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On the unpicturesque eastern shore of
Tres Palacios bay, where the wire grass flats and the
gradually ascending land toward the bay each commingle,
and where mosquitoes and other insect and animal pests
of low degree abound in summer and winter alike, stands
a small, windowless ranch-house, that was once used by
Allen and Poole for their herders, when they shipped
cattle from Palacios. These premises afforded a home for
the Hon. William Prissisk for several years previous to
his death. The innermost recesses of this house were
accessible to all of nature’s elements—save sunshine;
rain, wind and hail penetrated with little hindrance,
and bleak northers howled and scurried through its rents
and openings with undiminished force. The only room was
fourteen by sixteen feet, with bare rafters and
studding; here and there daylight peered through the
roof; several of the decaying weatherboards had dropped
from their nailing at one end, and were convenient
openings for slinging out any household refuse. A box of
earth in the middle of the floor was the fireplace, from
which the smoke escaped through the roof in calm
weather, and wherever the wind drove it at other times.
From a nail in one of the studdings hung a strip of
rusty bacon rind; from another the vertebrae of a dried
fish; in one corner was a used-up cast-net; at another
place a two-gallon stone jug, with which the late tenant
had brought his water about two miles from a cattle
tank, and alongside the jug was a blue paper,
fourth-gross match box, which, from its inside
appearance, had contained very brown sugar. This about
concludes the inventory of the humble dwelling, as near
as I can now reproduce the scene. The odor from the
inside and the outdoor filth, even in the cold weather
of winter, was sickening. The bad smells, however, could
by retreating from this “dread abode,” be left behind;
but the moral sensibilities were affected by a more
serious subject beyond a temporary shock, for there,
within a few feet of the water jug, lay the lifeless
corpse of William Prissisk on his couch, which consisted
of prairie hay spread on the bare floor; over that was
an old sail for a sheet; a piece of drift-wood served
for a pillow; his lifeless body was clad in filthy
summer wear, and was partly covered with an old brown
blanket. Age, exposure and starvation combined had,
after many years, extinguished his restive, restless
life, and, according to his belief, his every attribute.
After this fashion lived William
Prissick, and there he miserably died during the very
inclement weather in the early part of the year 1881,
destitute, uncared for and unattended. But during his
life he asked no favors from anyone, and died as he had
lived, in the bay, lay his water-logged skiff-boat, tied
to a stake on the shore; the stump of a mast was still
standing, but there was no rigging or other appliances
on board. She was named the Never Sweat, and was now,
like her master, at the end of her last voyage. A few
feet from the door was a large heap of oyster shells and
the remains of crabs and fish, which were the refuse
portions of Mr. Prissick’s edibles, and had accumulated
in the same way that the prehistoric man left his sign
in the kitchen middins.
Mr. Prissick was born in County
Shropshire, England at his father’s farm, called Polmer,
seven miles from Shrewsburg, towards Wales, in 1805. His
mother’s maiden name was Weaver, and she was Welsch.
Young Prissick received a good common and scientific
education, and at the age of twenty-one he was
apprenticed to a large mercantile establishment in
Liverpool. The third year of his apprenticeship he was
sent as supercargo in the ship Chelydrea, D. Smale,
master, to the African gold coast, where he remained six
months. In his absence his father moved to Seacomb.
During his apprenticeship he married and had one son;
and in 1831, on account of incompatibility between
himself and his wife, he abandoned her and his child,
came to America and purchased real estate in that
portion of Ohio then called the Western Reserve, where
he lived until 1834; and in the early part of the year
he went back to England for the purpose of settling up
his family affairs, in which settlement he conveyed to
his son and only heir a large tract of land in
Australia. On account of troubles with his Ohio
neighbors, he immediately, on his return, sold out his
estate and came to Eastern Texas the same year and
joined Captain Cheshire’s company of soldiers. He
received a headright to one league of land in Vehlin’s
Colony, and was for several years engaged in surveying
for Gen. T. J. Chambers, by whom he was much commended
for his skill and scientific knowledge as a surveyor. In
the summer of 1841 he suddenly and unheralded appeared
in Matagorda.
“His figure,
Both of visage and of stature,
Is lothly and maigracious.”
