On my return journey from Washington City in 1863, when traveling in the
stage coach with driver and two other passengers, we halted for supper
and a change of animals at a village seventy miles north of Fort Craig,
where, falling in with some officers who had served with me during the
then recent campaign, I accompanied them to their tents and there became
so interested in telling and hearing stories that I forgot all about
time and the stage went forward without me. I was the more to blame for
this thoughtlessness because I was at the time bearing important
official dispatches.
With many regrets and self-reproaches and good resolutions for the
future, I procured a Government horse and started alone for Fort Craig,
riding all night. I arrived at Fort Craig in due time safe and well, but
learned that the stage coach had been attacked by Indians and that the
driver and two passengers had been killed. It is certainly right to
teach schoolboys (as I did forty years ago) that promptness,
perseverance, diligence and watchfulness will greatly increase their
chances for success, but is it right to teach them that by these means
or by any other means they can _command_ success? But I am not writing
moral philosophy or solving riddles.
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