She hides in grot and dell!"
O, often, often, far from this, have we watched the great red sun sinking behind the vast stretching prairie, while all the broad west seemed like a surging flood of gold beyond an ocean of green; and often have we beheld day's glorious orb looming above the soft blue waters of the placid bay, while the joyous birds soared up the sparkling dome of heaven, their little throats almost bursting with thrilling melody, and the balmy south wind came laden with the perfume of ten thousand ordorous flowers!
O, sweet land upon the tropic's glowing verge, what star-bright memories we have of thee! How deeply treasured in our heart of hearts are all thy joys and pleasures,—ay, and griefs and sorrows too! But as the spot where this long-crushed and drooping spirit heard those first, low, preluding strains, foretokenings that its long-enfeebled energies were wakening from their death-like slumber to breathe response to the thousand tones in sea and air that called so loudly on them to arouse once more to life and action, it will ever be most truly dear. And when again life's fetters clog with the ice and snow of those frigid lands, we'll long to fly again to those climes of song and sunny ray, and forget earth's cankering cares in the contemplation of Nature's luxuriant charms. But we grow abstract.
Come with us, reader, if you will, over the prairies of Texas, gorgeous with their many-colored flowers, dotted with the dark-green live-oaks, and watered by pellucid rivers. To that log-house, standing under the boughs of a wide-spreading pecan tree, let us wend our way.
There is a gray-headed man sitting in a deer-skin-bottomed chair, on the rude gallery, and gazing with weary eye on the lovely scenery around him. Two young ladies are standing near, their countenances wearing sullen expressions of discontent and sorrow.
"So this is Texas, father," remarked the elder of the two, at length. "I wonder how you ever expect to earn a living here, for my part."
"By tilling the soil, my child, and growing cotton and sugar; fine country for that. Land rich as mud and cheap as dirt. Why, I have purchased five hundred acres for a mere trifle. Zounds! I feel like amassing a new fortune here in a few years," said the old man, suddenly rousing from his stupor.
"Well, I'm perfectly disgusted," said the younger lady, "and wish I had run off to Australia with brother Jack and Celestina's faithless husband."
"I wish I was in that convent upon the Mississippi, where poor sister Celestina is now," sighed the elder.
"Pshaw, girls! you'll both marry wild Texan rangers before two years," said the old gentleman, who was no less a personage than Esq. Camford, formerly the wealthiest merchant in New Orleans, but now a poor Texan emigrant in his log-cabin on the Cibolo. Well, he was a better man now than when rolling in the luxury of ill-gotten wealth, for adversity never fails to teach useful lessons; and it had taught this world-hardened, conscience-seared man, that "honesty is the best policy."