On March 2, 1863, Houston was seventy, and in response to an ovation in his own city of Houston, he made a short, broken little speech. It was his last public effort, and from it he went back home to Huntsville, to die. His last days were spent in incessant and heart-broken prayers for his country and for his family; and on July 26, 1863, three weeks after the fall of Vicksburg, he breathed his last to the words "_Texas! Texas!_" So honestly and unselfishly had this great man lived that he died in poverty, needing many comforts; this hero, who by his valor and statesmanship had increased the territory of the United States by more than _eight hundred thousand square miles_, or about the equivalent of _the thirteen original States_! But the splendor of his name is not to be touched by such an accident as poverty; to the people of Texas, Houston will ever be a beloved memory; and on the Roll of Fame he shines forth, the noblest, the most princely, the most picturesque and chivalrous character in American history. [Signature of the author.] WINFIELD SCOTT[8] By HON. THEODORE ROOSEVELT (1786-1866) [Footnote 8: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.] [Illustration: Winfield Scott. [TN]] Winfield Scott was born at Petersburg, Virginia, on June 13, 1786. His father was a gallant Revolutionary soldier, his mother one of the well-known Virginia family of Masons. He attended the schools in his neighborhood, and graduated at the then famous college of William and Mary; and upon graduation began his career as a lawyer. All his tastes were military, however, and in 1807 he joined a volunteer organization to watch the coasts, which were menaced by the British frigates; there being then great excitement over the Leopard and Chesapeake affair. When this flurry subsided he went down to practice in South Carolina. Soon after his arrival there was another alarm of war, and back went Scott post-haste for Washington, again abandoning his law, with the hope of getting a commission in the army. Yet again, in 1808, the chances of war once more retiring to the background, he tried his fortune at the bar, this time in Virginia. Alarms of war were frequent during the next four years, however, and Scott rigidly confined his practice as a lawyer to the intervals when it was not deemed possible that there could be danger from abroad.