IN my wandering life of deepest shadow and occasional sunshine, there is but one thing for which I am altogether devoutly thankful,—I was born and bred in the South, and for generations on both sides of my family my ancestors were Southern people; consequently, without conflict, my qualities and defects are those of my race. For my own personal defects, given me at birth with a free hand by my whimsical fairy godmother, neither my family nor my beloved land is responsible.

My great-grandfather, Major Duval, fought in the War of the Revolution, and gave goodly sums towards the cause. He married at twenty-three a Miss Pope of Virginia, an heiress of whom he made rather a sudden and theatrical conquest, not later than five minutes after he discovered her. She, a fair-haired, dimpled beauty, wearing a silken hood, a green merino gown, little calfskin shoes with silver buckles, a black silk apron, and open-work mittens, was walking one golden October afternoon in a primeval forest near the banks of the Shenandoah. In the angle of her round arm lay a big ball of worsted, and the sun slanting down on her glancing needles struck diamond brilliance from their quick activity.

My great-grandfather, returning from the chase, young, dashing, good-looking, suddenly beheld this vision. He wore the buckskin clothes of the Virginian hunter, and carried his day's trophy of wild turkey, ducks, and rabbits slung across his shoulder. His rifle held one last bullet.

Quickly advancing to the astonished young lady, he took off his bearskin cap, and making a bow so low that the turkeys touched the ground, he said, “Madame, permit me.” Then lifting the ball of worsted from its envied resting-place, he lightly tossed it high into the air, shot the bullet straight through its heart, and as it came down caught it and placed it, smoking with powder and with love, in her apron pocket.

The dimples all appeared as she said, “Sir, you can shoot and hit the mark.”

He bowed again and answered, “So can Cupid, and I hope,”—pointing to her fluttering heart—“in the right direction.”

The young lady, a very distant cousin whom he had never met, was from Richmond, visiting an aunt on an adjoining plantation. He walked home with her, in the mellow sunshine of an Indian summer afternoon, through the wonderful scarlet and gold forests of the early Virginia autumn, leaving on the doorstep of the wide plantation house his day's hunt as his first love offering.

THEY had only been married a week when court was held at a country town twenty-five miles away. It was hard for William Duval to leave his pretty bride, and he had no money, but he borrowed a little, and a horse from a neighbour and, like young Lochinvar, rode gaily away. Fate loves reckless courage and protects its possessors. The young lawyer had no case to plead before the court and no influence to get him one, but just as he entered the inn an old man in the barroom was struck by a bully. The young man promptly knocked the bully down. This secured his popularity. The crowd shook hands with the plucky stranger and plied him with drinks, which he had the judgment to refuse, for he felt the morrow would be a momentous day for him.

The next morning when the court opened, he boldly seated himself among the advocates. A man was charged with passing counterfeit money. He had been out of the range of lawyers and was asked to choose one for his defence. Looking around, he selected the eager faced lad, who was given until next day to prepare his case. As they left the court the accused man gave his counsel one hundred dollars as a retaining fee.

Young Duval spent many hours in anxious preparation of his defence and argument. When night came he was too excited to speak; in the morning he could not eat. He reached the court agitated and unnerved, and when he began to speak it was only to flounder and stammer. Presently the public prosecutor made a cruelly sarcastic remark. There was a laugh in court. At that his nerves became taut and steady. His voice rang out with a brave challenge. He marshalled his facts with telling effect and proved his client's innocence conclusively. The case ended triumphantly in the man's acquittal, and young Duval was made. His earnestness and eloquence had stirred even the lawyers. His youth, his courage, his knowledge of law were discussed. Other cases were given him, and when the week ended he had made seven hundred dollars. The night the fees were paid him he was like a miser. He locked his bedroom door and let the gold trickle through his fingers; he piled it up and saw in its glitter a rosy future of comfort for his wife and of gratified ambition for himself.

The next morning before dawn, he mounted the borrowed horse and started for Bardstown. His wife had prepared a delicious breakfast for him, but he was too excited to eat. Like the boy that he was, he wanted to surprise her, and he sat down at the table and began slowly counting out the money in ten-dollar gold pieces. His wife looked on and said, “Whose money is it? Have you got to take it to the bank?”

“It is my money!” said my grandfather, “mine and yours! Oh Nancy, come and dance and sing and cry.” And together they laughed and waltzed round the room, like the children they were, for poverty had gone out of the window, and success had come in at the door.

