"Why, I thought everybody knew Mr. Humphry," she continued.
She took me up town to this great establishment of Humphry's that evening and there I learnt how badly I had been bitten by the Jew.
I remained in the city about a week and my brother-in-law spent most of his time showing me the sights.
Before taking the train for Texas I bought mother a trunk full of clothes, knowing that she would be in need of them after having "roughed it" for nearly eight years.
I stopped in Houston one day looking for Aunt Mary, but learnt finally that she had moved to the country.
I then took in Galveston and spent two days visiting Uncle Nick and Aunt Julia. From there I went to Indianola on a Morgan Steamship and became sea sick; Oh, Lord! I concluded I would prefer the hurricane deck of a Spanish pony to that of a ship, every time.
In the town of Indianola I met a lot of my old Peninsula playmates, who were there from Matagorda, in their sail boats, with freight.
There being no boats down from Tresspalacious, I left my trunk to be shipped up the first chance and went to Matagorda with the two Williams' boys, Johnny and Jimmy. Nearly all the Peninsula folks lived in the vicinity of Matagorda now since the great storm of 1875, washed everything they had out into the Gulf, besides drowning about half of their number. Hence me going to Matagorda to visit them.
There were three Tresspalacious boys in Matagorda, and one of them, Jim Keller, loaned me his horse and saddle to ride home on.
Mother was happy when I told her to get ready and go to Kansas with me. There was only one thing she hated to leave behind, and that was her wood pile. She had spent the past two years lugging wood from along the creek and piling it up against her old shanty for "old age," she said. I suppose her idea in piling it against the house, on all sides, was to keep it from blowing over, should some kind of an animal accidently blow its breath against it.