He was about six feet one inch in
height, long, lank-bodied, small limbed, dark skinned,
with little flesh and much muscle, and in looks and
habits more of an Arab than a European. His face as
rigid and sharp cut as though it had been whittled out
of an old live oak and his small piercing dark-gray eyes
indicated Moorish blood, which he claimed to
possess.During the summer weather he invariably slept
out of doors, with his head and upper part wrapped in an
old blanket, and in winter he sought shelter in some
deserted building. Mr. Prissick was an excellent
mathematician, knew something of every science and
theory, and talked intelligently, but dogmatically, on
all subjects, and expressed his ideas fluently and
lucidly. When interested, he was a great talker, and it
mattered not to him whether the subjects were grave or
gay, moral or immoral., he talked with the same
earnestness; and not withstanding the filth of his
person and his presumptuous egotism, he was always
listened to with attention, even by strangers.
This man was an enigma, a
self-contradiction, a man beside himself; not by any
means crazy, as we generally understand that term, but
“Full of quips
and cranks and wanton wiles,”
and had a bee in his bonnet, as the
Scotchman would say. The most dire accidents and
misfortunes that human beings are liable to, when they
happened in his presence, were the sources to him of
unseemly puns and ribald jokes, while his own ill luck
was treated in the same way. On the other hand, his
sympathy was frequently excited towards the afflicted,
in which case he freely contributed his money and time
for the relief of human distress without any regard for
his own necessities. With educational acquirements and
natural mental capacities fitting him for employments
above manual labor, he was generally engaged in callings
which required very little save physical strength and
endurance, such as chopping wood and fishing; he was
always clothed in the most flimsy, cheap and ill-fitting
garments for summer and winter, and withstood the
changes and inclemency of the seasons with the stolid
indifference of a Digger Indian. He was no respector of
persons, times or places; his intercourse with the high
and with the lowly was on the same independent plane.
He frequently annoyed and angered
sober people by his rude remarks; but he had no enemies,
neither had he any particular friends. The indifference
did not arise from his worthlessness, because in many
ways he was a very useful member of society, but from
his utter disregard of the feelings of others and his
contempt for the conventionalities of civilized beings.
His Religious
Belief.
He had doubts about a future state of
rewards and punishments, but there were no doubts in his
mind about the falsity of the Christian religion.
Voltaire and Rousseau were shining lights, and Tom Paine
was his apostle par excellence. One day Mr. Prissick got
into a warm religious discussion with an old-fashioned
Baptist preacher, and had riled him considerably by some
sacrilegious remarks, when the good brother said: “Once
on a time the god Jupiter gave notice that on a certain
day he would distribute to mortals souls and gizzards;
that when Mr. Prissick arrived the souls had all been
taken and he was obliged to accept a gizzard,” which was
the cause of his waywardness.
His Advent to
Matagorda
On the first appearance of this
strange man in Matagorda he was quite a mystery and from
his apparently destitute condition, which contrasted
with his independent manner and free, intelligent
conversation, the citizens became curious about his
private history, but his he carefully concealed from all
inquirers. The first seen of him at this place was on a
warm summer’s day when he came into a store with a large
catfish attached to a fishline in his hand; he threw the
fish on the clean counter, and lay down on the floor,
leaning his head against a partition wall; not
apparently from fatigue; but his natural position of
comfortable repose. In this position he commenced an
animated discussion with one of the store attendant on
the geology of the Colorado Valley, its tertiary
formations and cocene period, from which he branched off
to Dr. Samuel Johnson and pleonasm, and ended the two
hours’ discourse, with a dissertation on cat fish and
the best bait to catch them with. Never during the whole
time did he ask one question, but he promptly made
answers to the interrogatories of his nonplused
listeners, and then dropped off to a comfortable sleep.
It was quite apparent that he had diligently studied
Nature’s laws and the effects thereof, and reasoned from
no theories but his own. The storekeeper had been so
absorbed by the strange visitor, not knowing whether he
was from above or below, that he had allowed the
writhing, gasping catfish to beslime his counter, until
Mr. Prissick awoke from his soft repose and took it
away. Mr. Prissick, after a few days, procured an old
sail-boat and followed fishing and oystering for several
months, with rather a poor pecuniary success, however as
he knew very little about the managing of a sailing
craft, and as the prevailing winds in summer are
southeast and ahead in coming from his fishing grounds,
he usually poled into shoal water and waded his boat to
tow. He was known to start frequently on a week’s
fishing expedition without provisions or fresh water and
depended entirely on oysters and roasted fish for food,
and chance pools of brackish water to quench his thirst.