Later, my grandfather was elected to Congress from Kentucky, as he said he would be, and on his return to the States was appointed Judge of the Federal Court, which office he retained for some years. By this time three of his eight children had been added to the family. In those days the Floridas were a territory, and the Indians being somewhat troublesome a man of courage, decision, and heart was wanted for governor. The appointment was offered to my grandfather, who retained the office for twenty-four years. The youngest five children were born in Florida and the last pretty little girl was named after that land of flowers.

The new governor kept open house. All the year carriages drove back and forth, and people came and went as if it had been a hotel. Christmas and Easter were different from other seasons only in more turkeys and game, larger cakes, more egg-nog, and greater quantities of punch.

Three of my aunts and my mother were all celebrated beauties, my mother inheriting the Scotch hair, a dark auburn, and the deep blue eyes of her mother. My grandfather was always hospitable to the admirers of his daughters. They could spend the day, or even, if they felt inclined, several days, but at ten o'clock each night old Scipio, the negro butler, was required to see that the drawing-room was closed and the piazzas cleared.

Scipio made his appearance dressed in a swallow-tailed coat, his hair tied like my grandfather's in a queue (a strain of Indian blood had given him straight hair), and bearing an enormous waiter, with a large, noisily ticking silver watch lying upon it and numerous mint juleps. The suitors were supposed to observe the time, drink the juleps, say good-night and go home.

Life in Florida in those days must have been enchanting. There were fruit and vegetables all the year round, oranges for the picking, peaches and melons in great abundance. The Indians constantly brought in all kinds of game; the woods were full of wild orchids and myriads of wild flowers, and the pink cranes and scarlet flamingoes were quite tame on the banks of the little river that flowed at the bottom of the grounds.

In 1823, Governor Duval rendered signal service to the territory of Florida and to the United States Government by putting down the conspiracy of Neamathla, one of the most noted Indians in American history. He was the chief of the Mickasookies, a fighting tribe of warriors, who had their hands not only against the white man, but against the weaker Indian as well. They had committed many depredations on the frontiers of Georgia and were constantly attacking the Seminoles, a peaceful and picturesque tribe, who gave the Government no trouble, but sought (unless influenced by the Mickasookies) its protection.

Neamathla was a splendid figure, more than six feet in height, with fierce fiery eyes and a face like a hawk. He hated white men and proudly called Governor Duval “brother,” never acknowledging his superiority.

The Indians at this time, chiefly through the governor's influence, had signed a treaty to remove to a small section of land in the eastern part of Florida and to remain there for twenty years, thus leaving the remainder of the State free to the white man. Neamathla fought bitterly against the treaty, but finally signed it, saying quite frankly: “If I had enough warriors, brother, instead of signing the treaty, I would wipe every white man from the face of Florida. I say this to you, for though you are white, you are a Man. Your pale-faced people wouldn't understand me.”

Thinking it wise to be near the Indians, Governor Duval had settled at Tallahassee. The village of Neamathla being only three miles away, he often rode out to have a pow-wow with him. One day he found him surrounded by all his warriors, drinking brandy freely. Neamathla began to boast that although the red man had made a treaty, the treaty was at an end, “broken by the white man, who had not delivered the cattle and money promised.”

The Governor replied, “The time for the money and cattle has not yet arrived.” But the old chief only looked sly and continued to drink and threaten. He had been cutting tobacco with a long knife, and while he was talking he flourished his keen blade not an inch away from the Governor's throat, saying the country was the red man's, that it should belong to him, and he would fight for it until his bones, and the bones of his warriors bleached upon its soil.

Suddenly and unexpectedly the Governor seized him by the bosom of his shirt, clenched his fist in his face, and said: “You have made your treaty. You shall keep it. I am your White Chief sent by your father in Washington to see that you do it. If you do not, the blood of every Indian in the country will dye the land, and his bones will bleach upon its soil.”

The old chief threw himself back with a bitter laugh. “Ho, ho, little white brother!” he said, “can't you see my joke?”

My grandfather returned to Tallahassee, and things went smoothly for several months. Every day some of the Indians reported themselves at the Governor's house, but suddenly their visits ceased, and at midnight of the fourth day after this, Yellow Hair, a young brave who loved the White Chief, stole into the house. “Governor,” he said, “at the risk of my life I've come to tell you that five hundred warriors are holding a secret war talk with Neamathla.”

There was no more sleep that night for Governor Duval; he saw that he must take a desperate chance. There were one hundred white families near, and he had no soldiers. Everything depended on himself. At dawn he was up, and, mounting a fleet horse, called upon the interpreter, De Witt, to follow.

The man demurred. “Wait, Governor,” he said, “until we can get the militia.”

