The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 47, July 1943 - April, 1944 Page: 187
456 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Book Reviews
expelled it therefrom, and given it to some of the sewers of
the city." Only one fact was contained in Green's book, all
else was slander-and the single fact related not to Houston,
although he counted his name 117 times in the 484 pages (VI,
75, 76).
Men who served long in the Senate with Houston must have
come to know the names of his principal enemies and their
special forms of depravity almost as well as Houston himself
did, and they must have wondered how so many villains could
beset so peaceable and blameless a man.
One enemy, at least, Houston eventually forgave--Dr. Francis
Moore, Jr., "lying scribbler of the Telegraph," whose one arm
was writing "more malicious falsehoods than any man with two
arms" in 1845 (VI, 11), found himself in a State job by Hous-
ton's appointment in 1860 (VIII, 125).
His friendships were strong and lasting, but seldom included
men of his own stature, and apparently were never intimate.
From their first meeting until Houston's death, Ashbel Smith
was his devoted and confidential friend. With Rusk, his col-
league in the Senate, whom he had known longer, his relations
were formally cordial rather than close. He evoked from thou-
sands of Texans a devotion which he accepted with dignity
and reserve, but it is doubtful if he ever shared with more than
one or two his innermost thoughts.
Bits of personal philosophy creep occasionally into letters
to friends like Smith: "Now you know, that modesty and dif-
fidence are very becoming in ladies, and are virtuous, as well
as ornaments, when worn by them, but in the business affairs
of men, they are very ridiculous!-at least I so regard them!"
(V, 10). Houston was a self-made man with some misgivings
about higher education at government expense. In the cam-
paign of 1859 he urged elementary education, "Not your clas-
sical education, but the a b c, a-b, ab, b-a ba, k-e-r ker educa-
tion and so on up to the mathematics. . . . Private enterprise
and philanthropy will rear institutions of an advanced char-
acter. Those who wish to educate their sons will have ample
opportunity to do so and they generally have the means to
spare to do it with. At any rate they should not do it at the
expense of the masses. Great men are not made by these
institutions. Not that they are not useful in their way, but
they do not present the mode of education to which the state187
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 47, July 1943 - April, 1944, periodical, 1944; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth146054/m1/205/: accessed May 1, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.