s of jam
and pickles and saleratus biscuit. She had the strangest views of life
and an almost unnatural shrinking from any usual converse with men.

Houston, on his side, was a thoroughly natural and healthful man,
having lived an outdoor life, hunting and camping in the forest and
displaying the unaffected manner of the pioneer. Having lived the
solitary life of the woods, it was a strange thing for him to meet a
girl who had been bred in an entirely different way, who had learned a
thousand little reservations and dainty graces, and whose very breath
was coyness and reserve. Their mating was the mating of the man of the
forest with the woman of the sheltered life.

Houston assumed everything; his bride shrank from everything. There was
a mutual shock amounting almost to repulsion. She, on her side,
probably thought she had found in him only the brute which lurks in
man. He, on the other, repelled and checked, at once grasped the belief
that his wife cared nothing for him because she would not meet his
ardors with like ardors of her own. It is the mistake that has been
made by thousands of men and women at the beginning of their married
lives--the mistake on one side of too great sensitiveness, and on the
other side of too great warmth of passion.

This episode may seem trivial, and yet it is one that explains many
things in human life. So far as concerns Houston it has a direct
bearing on the history of our country. A proud man, he could not endure
the slights and gossip of his associates. He resigned the governorship
of Tennessee, and left by night, in such a way as to surround his
departure with mystery.

There had come over him the old longing for Indian life; and when he
was next visible he was in the land of the Cherokees, who had long
before adopted him as a son. He was clad in buckskin and armed with
knife and rifle, and served under the old chief Oolooteka. He was a
gallant defender of the Indians.

When he found how some of the Indian agents had abused his adopted
brothers he went to Washington to protest, still wearing his frontier
garb. One William Stansberry, a Congressman from Ohio, insulted
Houston, who leaped upon him like a panther, dragged him about the Hall
of Representatives, and beat him within an inch of his life. He was
arrested, imprisoned, and fined; but his old friend, President Jackson,
remitted his imprisonment and gruffly advised him not to pay the fine.

Returning to his Indians, he