“No,” said my grandfather, “there is not a moment to lose, we must ride fast.” And they struck for the Indian village to what De Witt thought was certain death.

“The chiefs,” he said, “are old, discontented, suspicious and exasperated. They intend serious mischief.”

Finally my grandfather said, “Go back, man, and leave me to go on alone.”

“No,” said De Witt, “I won't leave you to die alone, but God! what a foolhardy expedition.”

They rode on in silence, and when they neared the village my grandfather said sternly, “Translate word for word what I say to you. Only courage can save us now.”

There was a great council fire, and Neamathla was sitting on a rude throne surrounded by his warriors. The Governor rode straight into the circle, while forty rifles were cocked and levelled at him. He slowly dismounted, looked Neamathla fearlessly in the eyes, and, with a gesture of contempt, stood waiting. The old chief threw up his arm; the guns were lowered. The Governor then walked up to Neamathla and asked why he was holding a council of war. The old chief was silent.

The White Chief said, “You need not answer. I know; but if a single hair of the head of a white man in this country is harmed”—he made a mighty sweeping gesture with his arm—“I will hang every chief to the trees that surround you. The Great Father in Washington holds you in the hollow of his hand. He has only to close it and you are dead. I am but one man. You may kill me, but the white man is as many as the leaves on this oak. Remember your warriors, whose bones have made the battlefields white. Remember your wives and your children dead in the swamps. Another war with the white man, and there will not be one Indian left to tell the story to his children.”

His words had effect. They sat still and silent. Then he appointed a day for them to meet him in St. Mark's and rode forty miles straight ahead to the Apalachicolas, a friendly tribe who were at feud with the Mickasookies. They immediately sent three hundred warriors to St. Mark's. He summoned also the regular army and the militia, and was then ready for Neamathla. Yellow Hair came again in the dead of night to tell the Governor that nine towns concerned in the conspiracy were disaffected, and from him he found out the names of the chiefs in these towns who were popular, but without power.

On the day of the conference he rode out to meet Neamathla, who, although at the head of eight hundred Indians, was afraid to venture into the court of St. Mark's alone. He thought when he saw the troops and the preparations that he had been betrayed, but was reassured when the Governor rode by his side and told him when the talk was ended that he could go home free.

Neamathla and the older chiefs blamed the younger ones who had led them into conspiracy. “Then,” said my grandfather, “if you cannot govern your braves you must, like the white man, find men who can. I depose you, Neamathla, and appoint Little Bear in your place.” And with great ceremony a broad ribbon sewn with beads, from which a large medal of the Capitol depended, was hung around the neck of a younger chief.

In this way nine chiefs were deposed and popular braves appointed in their place. The Indians were delighted; they thought my grandfather a prophet to have divined their choice. The new warriors, he was confident, would keep an eye on the disaffected, and would remain loyal to the Government and to him.

Neamathla left the country and returned to the Creek nation, who made him a chief, but, shorn of his great power, he soon died of disappointment. The Governor's achievement of defeating alone and unaided a conspiracy which would have brought about a terrible massacre, was a valiant and heroic act. In later years with no military escort, he was able to remove, through their confidence in him, all the Indians from Florida to the Indian Territory—thus saving the Government at Washington great trouble and expense.

When the question of the Indians was settled, he devoted himself to the development of the State. His children were being educated in Kentucky. The girls went to the Convent of Nazareth in Bardstown, and the boys to St. Joseph's, the college of the Jesuits which gave shelter to Louis Philippe when he was a refugee in America, and where later Jefferson Davis was a hard-working student.

My uncle Burr, the eldest son, was the flower of my grandfather's flock, tall, with a splendid figure, bright blue eyes, light waving hair, a dazzling smile, a speaking voice of golden sweetness, a dashing rider, and like his father a man of extraordinary courage, he sounds a perfect hero of romance. As a child I was ever eager for stories about him. When he graduated from college, young, gallant, intrepid, inheriting from his father the pioneer spirit, Texas, with a handful of brave men, was fighting for her liberty against the Mexicans, and Burr Duval raised in Kentucky a company of young men like himself, college bred and the sons of gentlemen. Among them was the lover of my great aunt Polly Hynes,—then a young lady who made her home with my grandfather—and my uncle John Duval, a boy of eighteen. This gallant company was called the “Kentucky Mustangs,” and Burr Duval was their captain. They offered themselves for service to Texas, and Colonel Fannin asked them to join his army.

They had not been long in the State when in a battle between Fannin's army and the Mexicans they surrendered to General Urrea, who agreed to treat them as prisoners of war, but at Goliad, on Palm Sunday, 1836, they with other companies, about four hundred and forty-three men in the very flower of their youth, were marched out and traitorously drawn up in line and shot. A few escaped, my uncle John, being at the end of the line and fleet of foot, among them.

