Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/44

solved upon exile. On that resolution hung a future which has filled up with some of the most memorable events of modern times. Had that first marriage resulted happily, the history of the Indian nations in the Southwest, and of Texas, would have had other events, and even the map of the United States might have been different. For one to throw away the robes of office just as the wreath of glory was twining around his brow, to exchange the fascinations of political leadership in civilized life for the obscurity of the wilderness, was an uncommon event rarely witnessed. Voluntarily, after the wrath of his enemies had diminished and his real strength appeared greater than ever, to drown the reflections which harrowed his heart he exiled himself. It was the leading of Divine Providence, mysterously shaping his future life, and leading him by strange forest paths to be the founder of a new empire, ultimately to become one of our grand cordon of American States, Agencies and instruments are needed for great occasions, for a great work. Human sagacity does not descry the future, nor apprehend how these agencies and instruments are to be provided. An erratic boyhood, a wild life among uncivilized men, a soldier's hard fare, and a hero's fate, contest with enmity, trial in station under difficulties, constitute the ordeal through which one remarkable agent was called to pass. That agent was Sam Houston, a name which forms no common part of American history.