Part 9 (1/2)

A few years later Mrs Houston applied for a divorce, which in those days had to be granted by the state legislature Inevitably reports derogatory to her had got abroad Als of Governor Houston's whereabouts were contained in a letter he wrote from somewhere in the Indian country to islature to whom Mrs Houston had applied, in which he said that these reports had come to his ears ”They are,” he wrote, ”as false as hell If they be not stopped I will return to Tennessee and have the heart's blood of him who repeats them A nobler, purer woiven the divorce she asks I alone ah not the lover she had discarded I knew her in her old age--a gentle, placid lady, in whose face I used to fancy I could read lines of sorrow and regret He, to close this chapter, likewise ain a wise and womanly woman who bore him many children and hom he lived happy ever after Meanwhile, however, he had dith the Indians and had beco Drunk, they called me,” he said to his faht into the world a whole tribe of half-breeds

II

Houston was a rare perforumentative appeal and bristled with illustrative anecdote, and, when occasion required, with apt repartee

Once an Irishoin' to sell Texas to England”

Houston paused long enough to center attention upon the quibble and then said: ”My friend, I first tried, unsuccessfully, to have the United States take Texas as a gift Not until I threatened to turn Texas over to England did I finally succeed There e of sheep culture They have doubtless seen a motherless lamb put to the breast of a cross old eho refused it suck Then the wise shepherd calls his dog and there is no further trouble My friend, England was ainst the New York Tribune Having described Horace Greeley as the sum of all villainy--”whose hair is white, whose skin is white, whose eyes are white, whose clothes are white, and whose liver is in my opinion of the same color”--he continued: ”The assistant editor of the Try-bune is Robinson--Solon Robinson He is an Irish his eye over the audience and seeing quite a sprinkling of redheads, and realizing that he had perpetrated a slip of tongue, he added: ”Fellow citizens, when I say that Robinson is a red-haired Irishman I mean no disrespect to persons whose hair is of that color I have been a close observer of men and women for thirty years, and I never knew a red-haired man as not an honest man, nor a red-headed woive it you as my candid opinion that had it not been for Robinson's red hair he would have been hanged long ago”

His pathos was not far behind his huly

At a certain town in Texas there lived a desperado who had threatened to kill hi dates but he went out of his way to include it A great concourse assean, observed hisfor hi remarks, he dropped into the reminiscential He talked of the old ti terms of the Alamo and of Goliad There was not a dry eye in earshot Then he grew personal

”I see Toan over yonder A braver ht by ether we buried poor Bill Hole I should not be here to-day

He--”

There was a stir in front Gilligan had throay his knife and gun and was rushi+ng unar down his face

”For God's sake, Houston,” he cried, ”don't say another word and forgive me my cowardly intention”

Froan was Houston's devoted friend

General Houston voted against the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and as a consequence lost his seat in the Senate It was thought, and freely said, that for good and all he was down and out He went hoovernor of Texas

The can that folloas of unexah Houston was an uncoenerally expected But there was no beating such a man in a fair and square contest before the people When the votes were counted he led his coovernor he refused two years later to sign the ordinance of secession and was deposed from office by force He died before the end of the hich so signally vindicated his wisdom and verified his forecast

III

Stephen Arnold Douglas was the Charles Jaaaits and was possessed of a sweetness of disposition which made him, like Fox, loved where he was personally known No one could resist the _bonholand Catch a Yankee off his base, quite away froay as anybody Boston and Charleston were in high party tilas was a Green Mountain boy He was born in Verrated beyond the Alleghanies before he ca in Illinois as Prentiss had settled in Mississippi, to grow into a typical Westerner as Prentiss into a typical Southerner

There was never a ot of sectional ainht a kindred people to blows over the institution of African slavery there were Puritans who fought on the Southern side and Cavaliers who fought on the Northern side What was Stonewall Jackson but a Puritan? What were Custer, Stoneman and Kearny but Cavaliers? Wadsworth was as absolute an aristocrat as Hampton

In the old days before the war of sections the South was full of typical Southerners of Northern birth John A Quitman, ent from New York, and Robert J Walker, ent from Pennsylvania to Mississippi; James H Hammond, whose father, a teacher, went from Massachusetts to South Carolina John Slidell, born and bred in New York, was thirty years old when he went to Louisiana Albert Sidney Johnston, the rose and expectancy of the young Confederacy--the most typical of rebel soldiers--had not a drop of Southern blood in his veins, born in Kentucky a few months after his father and ht be extended indefinitely

Cli to do with temperained All of us are more or less the creatures of environment In the South after a fashi+on the duello flourished Because it had not flourished in the North there rose a notion that the Northerners would not fight It proved to those who thought it a costly mistake