When the scourge of yellow fever fifteen years later visited Florida, John had returned from Texas, brown, thin, and still saddened from the loss of his gallant young soldier brother, and another and slighter grief which ever pursued him, the necessity of choking to death a little dog that he had taken to Texas from Kentucky. With Mexicans in full pursuit, the dog was about to bark, and the only way to save his own life was to strangle his one faithful friend. It was a miserable little tragedy, and when quite an old man his face would still grow melancholy when he spoke of it.

After the death of her first-born beautiful son even my grandfather, they said, could rarely make my grandmother smile, and she was one of the first to die of yellow fever, for she made no effort to live. Aunt Polly, who was a woman of strong character and affections, had closed the room where she bade her lover good-bye forever, and she allowed no one to enter it but herself. The silver candlesticks had grown tarnished, the orange blossoms were brittle in the vase, the dust, like a grey pall, covered every object. But she spent hours alone there every day.

The loss of my grandmother was a terrible blow to my grandfather, and to the end of his life he remained inconsolable. They had been like two happy birds in the springtime. He teased her, and she would laugh and pull his ears and play with him as if they were still boy and girl. After her death he was restless and miserable, having lost interest in all things. With aunt Polly and her grief, it was a depressed and changed household. My uncle John, in spite of the terrible tragedy he had lived through, wanted to go back again to Texas. He had lost his heart to that vast country, so full of excitement and of seething vivid life, and my grandfather, to seek change from his poignant grief, consented to take his remaining family and go with him. They settled first in Galveston where my aunt, Elizabeth Beall, who was a very beautiful young widow, was at the head of the house. His children gathered around him, he began to get back his cheerfulness again, to take an interest in politics and the rapid development of the great “Lone Star State.” My father, who had held the office of Supreme Judge of the State of Arkansas, resigned and came to Texas, where he married my mother and went with her to live at Austin.

Fate surely cheated me out of a joy in not knowing my grandfather. I have always felt that we were congenial spirits. He was the soul of hospitality, affectionate, generous, brave, witty, and light-hearted, even in the face of death. His love of tradition led him to wear a queue. In his youth it was tied with a black ribbon, but later in life, when considered too aristocratic and dandified, it was plaited and tucked up out of sight among his curls with a hair-pin. Doctor Blake after his death cut off the queue and sent it to my aunt, his eldest daughter, Mrs. Elizabeth Beall. He was not an old man when he died in Washington from an attack of gout and pneumonia. He loved life, and he had not an enemy in the world. He was vitally interested in Texas, that splendid new country of his later years. He had many friends, and his children adored him, not with the theoretical love of children for their parents, which can brook absence, but with the real companionable love, desiring nothing so much as constant, affectionate intercourse and intimate interchange of thought. Aunt Lizzie told me that his daughters, my mother, my aunt Mary, my aunt Florida and herself were counting the days of his return from Washington, when they received a letter from old Doctor Blake announcing his death.

THE best blood of America is in Texas, the hardy blood of the conquering pioneer. Even to-day, by instinct, inheritance, and tradition, the men of Texas are still pioneers, for they must be ever on the alert to fight nature as she tries their prowess in droughts, floods, hurricanes and tornadoes, but the golden possibilities in that vast land— oil and coal to-day, topaz and turquoise to-morrow, gold and silver in the future—urge them on to hope and fresh endeavour.

The men who first established the Republic had force enough to wrest the land from the Indian, and afterwards from the Mexican. They were strong, they fought to conquer or to die. And not only were there pioneer men, but splendid pioneer women as well. How wise is Nature in aptly supplying her needs! After the Civil War all the babies born in the South were boys. It was impossible for mothers who longed for them, to produce girls, and when women were needed with intrepid souls, great powers of endurance, and vigorous health to share a life of difficulty and danger with daring men, Nature produced them. Medea, when asked, “Country, husband, children are all gone, what remains?” answered, “Medea remains.” There were many Medeas in Texas. When husband and children were killed by the Indians, and later by the Mexicans, houses destroyed by fire, cattle and horses confiscated, still these hardy women lived on to a brave old age.

Mrs. Long, whose husband of her youth was assassinated by the Mexicans, spent a long life in trying to avenge his death. It needs an iron constitution and rugged health, to survive the memory of bloody tragedies, and life in those days was melodramatic in its intensity. If the occurrences of a day or a week of that time were now put on the stage, it would give us, sitting in our seats in a theatre, fierce and bloodcurdling thrills.

The crest of that wave of supreme daring—and history, ancient or modern, contains no more sublime display of courage—was the defence of the Alamo. Not one man survived. They died like their leaders, Travis, Crockett, Bowie and Bonham, fighting until death loosened the grip of the smoking weapons from their brave hands. There is something glorious and complete in a bloody struggle where every man dies. On the old monument of the Alamo was the inscription: “Thermopylæ had her messenger of defeat, but the Alamo had none.” None was needed. It was better for that superhumanly gallant band to die together. They have made an imperishable page of glory in history, and left a proud heritage of unconquerable courage for the state to hand down to her sons.

But the battle of San Jacinto, when the Texans, concealed behind a gradually sloping hill, descended unawares upon the Mexicans with the terrible cry from every man: “Remember Goliad! Remember the Alamo! Goliad! The Alamo!” avenged many deaths. And in such furious, revengeful haste were the soldiers that, coming to close quarters with the Mexicans they clubbed their muskets, and fought hand to hand with bayonets and knife. “Goliad! Goliad!” which in hoarse, fierce cries echoed over the battlefield, meant death to the Mexican army, for, cruel memories crowding upon them, the men fought like savages. The artillerymen ordered: “Guns to the front! Guns to the front! God! This for the Alamo!” and a steady stream of fire poured forth on the Mexicans. The men at the guns were blackened with powder; the cannon smoked and sent out long tongues of flame.

“Fire, fire,” cried one, “in God's name, fire!”

“In the name of Travis, Bowie, and Crockett, fire, men, fire!”

The guns roared like wakeful hyenas, the band of drum and fife stridently played, “Will you come to the bower?” The Mexicans were running, rushing, fleeing, agonised and appalled from “The Bower.”

The battle lasted only half an hour, but six hundred and thirty Mexicans were dead on the fertile plain, more than two hundred were wounded, and more than seven hundred were prisoners. Arms, munition, mules, horses, money in gold and silver, were taken as loot from the Mexicans, and of the brave little army of seven hundred and forty-three Texans there were only six killed and twenty-five wounded. Goliad and the Alamo were avenged.

Santa Anna when captured was generously treated as a prisoner of war. If women, the mothers and wives of the men slain at the massacre of Goliad and shot at the Alamo, had taken him prisoner he would have met instant death, which he deserved, but he lived to again betray in 1843 the Texan troops at Nier, when Fisher's men, surrendering under a written promise to be accorded treatment as prisoners of war, were instantly tied together in pairs, and driven like cattle towards the city of Mexico.

In the early dawn of the following day, led by a brave Scotchman, Captain Ewan Cameron, many of them escaped. The remaining number who could not get away were commanded by Santa Anna to be drawn up in a line and shot, but the order was modified to the drawing of black beans. The man, who, blindfolded, drew the fatal colour was shot. Seventeen men in this way were executed, and those who drew white beans had better have died than lived, so cruelly did they suffer. But every day brought nearer to the undaunted pioneers of Texas the hope of freedom and independence. Men may have been many things in that struggling republic, filibusters, outlaws, adventurers, gamblers, pirates, but I never heard of a coward.

We had the honour of sharing with Louisiana the picturesque gentleman pirate Lafitte, who was said by his enemies to make love or to scuttle a ship with equal success, and by his friends to be a seigneur with letters of marque from the French government. He was certainly, to put it politely, a violator of the revenue, and Governor Claybourne had put a price upon his head, when, at an opportune moment for him, General Jackson and his army arrived in New Orleans. With the ready assurance of the bold adventurer, Lafitte offered his services and that of an armed company for the defence of the state, and though General Jackson had denounced “robbers, pirates, and hellish bandits,” he entered the army, was commended for bravery, gained a full and free pardon by the government, and left Louisiana rehabilitated, only to start privateering in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Galveston. In an incredibly short space of time he had gathered more than a thousand lawless adventurers about him. Finally a Government vessel was robbed of some thousands in gold. After that he disappeared and was supposed to have sailed for South America.

La Salle, that brave and intrepid discoverer, having claimed and named Louisiana for Louis XIV, sailed for Texas, landed at Matagorda Bay, explored the Lavaca River, and built Fort St. Louis. He called it “The St. Louis of Sorrow,” and so it proved for him. It is a pity that its historic name has been changed to Dimmit's Point. A leader of men can never escape the destroying jealousy of those whom he dominates. They admire him. They fear him. They envy him to the point of hatred. La Salle escaped the dangers of the explorer by land and sea only to die by the hand of an assassin, one of his own men, on the Neches River.

