The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 43, July 1939 - April, 1940 Page: 490
576 p. : ill., maps ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
to leave my country and the friends that I have loved and swear
allegiance to a foreign government, to make a fortune when I
have none to give it to, and could not hope to live to enjoy it
myself, I hope to remain long enough here to pay all the liabilities
against me and once again feel and be a free man. I know that
if ever any man has suffered the tumults of a hell in this life I have.
All I ever coveted in this world has been to sustain my reputa-
tion for an honest and an honorable man and the only consola-
tion I now have is that where I am known though poor of every
thing else the malicious part of the world cannot rid me of my
reputation. I am not of a melancholy temperament of mind in
the general, yet when I review the past, and reflect that I have
lived for country and friends and at all times was ready to risk
my life upon all honorable and fit occasions for either; and at
my age find himself almost alone in the world in a foreign land
in the midst of strangers I cannot avoid indulging some times
in the mournful, and melancholy, reflection that after all we
have but few friends in this life that can be depended upon, how
soon do all our intimances and affections however ardent become
cooled how often is our confidence violated, and the friends for
whom we have contracted the warmest attachment from the most
trivial circumstances become estranged, our, companions of early
life when the feelings and passions of the human heart is most
strong, who have shared our hospitality our joy and our hapiness
that we expected to be willing to breast with us the strains and
dificulties of life, how few even of these, when the clouds of
adversity thicken around us, are willing to paticipate in our
misfortunes or even whisper one word of consolation to a heart
lacerated with woe, and ready to sink with dispair. What changes
then might I ask are so sudden and rapid as the changes of the
human heart; it has been well and emphatically said that love
is an emty [empty] sound, a dream, and friendship but a name
a mear [mere] shadow and delusion I have been called iretable
[irritable] passionate and intemperate in my feelings it may be
and probably is so. but I know, that I have seen and felt enough
to drive any other man mad. I set out in life with the most
flatering prospects before me, sanguine and confiding in my
disposition warm in my attachments, with unwavering devoted-
ness to all who I called friend. In anticipating future life, I
had built castles and splendid edifices, that were never to be
experienced in real life, but pass away as quick as the thought that
created them, leaving not a trace behind [sic] but the thought,
behind. Could I then have opened the book of fate and have
read my future destiny, where I could have seen the revelations
of time and of circumstances, of the crosses lashes perplexities,
and disappointments with which my life has been chequered.
I should have been tempted to have drawn back from life, and490
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 43, July 1939 - April, 1940, periodical, 1940; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101111/m1/526/: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.