Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 35.djvu/161

Rh contemporaries now long dead I believe that this marriage and the mysterious separation that followed are easily explained by a single analysis of the physical and spiritual natures of Houston and his bride, rather than the wild rumors and exaggerations current at the time it occurred.

"General Houston, as I remember him, was a man powerfully built, wonderful in animal strength and vitality and of an ardent and romantic temperament, revelling in the ideal. He idolized his wife extravagantly; to him she was the fairest woman that ever the sun shone on. He gave her admiration and devotion and expected the same from her.

"Their courtship reads like an old romance. There was a stately house three miles from Gallatin, Tenn., on the bluffs of the Cumberland River. Here lived John Allen, an old fashioned country gentleman, whose daughter was at once the delight and despair of the young cavaliers. Beautiful and queenly, the lily was not purer nor marble colder than this stately lady. She was a Greek in her repose, perfect in feature and figure, but with a spiritual something that the Greeks never possessed.

"The wooers came from far to woo. She listened to them patiently; said 'no' gently, but decidedly, and then turned away unmoved by their entreaties, never even looking around as they galloped off. She was well educated and her conversation, like herself, was at once sensible, graceful and dignified.

"In her train was one who never spoke of his love, feeling that his suit was hopeless. And him she loved, as she confessed to one of her bridesmaids on the eve of her wedding. Who the unknown suitor was, why he never spoke, there are only conjectures ; his name never passed her lips.

"Meanwhile Houston came to Gallatin—Houston the soldier, friend and comrade of General Andrew Jackson; Houston the Governor, and always Houston the cavalier, booted and spurred, 'the glass of fashion and the mold of form."

"Surely there was never a lover whose honors clustered as thick around him; no wonder the unknown suitor hung back