Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 April 1877 — Sam Houston and the Ham. [ARTICLE]

Sam Houston and the Ham.

On a recent business trip to Houston I had for traveling companion a well-known merchant of this city, who told story after story of in Texas. One struck me as worth preserving. “ When my father first came here,” said the merchant, u he settled in Houston —then the Capital of Texas. I was put in a grocery and provision store under a very strict and parsimonious boss. One morning,.just as I had swept out, Tom, Gen. Houston’s body-servant, came into the stere. Looking round he spied a fine ham—a rard Mie in those days. Having asked the pride, he said he would take it and the President would call around and pay fofr ft." I felt proud of my sale, and called the attention of the boss to it as soon as he came in. “ ‘ Did you get the meflby?’ he asked, ; but President Houston is coming round to pay for it? f '* ss* ••‘President Houston—the dickens! Did Tom say he would see it paid!' No, sir.’ “ ‘Then you are a fool. Now, sir, you go straight to the President's kitchen and bring me that ham, unless Tom will say it shall be paid for? ' “I started off, very much crestfallen, and hot liking the job before me. But I resolutely walked into the President’s kitchen. Tom was there. < I saw my ham lying there, with a few slices out of it. and, seizing it, told Tom Unless he would undertake to see that the money was paid I must take It back. • " “ Tom cogitated awhile, and then said: ‘ Young man, take back your meat. The Gineral is a mixhty good master, but a mighty poor paymaster, and I don’t keer to involvjlate myself wjth hie debts.’ “.Thia was enough for me. I left with the ham in my hand. .. Going around to the gate, I had to pass the front door. There stood Gen. Houston, the President bf Texas, with a pocket-handkerchief in one hand and a toothpick in the other. ‘My little man,’ says hti, in his superb manner, ‘tell your'master I am under great obligations for a most delicious breakfast, and would pay him, but I really haven’t got the money. The fact is, young man, Texas is very poor, and, as ‘her President, I must share I ,her poverty.’ ” —Galweton (Texae) (for. Jy. Y. Sun. i , v i ■,'■'»»» - —The man who gets into office must do it by yanking somebody else out, and with the fecling.that some day he will in like manner be yanked.