There was courage and daring and carelessness of life in Texas; not only in those early days, but even as a child I myself remember the old disregard of danger which prevailed in Texas. There is a great deal in atmosphere. When a man lives in a country where cowardice is not tolerated, although he may quake inwardly he would never dare to show the white feather. On a Saturday night if a frontiersman had drunk enough liquid “hell-fire,” he would ride into the town yelling like a Comanche Indian, the reins of his horse thrown over his arm or held in his teeth, and both hands occupied in alternately firing off pistols, one perhaps pointed upward to the heavens, the other downward to the earth, or by misadventure hitting a human being. My youngest brother, Ridge, standing on the side-walk, enjoying one of these all too realistic spectacular performances, was shot through the foot. He was about fifteen years old and we were the greatest friends, then and always. After a few days I was allowed as a great privilege to see the little greyish hole in his instep. I don't think he minded it much; with a bundle of newspapers and a pile of books he was always oblivious to the world.

When I grew up and married, during my visits to Texas my brother Ridge always spent a part of every day with me and he had such a restful, comfortable, sensible, original way of visiting. He wanted to see me, but having nothing in particular to say, he said nothing. Arriving with a dozen newspapers under one arm and several books under the other, he gave me a brief but affectionate greeting, and, sitting down, he read steadily for two hours, got up, patted me on the head or shoulder, and said, “Good-bye, Betts Swizzlegigs, see you to-morrow.” And off he would go; but he always saw me on the morrow. For, in the whole of his life, he never broke the slightest promise, or told a little or a big lie.

When he talked, which he did amazingly well, it was to say something worth while, for he had a perfectly astounding memory. It was like a moving picture show, and seemed to have literally photographed every event, every book, and every poem that he had ever read. He was very fond of some little verses by Rollin Ridge, a talented Cherokee Indian: I love thee as the soaring birdThe bright blue morning when he sings,With circling, circling melody,And Heaven's sweet sunlight on his wings.I love thee as the billows loveIn tropic lands the pearly shore;They come and go—they come and go,With answering kisses evermore.I love thee as the marinerFar driven o'er the stormy seaThe bright and shining silver starWhich tells him where his home may be.I love thee thus and ever shall;Thine eyes their bright and glorious lightShine in my soul for evermoreIllumining its darkest night. and he always repeated again the lines, “With circling, circling melodyAnd Heaven's sweet sunlight on his wings.” and I hope in that other and more beautiful country where he has gone, “Heaven's sweet sunlight” is shining upon him.

As a little girl, I had a great desire to be brave, but, like the burglar described to me by F. C. Froest, the able superintendent of police in London, who had three terrors— an old-fashioned iron bar fastened across a door, a little shrill barking dog, and an old maid who always sleeps with one eye open,—there were three things, which struck terror to my soul. These were the drunken yells of the galloping outlaws, the old Voodoo negro witch living near us, who was said to make people die by putting a spell on them; and the bellowing of a bull, which for a long time I believed to be the devil roaring aloud for bad children whom he was seeking to devour. This fable had been told me by a little negro girl on the place, and had sunk deep into my well of credulity, where even yet the waters have not been dried to dust by the world's disillusionment.

Maum Phyllis, the Voodoo witch, had been brought to Texas from South Carolina by my uncle Marcellus Duval, and my father always said she was the last slave who had been born in Africa. She was so black that even her lips were a blue-black colour; her eyes were large and rolling; she never smiled and seldom spoke. In her ears she wore big hoops of gold, and a snow-white head handkerchief instead of the gay plaid turban always worn by other negro women. The contrast of her stern black face and the white above it was startling. There was no scandal, no secret, no small incident in any house in town which was unknown to her, and even white women were not above buying her love philtres. One of her peculiar talismans, composed of a bat's wing, a rabbit'a foot, some hemp from the rope which had hanged a murderer, and drops of milk from the breasts of a mother and daughter, each nursing a baby of the same age, was supposed to bring unwilling lovers to the most forbidding of woman-kind. In the South, where women married very young, it was not an unusual thing for the mother's youngest child to be of the same age as her daughter's firstborn.

Mammy, although a very religious and ardent Methodist, was a firm believer in Voodooism, charms, amulets, the evil eye, “sperrits” and all the rest of it, I cannot even now disabuse my mind of superstition and I know, “de cunjhe book” contains many warnings and shuddering peeps into the future.