For several of his first years in and
about Matagorda he was miserly in his habits and saved
every cent that came to his hands, excepting the merest
trifles for food and raiment. His clothes, which were
always of the cheapest fabric and most uncouth styles
were worn unchanged until time and rough usage wasted
them to a scant covering of his form, and not till he
became loathsomely filthy would he recloth himself. His
bedding was in unison with his wardrobe, and so scant
that one small horse blanket, or a bit of old sail, and
a little moss in a gunny bag sufficed for his repose.
Mr. Prissick may have though with Rousseau: “Man is
never less miserable than when he appears to be deprived
of everything.” This dispensing with bodily comforts to
a degree that would have been cruelty, if not disease
and death, to any other human being was not from extreme
carelessness and a natural indifference to the
requirements of civilized life. With the palate and
stomach of an ostrich, and bones and muscles to match,
he ws insensible to all manner of discomfort. But within
this filthy uncouth form was a vivid, refined and
cultivated intellect which belied its squalid tenement,
and verified what Pythagoras taught about
metempsychosis. When talking or reading, his mind was
absorbed in the subject to such a degree that, if he
said or did anything outside of that subject, it was
through mechanical volition. One cold winter night when
he was holding forth over a bar-room stove to a party of
listeners, one of them voluntarily handed him a
half-pint tumbler nearly full of French Brancy, and told
him to drink. Mr. Prissick talked and drank until he had
finished the whole, and left for his sleeping den; but
before the got there the effects of the branded grounded
him, and he lay in the prairie all night exposed to the
norther, but with no injurious effect. The next morning
he declared that he had been drugged, and never could be
convinced that he had drunk more than an ordinary dram;
but he was never at any time addicted to the intemperate
use or even the common use of ardent spirits.
By fishing, wood-chopping and
surveying and other odd jobs of muscle and brain, Mr.
Prissick, in the course of about four years, had
accumulated and saved over $200 in hard earned money,
which he secured not by bond or mortgage, but in large
mouthed glass cherry bottles, and buried them in the
ground in a secluded place. He said that if he did not
increase his pelt in the most approved financial manner,
he was never troubled about the insolvency of debtors.
In order that luxury should not be extravagantly used,
he would one in several months buy 50 cents worth of
cheap brown sugar, and with much time and trouble put it
into a narrow mouthed tin can canister, such as are used
by grocers to retail gunpowder from; and if it took a
long time to get it into the tin vessel it was a far
more tedious job to get it out.
Another of this strange man’s
peculiarities was, when he went to the country on a
surveying expedition, or other business, no matter how
great the distance of how bad the woods, he generally
made the trip on foot, and if he took a riding horse
along he walked and led his horse the greater part of
the way; on starting he struck a bee line for his
destination, and no more deviated from a straight course
than Norway rats when they seek a new home. When riding
on horseback his motions appeared most grotesque, and
were likened to an unfledged bird vainly trying to fly.
His
Disinterested Follly.
In about the year 1845 a widow, an
old colonist, died in Matagorda, leaving a large stock
of cattle and real estate and slaves; as heir, a
daughter of tender years. The disposition of this estate
and the care of the orphan evolved on Mr. Prissick, who
was employed in the business for several years. During
this time he had also been appointed tax collector of
Matagorda county, to fill a vacancy in that office. The
affairs of the dead widow’s estate prospered in his
hands and waxed exceedingly, but the county finances
waned in the same portion, and when he came to account
and settle for the taxes collected, he was not only
indebted to the county $1600, but had used up all of his
own private funds in paying the expenses and carrying on
the business of the estate, without having made a single
charge against the trust in his own favor. He had by his
folly enriched the estate confided to his care,
jeopardized the surities on his tax bond and bankrupted
himself. In order to pay up his official deficit to the
county, he sold his headright league of land in Houston
county for $1600. One of his idiosyncracies was, when
entrusted with the business of two or more persons, he
selected one as a favorite and made all others
subservient and contributory to that one, and even
sacrificed his own time and money to promote the object
of his choice as freely as he did that tax fund. He was
subsequently intrusted with other public and private
business but he invariably managed the affairs of others
to his loss and their gain.
Estranged
From His Early Connections.
