WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1824-1857
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Here to mortal vision the scene must close. But happily this is not all of life. Then, after mortal existence has ended, which has been but the prelude, there is a state of eternal existence. To be prepared for this future existence should be the greatest business of our lives. With all rational enjoyment of earth, we can blend religion; and when realizing pleasure or happiness, we ought to reflect that we are indebted to God for every gift and feel gratitude which is an essential principle of Holiness. Try, my son, to bear these thoughts on your mind, and seek God while you are young. I do not, my son, wish to deprive you of rational pleasures, but to induce you to take pleasure in rational enjoyments, and those that will cause you no remorse, but will insure you happiness here and hereafter. And these things remember: "What will it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul; or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul." Read the Scriptures!!! My son, I have not had time to look about, but so soon as I get a letter from you, I will write again. Thy Devoted Father, Sam Houston. Sam Houston, Jr.
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1 Copied from the origi_nal in Mrs. Madge W. Hearne's collection.
SPEECH AT AUSTIN, JULY, 1857 1 Mr. Houston commenced by alluding to some perplexing bad relations which he had held with the people of this place, and was new satisfied that the hatchet was buried. He soon entered upon his war of words against the Waco Convention, and its members, as well as the men who had taken issue with him on the Kansas-Nebraska question on the stump. He declared that he could not take hold of the Convention, because it was a muley and had no horns. He termed its defenders "dogs" ; and they were not terriers but C'llr dogs; he desired to get hold of them all, but the only harm that he would do them would be to sell them for cur dogs and then hang the curs. He said that L. T. Wigfall had been a lawyer in South Carolina, and there had swindled those who employed him, and had escaped to Texas to avoid being put in the penitentiary; he accused General Henderson of the crime of forgery, and said that he [Henderson] had forged General Houston's name to a certain deed, for which he was liable to criminal prosecution; he intimated that Judge Oldham had left
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