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Several ignorant editors were shocked last week by what they conceived as an anachronism--a cable despatch from Rome announcing that Mrs. Philip H. Sheridan, wife of the great cavalry leader, had had an audience with Pope Pius. But it was no anachronism.

In 1831 "Little Phil" Sheridan was born in Albany, N. Y. He had been graduated from West Point, had served in the Far West, had been a Quartermaster Captain in the Civil War, a Cavalry Colonel, had stormed Missionary Ridge, had fought with Jeb Stuart in the battle in which the latter was killed, had beaten General Early in the Shenandoah Valley, had had his famous 20 miles to Cedar Creek to turn defeat to victory, had been at Appomattox Court House, had commanded in the Southwest after the war, had fought the Indians, had gone to Germany and observed the war of 1870, before in 1874 he took to wife a charming little brunette, just out of school, the daughter, sister, wife (and now widow) of soldiers.

Then "Little Phil" was 43, and his five-foot-six-inch frame (shrunken at one time during his arduous campaigning to 130 lb.) "had now begun to fill and curve with adipose.*. . ." His face was florid. . . . Irene M. Rucker, his little bride, also a devout Catholic, was a score of years younger. For 14 years they lived together, and had four children, and then, deathly ill, Sheridan received from Congress the full rank of General, a rank which he held until his death two months later./-

It is now nearly 38 years later and Mrs. Philip Henry Sheridan, kneels and devoutly kisses the ringed finger of Pius XI.

*From The Life of General Philip H. Sheridan, by Frank A. Burr and Richard J. Hinton.

/-The full rank of General has been held by only five Americans : Washington, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Pershing.