him dance, it would be likely to cause
international complications'; to which Jim responded with
unaffected horror, 'Why, Colonel, I shouldn't think of it! I
shouldn't think of it!'" [Footnote: "Autobiography," p. 132.]
And here is one about his children:
"The small boy was convalescing, and was engaged in playing on the
floor with some tin ships, together with two or three pasteboard
monitors and rams of my own manufacture. He was giving a vivid
rendering of Farragut at Mobile Bay, from memories of how I had
told the story. My pasteboard rams were fascinating--if a naval
architect may be allowed to praise his own work--and as property
they were equally divided between the little girl and the small
boy. The little girl looked on with alert suspicion from the bed,
for she was not yet convalescent enough to be allowed down on the
floor. The small boy was busily reciting the phases of the fight,
which now approached its climax, and the little girl evidently
suspected that her monitor was destined to play the part of
victim.
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