er before a popular audience. His speech
abounded with argumentative appeal and bristled with illustrative
anecdote, and, when occasion required, with apt repartee.

Once an Irishman in the crowd bawled out, "ye were goin' to sell Texas
to England."

Houston paused long enough to center attention upon the quibble and
then said: "My friend, I first tried, unsuccessfully, to have the United
States take Texas as a gift. Not until I threatened to turn Texas over
to England did I finally succeed. There may be within the sound of my
voice some who have knowledge of sheep culture. They have doubtless seen
a motherless lamb put to the breast of a cross old ewe who refused
it suck. Then the wise shepherd calls his dog and there is no further
trouble. My friend, England was my dog."

He was inveighing against the New York Tribune. Having described Horace
Greeley as the sum of all villainy--"whose hair is white, whose skin is
white, whose eyes are white, whose clothes are white, and whose liver is
in my opinion of the same color"--he continued: "The assistant editor of
the Try-bune is Robinson--Solon Robinson. He is an Irishman, an Orange
Irishman, a redhaired Irishman!" Casting his eye over the audience
and seeing quite a sprinkling of redheads, and realizing that he had
perpetrated a slip of tongue, he added: "Fellow citizens, when I say
that Robinson is a red-haired Irishman I mean no disrespect to persons
whose hair is of that color. I have been a close observer of men and
women for thirty years, and I never knew a red-haired man who was not an
honest man, nor a red-headed woman who was not a virtuous woman; and I
give it you as my candid opinion that had it not been for Robinson's red
hair he would have been hanged long ago."

His pathos was not far behind his humor--though he used it sparingly.
At a certain town in Texas there lived a desperado who had threatened to
kill him on sight. The town was not on the route of his speaking dates
but he went out of his way to include it. A great concourse assembled
to hear him. He spoke in the open air and, as he began, observed his man
leaning against a tree armed to the teeth and waiting for him to finish.
After a few opening remarks, he dropped into the reminiscential. He
talked of the old times in Texas. He told in thrilling terms of the
Alamo and of Goliad. There was not a dry eye in earshot. Then he grew
personal.

"I see Tom Gilligan over yonder. A braver man never lived th