He never communicated with his
relatives in England, and always endeavored to keep his
place of abode secret from them; but they through the
British Consul, discovered his hiding-place, and in 1842
sent out in care of one Dr. Duck, on a British vessel,
to Matagorda Bay, several trunks and boxes with valuable
clothing, books and family relicks. As soon as the
vessel arrived at Matagorda anchorage, Dr. Duck
dispatched a note to Mr. Prissick, informing him of his
charge, and requesting him to come on board and receive
the goods. Some of the young men about town hearing
about the circumstances, started the report which came
to Mr. Prissick’s ears, that his English wife was on
board the vessel; this agitated him so much that he fled
to the woods and remained there two weeks. During his
absence the vessel sailed away to Port Lavaca, and
Prissick’s freight was stored in the custom house, where
moisture and rust do corrupt and thieves do occasionally
break in and steal; at any rate Mr. Prissick never
received any of the contents of said trunk and boxes.
Cistern
Marshall the Discoverer of Gold in California.
In 1842 Annah Marshall, the original
discoverer of gold at Sutter’s flume, came to Matagorda
county and lived on the west side of the Colorado river,
with Mr. Vandeveer. He was a suspicious, jealous sort of
human formation, with much Yankee ingenuity. Having
heard in his New England home that Texas was a very dry
country, he conceived the idea of storing the water from
the clouds for domestic purposes, by digging holes in
the ground and plastering them over with mortar. This
kind of cistern may answer in some countries, but from
the nature of the soil they soon cracked and let the
water out. From the circumstances, he gained the
sobriquet of “Cistern Marshall,” and was very little
known by his sobriquet or prefix. One day he rowed over
the river from Vandeveer’s to Matagorda, and purchased
twelve hams, which he sent down to his skiff at the
river landing by Bill Hailey, the drayman, who instead
of carrying the freight on board like a prudent carrier,
tossed the pieces one by one from his dray into the
boat, and in doing so missed his mark once by a little
too much momentum, and the ham fell into the river where
the water was ten feet or more. Hailey then with a long
pole groped around in the water for the magnificent
freight, but meeting no encouragement gave up the search
and drove back to town, where he reported correct
delivery and collected his drayage from Marshall. Mr.
Prissick was during the whole of this time lying in the
bottom of his leaky hulk, which was tied to the bank a
few feet above Marshall’s and he say how Hailey had
managed the loading. When Marshall arrived at
Vandeveer’s and unloaded his hams, he found only eleven,
being one short of his invoice. On thinking over the
subject, he recollected that there was no other boat at
the Matagorda landing save Prissick’s, and he came to
the reasonable conclusion that the outward appearance
and apparent circumstances of the strange man, ran
conclusive evidence of his bad character, and that the
theft of a single ham by such a looking outcast would be
one of his least crimes. Marshall had frequently seen
Prissick about the landing at Matagorda, and had formed
his estimate according to New England notions.
When he next came to Matagorda, he
accused Mr. Prissick of stealing his ham, and demanded
restitution of him, but Mr. Prissick, without denying
the insulting charge, or making any other answer, merely
laughed in his face. Marshall was terribly angered and
aimed a heavy righthander at Prissick’s head, which the
latter fenced off with his left hand, and as quick as
thought gave him a blow with each fist, which instantly
grounded the cistern man, and wonderfully humbled his
pride; while prostrate he even agreed that he had not
lost a ham, or even a piece of meat of any kind, and
never expected to. But after he had got well through
with his first painful experience, and brushed and
washed himself off, he found that, added to his sense of
loss, he had acquired other new and disagreeable
sensations, as shame and humiliation at being whipped
and browbeaten by a rag-muffin, and pain from the blows.
He quickly made up his mind that it was waste of time
and breath to any longer discuss the disagreeable
subject with Mr. Prissick, and he also thought that he
could more satisfactorily vindicate his cause with Bill;
so he goes, sore and bruised as he was, straight to the
drayman, and accuses him of stealing his ham with malice
aforethought. This was rather brash talk for a
vanquished man, and so thought Bill Hailey, and so he
expressed himself in language not appropriate for
tea-table or church. Marshall made an ineffective effort
to spoil Bill Hailey’s frontis peace, but before the
well-intended blow had quite reached its destination, or
anywhere else in particular the unyielding ground had
arrested his sudden descent, and Bill was working away
on the prostrate cistern builder with his two ugly
fists. In due time Mr. Prissick who had been witness to
the scene, came up and rescued Marshall, who didn’t save
his bacon and had lost his prestige as a fighter.
