previous next

[65] Frenchman, Eugene de Courcillon, who had met with some singular misfortune and was seeking employment. I was somewhat fascinated by him and hoped that my intercourse with him would improve my French, but he soon proposed to write a book revealing some of the customs of the part of France from which he came, interesting especially to Protestant minds. As he knew very little English I aided him in the translation of his book. This took all my leisure time for months. The book was published in New York. I aided him in its publication and was to receive a return for my advances whenever he disposed of his manuscript. Without my knowledge he managed to sell his work out and out and then disappeared without communicating with me, rewarding me only with this singular dedication:

To Lieutenant Oliver O. Howard, my friend in adversity.

My comrades laughed and wondered at the double meaning of the dedication, that is, as to which was really in adversity, de Courcillon or myself.

In those days, in addition to the commissioned officers, we had an official called the military storekeeper. Accounts of the material in this arsenal of construction were carefully kept upon his books. He took care to receive everything coming in and to issue everything going out from the arsenal, making careful storage and record. An elderly man, Mr. Lansing, occupied that place. He and his wife, not much younger than himself, lived nearer to the arsenal entrance than any of us. For really charming hospitality Mr. and Mrs. Lansing excelled and very often entertained the young officers, among whom I was a welcome guest. Frequently Mr. Lansing, who was fond of fishing,

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
France (France) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Lansing (3)
Eugene Courcillon (2)
Oliver Otis Howard (1)
W. H. French (1)
English (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: