The hurly-burly is hushed into silence now. Good men and bad, gallant but mistaken heroes, and those who faltered not in the fiercest blowing of the terrible storm--the whole period has come and gone. Like the sudden "northers" peculiar to Texas, the tempest broke upon it and passed away, leaving its imperial expanse all the greener and more fruitful, as if enriched by the blood of so many of its noblest sons. But for my part, as I look back into the darkness of those days, the central figure of them all is that of the old governor sitting in his chair in the basement of the Capitol, the tumultuous convention in session overhead, sorrowfully meditating what it were best to do. As he sat a day came when the officer of the gathering up stairs summoned the old man three times to come forward and take the oath of allegiance, as governor, to the Confederacy. I remember as yesterday the call thrice repeated--"Sam Houston! Sam Houston! Sam Houston!" but the man sat silent, immovable, in his chair below, whittling steadily on. The pert lieutenant-governor stepped at last with brisk willingness upon the platform, and was sworn in to an official nothingness in Houston's place. Very early next morning, when the old man went as usual to his office, he found his seat occupied by his smirk successor, and there was nothing for him to do but to abandon his last hope of help from any quarter and retire. Withdrawing to his plantation, he died before the war ended, a Union man still. WILLIAM M. BAKER. THE MISTAKES OF TWO PEOPLE. It seemed an extraordinary chance which brought those two people together upon that dirty little Neapolitan steamer. But then any incident of our human lives, divorced from the chain of cause and effect that has been forging since the world began, would seem an extraordinary chance, just as this did, which really was not extraordinary at all. For the lady had been busy all winter in Rome copying in the Borghese Gallery, and it was not until she had found herself almost alone among the deserted rooms, whence all her companions of the year had fled before fear of the fever, that she had also sought some place where she could paint, and rest from painting when she would, the remainder of the summer. This and a second-class railway-ticket were what had brought her to Naples, where she had driven to the Mole and embarked upon the little steamer just five minutes before the gentleman, who had come from Rome in a first-class carriage, also stepped upon it. His appearance there, just upon that day of all days, might be called stranger than hers. For, really, there was no reason whatever for his being there that sleepy midsummer day. Indeed, reason had nothing whatever to do with it. It was brought about by something quite remote from reason--by an indescribable longing, which was perhaps, however, as unyielding a link in the chain of cause and effect--or of destiny, let us say--as any more visible and tangible one.