He was one of the most observant of men in all matters affecting the rights of others; he was one of the least observant in all matters appertaining to himself. With a decided taste for dress, yet his actual knowledge of the kind of clothes worn by him from day to day was amusingly inexact, as the following incident shows: Before wearing out an only pair of trousers, the pioneer had indulged in the unusual luxury of a new pair. But as there was still considerable service to be got out of the old pair, he, like a prudent man, laid aside the new ones for future use. His wife, however, who managed all this part of the domestic business, determined, without consulting him, the morning when the new trousers should be donned. She made the necessary changes when her lord was in bed, putting the new in the place of the old. Garrison wore for several days the new trousers, thinking all the time that they were his old ones until his illusions in this regard were dispelled by an incident which cost him the former. Some poor wretch of a tramp, knocking in an evil hour at the pioneer's door and asking for clothes, decided the magnificent possessor of two pairs of trousers, to don his new ones and to pass the old ones on to the tramp. But when he communicated the transaction to his wife, she hoped, with a good deal of emphasis, that he had not given away the pair of breeches which he was wearing, for if he had she would beg to inform him that he had given away his best ones! But the pioneer's splendid indifference to _meum_ and _tuum_ where his own possessions were concerned was equal to the occasion. He got his compensation in the thought that his loss was another's gain. That, indeed, was not to be accounted loss which had gone to a brother-man whose needs were greater than his own. CHAPTER XVIII. THE TURNING OF A LONG LANE. Garrison's forecast of the future, directly after the annexation of Texas, proved singularly correct. Never, as at that moment, had the slave-power seemed so secure in its ascendency, yet never, at any previous period, was it so near its downfall. Freedom had reached that darkest hour just before dawn; and this, events were speedily to make clear. If the South could have trammeled up the consequences of annexation, secure, indeed, for a season, would it have held its political supremacy in America? But omnipotent as was the slave-power in the Government, it was not equal to this labor. In the great game, in which Texas was the stakes, Fate had, unawares, slipped into the seat between the gamesters with hands full of loaded dice. At the first throw the South got Texas, at the second the war with Mexico fell out, and at the third new national territory lay piled upon the boards.