Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/268

 and Secretary of War without delay, and have him properly advised and instructed.

"Gen. Cass replied: 'I have conferred with the President and Secretary of War, in conformity to your request, and without committing Gen. Taylor, who has the entire confidence of the Government; and Gen. Taylor has been fully advised of its wishes, and furnished with the necessary instructions.' The result you know.

"Faithfully and truly yours, ."

Not only in Texas, where he. was the idol of "the people," but in Washington and New York, the people clustered about Houston as a father, and hundreds were proud to have taken his hand, to have met his benign snnile, and to have received from him a word of heartfelt tenderness. Called in New York to take part, in the winter of 1853-4, in a course of public lectures for a benevolent object, inaugurated by J. T. Smith, Esq., in which several clever eminent gentlemen took part, Houston's calm dignity of manner, his profound good sense, and his overmastering spirit of patriotic earnestness, captivated his hearers. At church, in Washington, the aisles would be blocked by people pressing forward, at the close of the service, toward the pulpit, near which he always sat; the humblest hearer, as well as men of prominent positions, pressing to exchange greetings with the hero and statesman of his generation. In the vestibule the colored occupants of the gallery waited to welcome him, and were eager to receive his kind and genuine expressions of esteem. Those twelve years in Washington, interspersed with visits farther north, were full of incidents, and rich in sentiments uttered, which a volume would not contain. Most of all, it was what Houston did not do and say—especially amid the exciting scenes attending the assault on the Massachusetts Senator—the theme of excited comment in public and private, which brought out Houston's greatness. The remark of the old Greek sage, that " he had sometimes repented speaking, never keeping silent,"—the highest of all examples, that of "the Just One," condemned to death though faultless, who, when insulted, "yet opened not His mouth,"—these models of the most transcendent greatness thoughtful observers saw often realized in Sam Houston.