But the independent, honest eccentric had reached the end of his public career. In the next congressional election he was beaten by tricks such as would not be tolerated at this time. One of these devices was to announce fictitiously a large number of public meetings in Crockett’s name on the same day. When he failed to appear, as announced, speakers of the Jackson party, who would always arrange to be present, denounced Crockett as afraid to face his constituents upon his “treacherous and corrupt record in Congress.” The defeat was a surprise to him; more, it almost broke his heart. He wrote, manfully, but pathetically, “I have suffered myself to be politically sacrificed to save my country from ruin and disgrace.” I may add, like the man in the play, “Crockett’s occupation’s gone.” Shortly after he made a farewell address to his constituents, into which he compressed a good deal of plain speaking, or as he says, “I put the ingredients in the cup pretty strong, I tell you: and I concluded by telling them that I was done with politics for the present, and that they might all go to hell and I would go to Texas.” “When I returned home,” he adds, “I felt sort of cast down at the change that had taken place in my fortunes; sorrow, it is said, will make even an oyster feel poetical. Such was my state of feeling that I began to fancy myself inspired; so I took my pen in hand, and as usual, I went ahead.” This is CROCKETT’S FAREWELL TO HOME. “Farewell to the mountains whose mazes to me Were more beautiful far than Eden could be; No fruit was forbidden, but Nature had spread Her bountiful board, and her children were fed. The hills were our garners—our herds wildly grew And Nature was shepherd and husbandman too. I felt like a monarch, yet thought like a man, As I thanked the Great Giver, and worshiped his plan. “The home I forsake where my offspring arose; The graves I forsake where my children repose. The home I redeemed from the savage and wild; The home I have loved as a father his child; The corn that I planted, the fields that I cleared, The flocks that I raised, and the cabin I reared; The wife of my bosom—Farewell to ye all! In the land of the stranger I rise or I fall. “Farewell to my country! I fought for thee well, When the savage rushed forth like the demons from hell. In peace or in war I have stood by thy side— My country, for thee I have lived, would have died! But I am cast off, my career now is run, And I wander abroad like the prodigal son— Where the wild savage roves, and the broad prairies spread, The fallen—despised—will again go ahead.” We can not follow our hero—for he was a moral hero—in his adventures while going across the country to Texas. Only one incident have we room for. On the way he rode apace with a circuit preacher, a man not less a hardy adventurer than himself. He narrates this: