Sixty or seventy years ago it was considered a great joke to chalk upon any man's house-door, or on his trunk at a coaching-station, theconspicuous letters "G. T. T." The laugh went round, and every one whosaw the inscription chuckled and said: "They've got it on you, oldhoss!" The three letters meant "gone to Texas"; and for any man to goto Texas in those days meant his moral, mental, and financialdilapidation. Either he had plunged into bankruptcy and wished to beginlife over again in a new world, or the sheriff had a warrant for hisarrest.
The very task of reaching Texas was a fearful one. Rivers that overrantheir banks, fever-stricken lowlands where gaunt faces peered out frommoldering cabins, bottomless swamps where the mud oozed greasily andwhere the alligator could be seen slowly moving his repulsive form—allthis stretched on for hundreds of miles to horrify and sicken theemigrants who came toiling on foot or struggling upon emaciated horses.Other daring pioneers came by boat, running all manner of risks uponthe swollen rivers. Still others descended from the mountains ofTennessee and passed through a more open country and with a greatercertainty of self-protection, because they were trained from childhoodto wield the rifle and the long sheath-knife.
It is odd enough to read, in the chronicles of those days, that amidall this suffering and squalor there was drawn a strict line between"the quality" and those who had no claim to be patricians. "Thequality" was made up of such emigrants as came from the more civilizedEast, or who had slaves, or who dragged with them some rickety vehiclewith carriage-horses—however gaunt the animals might be. Allothers—those who had no slaves or horses, and no traditions of theolder states—were classed as "poor whites"; and they accepted theirmediocrity without a murmur.
Because he was born in Lexington, Virginia, and moved thence with hisfamily to Tennessee, young Sam Houston—a truly eponymous Americanhero—was numbered with "the quality" when, after long wandering, hereached his boyhood home. His further claim to distinction as a boycame from the fact that he could read and write, and was even familiarwith some of the classics in translation.
When less than eighteen years of age he had reached a height of morethan six feet. He was skilful with the rifle, a remarkablerough-an