eratus biscuit. She had the strangest views of life and
an almost unnatural shrinking from any usual converse with men.

Houston, on his side, was a thoroughly natural and healthful man, having
lived an outdoor life, hunting and camping in the forest and displaying
the unaffected manner of the pioneer. Having lived the solitary life of
the woods, it was a strange thing for him to meet a girl who had been
bred in an entirely different way, who had learned a thousand little
reservations and dainty graces, and whose very breath was coyness and
reserve. Their mating was the mating of the man of the forest with the
woman of the sheltered life.

Houston assumed everything; his bride shrank from everything. There was
a mutual shock amounting almost to repulsion. She, on her side, probably
thought she had found in him only the brute which lurks in man. He, on
the other, repelled and checked, at once grasped the belief that his
wife cared nothing for him because she would not meet his ardors
with like ardors of her own. It is the mistake that has been made by
thousands of men and women at the beginning of their married lives--the
mistake on one side of too great sensitiveness, and on the other side of
too great warmth of passion.

This episode may seem trivial, and yet it is one that explains many
things in human life. So far as concerns Houston it has a direct bearing
on the history of our country. A proud man, he could not endure the
slights and gossip of his associates. He resigned the governorship of
Tennessee, and left by night, in such a way as to surround his departure
with mystery.

There had come over him the old longing for Indian life; and when he was
next visible he was in the land of the Cherokees, who had long before
adopted him as a son. He was clad in buckskin and armed with knife
and rifle, and served under the old chief Oolooteka. He was a gallant
defender of the Indians.

When he found how some of the Indian agents had abused his adopted
brothers he went to Washington to protest, still wearing his frontier
garb. One William Stansberry, a Congressman from Ohio, insulted Houston,
who leaped upon him like a panther, dragged him about the Hall of
Representatives, and beat him within an inch of his life. He was
arrested, imprisoned, and fined; but his old friend, President Jackson,
remitted his imprisonment and gruffly advised him not to pay the fine.

Returning to his Indians, he made his way to a new field