I was still corresponding with Miss Frederici, the girl I had left behind me in St. Louis.  My future seemed now secure, so I decided that it was high time I married and settled down, if a scout can ever settle down.  So, surrendering my stage job, I returned to Leavenworth and embarked for St. Louis by boat.  After a week’s visit at the home of my fiancee we were quietly married at her home.  I made, I suppose, rather a wild-looking groom.  My brown hair hung down over my shoulders, and I had just started a little mustache and goatee.  I was dressed in the Western fashion, and my appearance was, to say the least, unusual.  We were married at eleven o’clock in the morning, and took the steamer Morning Star at two in the afternoon for our honeymoon journey home.

As we left our carriages and entered the steamer, my wife’s father and mother and a number of friends accompanying us, I noticed that I was attracting considerable excited attention.  A number of people, men and women, were on the deck.  As we passed I heard them whispering: 

“There he is!  That’s him!  I’d know him in the dark!”

It was very plain to me that these observations were not particularly friendly.  The glares cast at me were openly hostile.  While we were disposing our baggage in our stateroom—­I had hired the bridal chamber—­I heard some of my wife’s friends asking her father if he knew who I was, and whether I had any credentials.  He replied that he had left the matter of credentials to his daughter.

“Well,” said one of the party, “these people on board are excursionists from Independence, and they say this son-in-law of yours is the most desperate outlaw, bandit, and house-burner on the frontier!”

The old gentleman was considerably disturbed at this report.  He made up his mind to get a little first-hand information, and he took the most direct means of getting it.

“Who are you?” he asked, walking over to me.  “The people on board don’t give you a very good recommendation.”

“Kindly remember,” I replied, “that we have had a little war for the past five years on the border.  These people were on one side and I on the other, and it is natural that they shouldn’t think very highly of me.”

My argument was not convincing.  “I am going to take my daughter home again,” said my father-in-law, and started toward the stateroom.

I besought him to leave the decision to her, and for the next ten minutes I pleaded my case with all the eloquence I could command.  I was talking against odds, for my wife, as well as her parents’ friends, were all ardent Southerners, and I am proud to say that after fifty years of married life, she is still as strongly “Secesh” as ever.  But when I put the case to her she said gamely that she had taken me for better or for worse and intended to stick to me.