Marshall, soon after the foregoing Texas experience,
left Matagorda for the Pacific coast, and our loss was
his gain, for he has been rewarded for his discovery of
gold at Sutter’s mill, with a respectable annual pension
by the State of California, and now enjoys prosperity at
his home in the Sacramento Valley, and several
half-filled circular holes in the earth with crumbling
mortar attached to their sides are the only existing
evidences that Annah Marshall, the gold-finder, ever
developed anything in Matagorda.
Grom the time Mr. Prissick came to
Matagorda until emancipation he was a bold and outspoken
abolitionist, and was always opposed to public opinion
on that subject, but somehow he passed along unmolested
at times when any other man would have suffered for like
temerity. During the Civil War, as a natural sequence,
he was a fearless advocate of the Union cause, and
several times jeopardized his personal safety by his
indiscretion. After the fighting had commenced he
followed the movements of the commanding armies, from
the published reports and other sources; and announced
the results with the precision of a military commander.
He foretold in 1861 the result of the war, and he then
said that it would not continue over four years.
A Time of
Peril.
In the year 1862, when the war
excitement was intense, and even moderate Confederates
were accused of disloyalty, Mr. Prissick made himself
unusually obnoxious by denouncing and refusing to pay a
Confederate war tax which he, as the agent of another
person’s property, was called upon for. It was intimated
to him by a well-wisher that in immediate seclusion
could he only expect personal safety, and he knew that
by the popular sentiment he had been adjudged guilty of
many other acts of disloyalty besides his refusal to pay
the tax, and concluded that a timely retreat was the
proper movement. So one day, just before sundown, he
mounted his horse, Old Ball, and took a circuitous route
from Matagorda to Hill’s Ferry on Peyton’s Creek. When
he arrived there it was sufficiently dusk to make the
outlines of all distant objects indistinct. He hallooed
lustily for the ferryman, and in a few moments he
perceived a tall human form, who seemed to have a long
rifle in its hand, and the figure leisurely approached
the ferry. It seemed to the excited fancy of Mr.
Prissick to be aiming a charge into the man-killer. Mr.
Prissick was greatly excited by the hostile appearances
in his front, and came to the conclusion that he had
been outflanked by the enemy. His knowledge of military
science suggested a hasty retreat with the least
possible portion of his force exposed to the enemy, and
the exposed parts as well protected from attach as
circumstances and materials would admit. Mr. Prissick
recognized that strategy was the art of war, and that
only by strategy could he outmaneuver the advancing foe.
He stripped the Mexican saddle from Old Ball in a
twinkling, and bending himself toward the ground, so
that his body and legs formed a right angle, he held the
old saddle against his supposed enemies in the way as a
shield, and retreated in quick time to a near gulley,
where he lay and listened for hostilities until near
daylight, and from thence, in the haze of the early
morning, he fled to the Colorado timber, and secreted
himself for nearly a week; in the meantime his
unencumbered horse had found his accustomed prairie
range. It turned out that Mr. Hall, the owner of the
ferry, was absent; that his stalwart daughter had
answered Mr. Prissick’s call to be ferried over, and
that she at the moment held in one hand a knife, and in
the other a lusty sugar-cane from which she was deftly
stripping the sweet rind as she walked toward the ferry.
This young Texas girl and these harmless objects were
magnified through the nervousness and fear of Mr.
Prissick into a hostile foe, prepared for and intent on
murder.
As a
Legislator.
Mr. Prissick, from having been an
abolitionist before the war and a prominent and active
Union man during the four years of internecine strife,
naturally, after emancipation, became the freedman’s
friend and counselor and was elected by their vote as
one of the representatives to the Twelfth Legislature
from the Twelfth District. Of course after his election
to this distinguished position, and before going to
Austin, he realized the necessity of brushing up; he
shed his much depreciated raiment and reclad his person
in a suit of “Cheap John” store clothes of various
stripes and hues; the imitation cottonade pantaloons
were six inches too short at the lower end; his coat of
linsy-woolsey was built for a different model, and the
scant sleeves reached but a short way below the
legislator’s elbows, and exposed much of his thin dingy
arms, to which his dirty hands added no grace. For under
linen, a blue hicory shirt was his selection, and his
shoes had been intended for plantation wear, and were
therefore unsightly and too large; his hat was a coarse,
lowly constructed, straw concern, also too capacious,
and to diminish its capacity he wore a red cotton
bandanna, thrust in a wad between his skull and the hat
crown, which made his head appear to his constituents
much like the mental dome of Daniel Webster. A short
time before the first session of the Twelfth Legislature
he started from Matagorda for Austin on the outside of a
sorry old horse and traveled by by-ways and cross-roads
most of the distance on foot, leading his horse and
camping out at night. He was a punctual member of that
august body of law-makers, and performed much honest
labor on committees; and although in dress and manner
uncouth, was respected for his stern integrity and
intelligence on all subjects by his colleagues. After
adjournment of the session, he returned to Matagorda by
crossroads and by cowpaths, walking and leading his
horse, as was his want on a journey. At some
out-of-the-way place midway between Matagorda and Austin
he met a dozen of his constituents of whom, for talk
sake he turned a distance from the high road; the men
gazed with amazement, and at length, said, “Bees your
name Mr. Prissick, from Matagordy?” Mr. Prissick
answered, “Yes, how did you know me?” To which the
German citizen said, “I been read ‘bout you in Mr.
