POOR OLD TEXAS.
'TWAS said in days of old that misfortune never
comes singly. The fates are turning upon Texas an
unkindly eye. She is o'erwhelmed quite, sunk in the
Serbonian bogs of dark despair. First our mighty
Democratic majority
slipped up on the Hoggeian banana peel and drove its
vertebrae through the crown of its convention plug, while
unfeeling Populists and Republicans jeered and flouted
us. Then our blessed railway kermishen lost its linchpin
and the soulless corporations heaped coals of fire upon
our heads by reducing rates, thereby making our boasted
wisdom a byword and a reproach. The cyclone swooped
down upon us from Kansas and swiped our crops,
making our boasts that here was an Elysium beyond the
storm-belt sound as hollow as Adam's dream of Eden
after he was lifted over the garden wall. Still we bore up
and presented a bold, if not an unbroken front to a
carping world. But the vials of wrath were not yet
exhausted. Pandora's box had not yet emptied itself of
all its plagues. Our sorrow's crown of sorrow was yet to
come. It is here; our humiliation is accomplished, our
agony is complete. A lone highwayman has held up and
robbed a populous passenger train in Texas—in West
Texas, the rendezvous of the sure-enough bad man, who
catches catamounts and clips their claws,—who defies
whole barrels o' Jersey lightning and uses the bucking-broncho for his laughter, yea, his sport! Shades o' Ben
Thompson and Luke Short, has it come to this,—that a
rank stranger can lasso a Texas train, drive the
passengers under the seats, plunder them at his pleasure,
with no one to molest or make him afraid! Half a
hundred Texans trembling at sight of one gun were a
sight worth seeing,—and they did not even know it was
loaded! Gone is our ancient glory—our rep. is irretrievably
in the tureen. Henceforth when a pilgrim from the
pathless Southwest registers at an Eastern hotel the bell-boys will not fall over each other to do him honor as a
dime-novel hero, nor the gilded clerk insure his life before
politely requesting him to pay in advance. The last
lingering shadow of our greatness hath departed. The
tenderfoot will trample upon us, and the visiting capitalist
neglect to ask us up to the bar. The fair ladies of other
lands will no longer worship us as the picturesque
knights of a reckless but romantic chivalry. They will
remember that in a whole trainload of Texans there was
not one who would fight even on compulsion,—will
sweep by with frigid hauteur, leaving us to weep for the
days that are no more. Alas, poor Texas!
