ined the priest Hidalgo in
eighteen hundred and ten, when Mexico made her first attempt to throw
off the Spanish yoke."

"An unsuccessful attempt."

"Yes. The next year I made a pretended professional journey to
Chihuahua, to try and save their lives. I failed. They were shot with
Hidalgo there."

"Yet the strife for liberty went on."

"It did. Two years afterwards, Magee and Bernardo, with twelve hundred
Americans, raised the standard of independence on the Trinity River. I
saw them them{sic} take this very city, though it was ably defended by
Salcedo. They fought like heroes. I had many of the wounded in my house.
I succored them with my purse.

"It was a great deed for a handful of men."

"The fame of it brought young Americans by hundreds here. To a man they
joined the Mexican party struggling to free themselves from the tyranny
of old Spain. I do not think any one of them received money. The love
of freedom and the love of adventure were alike their motive and their
reward."

"Mexico owed these men a debt she has forgotten."

"She forgot it very quickly. In the following year, though they had
again defended San Antonio against the Spaniards, the Mexicans drove all
the Americans out of the city their rifles had saved."

"You were here; tell me the true reason."

"It was not altogether ingratitude. It was the instinct of
self-preservation. The very bravery of the Americans made the men whom
they had defended hate and fear them; and there was a continual influx
of young men from the States. The Mexicans said to each other: 'There is
no end to these Americans. Very soon they will make a quarrel and turn
their arms against us. They do not conform to our customs, and they will
not take an order from any officer but their own.'"

Houston smiled. "It is away the Saxon race has," he said. "The old
Britons made the same complaint of them. They went first to England to
help the Britons fight the Romans, and they liked the country so well,
they determined to stay there. If I remember rightly the old Britons had
to let them do so."

"It is an old political situation. You can go back to Genesis and find
Pharaoh arguing about the Jews in the same manner."

"What happened after this forcible expulsion of the American element
from Texas?"

"Mexican independence was for a time abandoned, and the Spanish viceroys
were more tyrannical than ever. But Americans still came, though they
pursued different tactics. They b