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WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1855
boys-babies, if you please,-are as good and clever as convicts from European cells; our boys grow up to manhood with all the tenderness of maternal care making early impressions on their minds, with the influence of our laws, education, observation, and individual responsibility resting upon them, they are required to pass tutorage of twenty-one years before they are admitted to full citizenship. The foreigner who does not understand our language, who is unacquainted with our laws, whose affections and prejudices are still identified with the country from which he has emigrated, should pass as long a probation here as we require of American boys, and nothing short. (Cheers.) > My fellow-countrymen, may I not be indulged in this disposi- tion that I have? Is it criminal honestly to differ from others in political opinion? Am I proscribing foreigners when I allow them to enjoy greater privileges than they enjoyed in the country from which they came? The foreigner here enjoys everything; his property is secure, his rights are protected. While remark- ing upon the subject of foreigners.not being acquainted with our language and our laws, I must be permitted to relate an anecdote which occurred in the late canvass, in a county not remote from this. A candidate while out on an electioneering campaign rode up to the residence of a good German citizen. On entering the house he saluted the owner thus: "How do you do?" "Howd'ye do?" said the German. ·Candidate. "Do you live here?" Ger- man. "Yes, I lives here." Candidate. "Well, I am a candidate; I have come electioneering." German. "I have heard tell of elec- tioneering folks going about the country." Then seeing a bottle of liquor on the mantel, the candidate proceeded: "I am not one of those temperance candidates you have heard of; I am in favor of allowing every man to drink liquor whenever he pleases. There are some candidates who are in favor of passing laws to prevent people from drinking liquor; I am not one of that sort." German. "Any body wants to pass laws that will make people not get drunk?" Candidate. "Yes, there are these Know Noth- ings who would pass laws not to allow people to get drunk if they choose." German. "That's petter dan goot. I go to town some- times, where I gets whiskey and gets drunk, and then I spends money, and then I have to get sober, and that is moughty bad. And then I know if I had laid out my money for something for the old woman and the children that would have been goot, and then I would not have to feel so bad in getting sober." Candi- date. "Well, I am not a Know-Nothing. I am a Democrat.''
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