BEFORE the war, society in Austin must have been very varied and interesting. General Sam Houston was governor of the State. My mother did not like him, holding him responsible for the massacre of Goliad where my Uncle Burr Duval had been shot; but from this history exonerates him. He came to Texas in the first instance, like many another man, to mend a broken heart, and for a time eschewed the society of the white man and above all the white woman. Living entirely with the Indians, he learned their language, adopted their costume, and to the end of his life retained a certain bold picturesqueness in his dress. When Governor of the State, he wore a soft silk shirt, a flowing red necktie, a leopard-skin vest, coat and trousers of brown camel's hair, a wide sombrero of grey felt embroidered in silver, and a rich-coloured Mexican serape. Some of these serapes woven by the Indians are of great value; they are made on a fine frame not unlike the manner of weaving an Eastern rug, and are splendid in colouring and as pliable and soft as an Indian shawl. Age only improves them; with care they last for generations and are with the Mexicans valued heirlooms. Governor Houston loved popularity and was always sending my mother, through my father, some small carved object. Like Madame de Staël he required constant occupation for his hands; she played with a twig or a flower, he was always whittling, and he was rarely seen without a knife and a piece of soft wood which he transformed into stars, hearts, diamonds, and Noah's Ark people and animals. Eventually my mother softened towards him, for he and my father were always friends. In a quarrel which he had with a public man, my father was trying to mend matters when Governor Houston said: “You are right, Judge, I must n't be too hard on Jones; he has every quality of the dog except his fidelity.”

The romance of his life was not unlike that of Claude Melnotte, but without the happy ending which romance so easily, but life rarely, gives. He was a man of great ability and when very young was elected governor of Tennessee. During his term of office he fell ardently in love with a beautiful and ambitious girl. The wooing was not without difficulty as he had a rival, a young man, undesirable and undistinguished, who scarcely entered into his big busy mind. The girl he loved lived in an adjoining town, and the courtship was mainly through letters, therefore he had not the opportunity of properly studying her character. As was the fashion of the time they were married at night, in a candle-lighted, flower-wreathed church. There was a big wedding, for everybody wanted to see the handsome young couple, and to congratulate the Governor, but at last, at the end of the festivities, he sought the beautiful bride. All shimmer of satin and glimmer of pearl, she awaited him, in the rose-and-white bridal chamber.

He went quickly towards her, speechless with emotion, and tenderly gathered her in his arms. “Don't,” she said, pushing him away, “you will crush my veil.” Her voice struck coldly upon his quickened emotions, but he was repelled only for a second. He was too happy to take warning, and he unfastened her veil, laid it reverently on the sofa, and softly lifted her face to kiss her. She drew back with a look almost of dislike, and said, “Please, please, not now.” He thought it was maidenly modesty and said: “I have n't thanked you yet for marrying me, but I do. See, I am humble; I am on my knees, my darling, to thank you,” and he knelt and covered her hands with kisses.

Another, softer woman, not loving him, would have done it then, and laying her hand upon his head would have thanked God for this adoring heart, but her own was of ice. She said, somewhat sharply: “Do get up and don't be foolish; I don't want you to thank me for marrying the Governor of Tennessee.” He said very gently, “You have married your lover, Madame.”

“I don't want a lover,” she said, coldly, “if I had wished to give myself up to love,—a thing I don't believe in,—I would have married S.,” naming his rival.

“Did you,” said her husband fiercely, “love him?”

“No,” she said, “but I might have loved him, if you had not been a man of successful ambition. I have married, as I said before, the Governor of Tennessee.”

“Perhaps,” said he with a dangerous light in his eyes, “you do not love this gentleman—this paltry Governor—”

She said, “Love is not necessary in an ambitious marriage. I am the Governor's wife. I am to sit at the head of his table, to receive his friends, to share his triumphs—”

“And,” he cried with a great burst of passion, “to starve his heart and leave it empty! To break it in the end, and to make ambition his curse. Even now,” he added bitterly, “my ambition is dead. You have killed all my hopes, and I suffer the torments of the damned, for I wanted you and I loved you,—my God, how I loved you!”

She answered calmly: “I thought men placed ambition before a woman. I am willing for you to do that. You are the Governor of . . .”

“By heaven, Madame,” he said harshly, “there is no such person.”

And with that, he strode to the writing-table, wrote his resignation to the State, threw it at her feet, picked up his hat, and said:

“I married you for love, the purest, the truest, the most reverently adoring that man ever gave to woman. You married me without love. I scorn a woman's body without her soul. We are as far asunder as the poles. We part here, now and forever.”

He closed the door and went out into the darkness of the stormy night—his tragic wedding night—and they never met again.

