Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/270

 According to her wishes, and to the astonishment of her friends, she was married to Gen. Sam Houston in Marion, Alabama, May 9th, 1840. It was not long before her influence induced him to give up strong drink, to which he never returned.

"There is a sorrow which even the hero can not bear. The storms of life may beat against the frail dwelling of man as wildly as they will, and the proud and the generous heart may still withstand the blast. But when the poisoned shaft of disappointment strikes the bosom where all we love or live for is treasured, the fruit of this world turns to ashes, and the charm of life is broken. Then it is that, often, reason and bliss take their flight together."

When this dark cloud fell over the path of Houston, he buried his sorrows in the flowing bowl. His indulgences began with the wreck of his hopes, and, like many noble and generous spirits, he gave himself up to the fatal enchantress. But his excesses were exaggerated a hundredfold. We believe no man can say that he ever saw Houston rendered incompetent, by any indulgence, to perform any offices of private or public life a single hour. But the days of his indulgences passed away. When the sunlight of domestic happiness again shone through his dwelling, and he was sustained once more by that great conservative principle of a man's life, a happy home, illumined by the smile of an affectionate and devoted wife, his good angel came back, and for years no man was more exemplary in all the duties and all the virtues of the citizen, the father, and the husband. From that moment he espoused the great cause of virtue and temperance with all the earnestness of his nature. Whenever an opportunity presented itself, he has eloquently spoken, in public and in private, in favor of that beneficent movement which has restored many thousands of generous but misguided men to the long-abandoned embraces of weeping families, and to the nobler duties of citizenship. And who could better tell the horrors and woes of the poor inebriate's life than the man who had experienced them? Who could more eloquently and winningly woo back the wanderer to the fold of virtue than he who had just returned to its hallowed enclosure? Blessings on the head of the devoted and beautiful wife, whose tender persuasions prove too strong for the clamors of appetite and the allurements of vice! In winning the stricken wanderer back to the pure charities of home she saved one of its noblest citizens; and so benign has been the influence of his wonderful example, and so calm and so holy a light beamed around the altars of his prairie home, that his children will, with the nation he saved, rise up and call him blessed. Houston's indulgences never were carried so far as to