Flake’s newspaper, and I knowed you so soon I sot my
eyes on you.” “Dot is Mr. Prissick,” I says to myself.
“My gracious, Mr. Prissick, how you find yourself?” This
illustrates the unmistakableness of the strange man’s
identity, if once seen or heard of. When Mr. Prissick
left Austin he left undrawn the whole pay as a
representative, amounting to about $500.
His Seven
Years Travels
In September 1871, Mr. Prissick left
Matagorda, ostensibly for the purpose of attending as a
member of the second session of the Twelfth Legislature,
but in fact he struck off in the uninhabited region of
Northwestern Texas, where he met with a fellow
countryman named Gilbert, and they travelled leisurely
about in that wild country for months, examining and
studying the geology, fauna, and botany, lying loose
about, and hunting for their daily provender. At the
Pack Saddle mountains, Mr. Prissick and his co-partner
Gilbert dissolved companionship and the latter with his
old horse, gun, ammunition, small bag of salt and
package of matches, started for Denver, Colorado, where
he safely arrived in good condition after several
months, having walked nearly al the way and subsisted on
the small game that he killed with his gun. At Denver he
discharged his horse and took the more expeditious mode
of travel by rail.
From Denver he went to Salt Lake
City, and remained among the Mormons two months. From
thence he went to the Pacific coast, and arrived in San
Francisco without money, and among strangers; but he
soon replenished his purse by teaching mathematics in a
private class of students. He also speculated in a small
way in stocks, took risks at the gambling tables, bought
the fruit of a vineyard on credit and manufactured it
into wine and was altogether prosperous in his novel
adventures. After two years sojourn in San Francisco and
vicinity, he took passage on a British steamer for
Australia in search of his son, who had married on
coming of age and settled on the tract of land which his
father had conveyed to him. He landed at Sidney and from
thence he traveled into the southern part of Central
Australia, and near Lake Forrens he found his son’s
grave; also the last resting place of his son’s wife and
their two children. As to what had become of his son’s
estate he made no inquiry. He then sailed to the Figi
Islands, to Borneo, China, and to Japan, and after an
absence of three years in these countries returned to
the Pacific coast. He then invested a few hundred
dollars in suitable merchandise and went in a sailing
vessel to the Sandwich Islands. There he remained six
months, trading with the natives, studying their
peculiar habits and names and exploring the wonderful
volcanoes in that group.
During all the time no tiding had
been heard of Mr. Prissick by his Texas friends and
acquaintances, and he was presumed to be dead. His
supposed lifeless body had several times been found, and
administration on his estate for the purpose of
realizing his legislative dues had been attempted. It is
said that in such a case the courts hold that seven
years absence is prime facie evidence of the absentee’s
death. After over seven years of unexplained absence,
Mr. Prissick suddenly appeared in Austin, collected the
money due him from the State, obtained his veteran
pension bonds, and arrived at his old Matagorda home in
robust health and spirits, unchanged in features, and
with $3000 in his pocket. But this amount of money,
which with prudence would have long supplied his humble
wants, was wasted on frivolous objects, or lost by
loaning to irresponsible persons. He existed during the
last earthly turmoil in extreme poverty, and after he
had outlived his money and his usefulness, he died
uncared for like an unowned beast, in that desolate
hovel on Tres Palacios Bay. Much of good and no little
of evil were inherent in the nature of this man, but I
judge that the various benefits and kindly acts
conferred by him on his fellow-creatures in distress and
under other circumstances, far outweigh all the bad
effects of his obnoxious precepts and examples.
Galveston Weekly News, January 12, 1882
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