He sought forgetfulness among the Indians, and was only roused from lethargy by the desperate efforts of the struggling Republic of Texas towards liberty. When he became General of the army, his wife, at last loving him deeply, should, according to romance, have travelled thousands of miles and appeared, travel-stained, softened and repentant, to sue for his forgiveness; but in reality they were divorced. Each married again, and they never met after the fatal night of their parting.

Texas must have held more than her share of thrilling romance at this period. Men made love with impulsive ardour, for the rapid uncertainty of life brings greediness for all it holds. During the war, one day's courtship served for marriage. “Love to-night and death to-morrow,” was the soldier's motto.

Among the first settlers of Texas a number of representatives of old Southern families had established themselves in Austin. James Raymond had helped to frame the constitution of the State and was a banker; the Flournoys (what pity to anglicise the aristocratic name of Fleur Noire!), the Lubbocks, the Wauls (Waul's confederate Texas brigade was later to become a synonym in the army for undaunted courage);—the Hancocks, the Duvals, the Peases—Elisha Pease, afterwards governor, although born in the North and a Union man, never lost the affection or confidence of the people—these were among the most distinguished of the early settlers. Then there were the Throckmortons, the Wests, the Burlesons, the Steiners, the Haynes, and the Wigfalls. Louis Wigfall had been sent from Texas to the United States Senate. With uncompromising Southern proclivities, he became in 1861 one of the leaders of Secession, and was a fiery, vehement, passionate speaker, earning for himself the sobriquet of “the stormy petrel.”

Mrs. Chesnut, in her Diary from Dixie, 1860-65, frequently mentions the Wigfalls. “I sent Mrs. Wigfall a telegram—‘Where shrieks the wild seamew?’ She answered, ‘Seamew at the Spotswood Hotel will shriek soon. I will remain here.’ ” And of the bombardment of Fort Sumter, she says, “Wigfall was with them on Marius' Island when they saw the fire in the fort. He jumped into a little boat and, with his handkerchief, as a white flag, rode over . . . . As far as I can see, the fort surrendered to Wigfall. It is all confusion.” And at Richmond in 1861 she says: “Heavens! He manœuvered until I was weary for their sakes. Poor fellows, it was a hot afternoon in August and the thermometer in the nineties. President Davis uncovered to speak. Wigfall kept his hat on. Is that military?” After the war Louis Wigfall lived for a time in England, but eventually returned to the United States.

Matthias Ward, another Senator from Texas in 1860, was very popular. He had a great sense of humour and enjoyed a story against himself. His face was extremely youthful, with fresh bright eyes as blue as that dear flower, the prairie blue-bonnet, and cotton-white hair. Travelling from New Orleans to St. Louis by a Mississippi steamer, he had engaged the state-room number one hundred and ten. The boat was immensely crowded, and his room had been taken possession of by a party of lawless men. Standing outside the open door of the ladies' cabin, the steward called to one of the understewards, “Here, can't you get this poor man, one hundred and ten, a berth?” A pretty lady put her head out of the state-room. “Oh, steward, bring him right in here,” she said; “the ladies won't mind a harmless old man of a hundred and ten, and, poor old soul, he must have somewhere to sleep.” “Pull your hat down,” said the steward, “and hobble to your berth; it will be all right.” But the lovely ladies chattering, relieving their pretty heads of hundreds of curls and braids, letting their own hair flow over their shoulders, and dropping immense hoop skirts which fell with a clang like steel armour to the floor, were temptations too strong to be withstood. Mr. Ward peeped, and immediately an observant young lady called out, “Steward, steward, come quick and get your hundred and ten. He's looking at us with young blue eyes.” And the steward had to find him another state-room, minus crinolines.

There were many men in Texas opposed to Secession at the beginning of the war. The State had entered the Union on her own terms; she was prosperous and far enough away from the passionate excitement in Washington for astute statesmen to see inevitable defeat. From the beginning everything was against the South. The North had wealth, open ports, greater numbers, and even with success the South must have suffered horribly from a war fought on her own territory. But when Texas finally accepted Secession she did it with no half measures, furnishing to the Confederate army eighty-eight regiments of infantry and cavalry, and more than thirty batteries of artillery. In all, seventy-five thousand Texas men fought for the Southern cause. Albert Sydney Johnston ranked among the ablest officers in the service. Ben McCullough commanded the Texas Rangers, who did not know fear. Sam Bell Maxey, a cousin of my mother's, soon won his two stars. General William Steele, who had married my aunt Laura Duval's sister, an ardent sympathiser with the South, had resigned from a crack cavalry regiment in the United States army to take command in Texas. And the long roll-call of glory holds hundreds of Texas names.