My spirits rose every mile we left New Orleans behind us; I felt, besides, that to bring my skill to such a market was but to carry “coals to Newcastle;” nor, from the skipper's account, did Texas offer a much more favorable field. However, it smacked of adventure; the very name had a charm for me; and I thought I should far rather confront actual danger than live a life of petty schemes and small expedients. But what a strange crucible is the human heart! here was I, placed in a situation to which an incident had elevated me,—of a kind which a more scrupulous sense of honor would have made some shudder at,—fancying, ay, and persuading myself too, that, in the main, I possessed very admirable sentiments and most laudable ambitions; that the occasional little straits to which I was reduced were only so many practical jokes played on me by “Fate,” which took, doubtless, a high delight in the ingenuity by which I always fell on my feet,—while I felt certain that, were I only fairly treated, a more upright, honorable, straightforward young gentleman never lived than I should prove!
“Let Dame Fortune only deal me trumps,” said I, “and I'll promise never 'to look into my neighbor's hand.'” Gentle reader, you smile at my humility; well, then, it's clear you are neither a secretary of state nor a railway director,—that's all.
We dropped anchor off Galveston just as the sun was setting; and the evening being calm, and the reflection of the houses and steeples in the water sharp and defined, the scene was sufficiently striking. The city itself was more important as to size and wealth than I had anticipated, and the office of the “Texan Expedition,” held at the “Moon,” a great coffee-house on the Quay, impressed me most favorably with the respectability and pretensions of my “Co-expeditionaries.” Old Kit presented me to the secretary—a very knavish-looking fellow in spectacles of black gauze—as the winner of the great prize, which, to my excessive mortification, I learned was at Houston, about eighty miles farther up the Bay.
I apologized for my careless dress by stating that my baggage had been unfortunately left behind at New Orleans, and that in my haste I had been obliged to come on board with actually nothing but the few dollars I had in my pocket.
“That's a misfortune easily repaired, sir,” said the gauze-eyed secretary; “you can have your 'credit' cashed here just as liberally as at any town in the country.”
“I have no doubt of that,” responded I, somewhat tartly, for I did not fancy this allusion to banks and bankers; “but all my papers are in my portmanteau.”
“Provoking, certainly,” said he, taking a long pinch of snuff,—“ain't it, Kit?”
But Kit only scratched his nose, and looked puzzled.
“Are your bankers Vicars and Bull, sir?”
“No,” said I, “my credits are all on a Northern house; but I fancy my name is tolerably well known. You 've heard of the Cregans, I suppose.”