I was then a young man and was traveling in Louisiana. I put up at a hotel in a rather small town, where hotels were as rare as other evidences of civilization. I had just gone to my room on the night succeeding my arrival when I was honored with a call from the landlord.
"Mr. Coup," he said, "there'll be another feller up to bunk with you in a few minutes. You'd better wait up and arrange with him about the side of the bed you are to sleep on. If he walks in and finds you sleepin' on his side, there might be a coolness spring up between you."
At that time I was a stranger to southern customs, and their manner of doing things struck me as being a trifle irregular. However, I offered no objection. It has always been a rule with me to maintain the silence which is said to be golden when I am among strangers in a strange land. I afterwards discovered that it was customary for this landlord to put as many as three in one bed when he happened to be cramped for room. In about ten minutes my bedfellow came up. He was an elderly man with eyes which seemed to pierce one.
His bedroom candle lighted up a face which I have never since been able to eradicate from my memory. It was one of the most interesting faces it has ever been my good fortune to gaze upon. When he smiled, I was somehow irresistibly drawn towards him. It was the saddest, tenderest, sweetest smile that I have ever seen upon a man's face. He spoke to me kindly as he placed his candle upon the little table, then drew his chair up close beside me in front of the open, wood fire. Twenty minutes afterward I could have sworn that I had known the man all my life. He was a brilliant talker; and his stock of knowledge regarding men and affairs of that day seemed to be inexhaustible.
"By the way," I said, after we had talked well into the night, "I see Gen. Sam Houston is billed to speak here to-morrow night. I shall certainly go to hear him." He glanced up at me quickly.
"Are you an admirer of him?" he asked.
"I will answer that question by saying both yes and no," I replied. "I greatly admire him for his sturdy independence, his political ability, and his apparent hatred for all shams. But there seems to be another side to his character which I do not admire. The manner in which he deserted his Cherokee wife after he had left the nation and returned to civilization, I regard as wholly contemptible. Do you know him?"
"I have seen him," he replied, quietly, smiling the sad smile which had before struck me so forcibly.
"Well, don't you agree with me?" I asked.
"Before I reply to that question I would like to tell you a little story," my roommate replied, and it seemed to me that his voice trembled a little.