CHAPTER XIX. Lee's Surrender--Effect on Texas Soldiers--Trip to New Orleans--Family Ship North--Writer's Return to Texas--He Visits Brenham, Austin, San Antonio and New Braunfels--Rev. Josiah Whipple--The Old Woman in Austin What Wouldn't Hear the Blue Coat Preach 183-190
CHAPTER XX. Governor Hamilton--The Thirty Neros--The Old German and His Wife--Fight with Indians--A Native Texan's Opinion of Germans 191-195
CHAPTER XXI. Texas--Topography, Climate and Products of 196-210
OLD LETTERS.--POEM. Canto I. 213-222 Canto II. 223-225 Canto III. 226-231
HON. MARTIN P. SWEET--INTERVIEW WITH, AND EULOGIUM.
In the month of November, 1860, shortly after the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States, Hon. Martin P. Sweet came into the Circuit Clerk's Office of Stephenson County, Illinois, where the writer was acting as deputy to the regular Clerk--Mr. L. W. Guiteau--and addressing himself to us, said:
"If you can spare the time I would be glad of an interview with you at my office."
Laying aside the pen we went with him, and after being seated together in his private room adjoining the main office, he remarked:
"Mr. N., I understand you are thinking of going to Texas."
"I am not only _thinking_ of it, Mr. S., but the purpose is already fixed to go."
For a few moments he was silent, his eye scanning the figures of the beautiful carpet upon the floor; then calmly raising his face and fixing his full eyes, that looked nigh unto bursting, upon us--such was their intense earnestness, indicating the struggle of soul within, the play of emotions, honest and transparent; and holding the gaze upon us, while as yet no word from his eloquent lips had broken or changed the potent spell thereof--suddenly those eyes suffused with tears incontinent, the requisite power of speech had come, and he replied fervently:
"You ask why I regret to hear it; I will tell you why. We are friends, and have been friends for many a long year, and that, too, on terms of more than ordinary meaning, and sacred beyond the degrees of worldly friendship. The tie that hath bound us, you know, has been that of a deep and ardent Christian faith, which, though seeming to part asunder at times under the severe strain of mutual fault and criticism, producing the while outward non-affiliation, yet the substratum of unity is there, and its brotherly elasticity is too great to be snapped in twain. And however far apart the forces of the world may swing us, on the pendulum of time, still the return movement is certain and sure."