Sixty or seventy years ago it was considered a great joke to chalk
up on any man's house-door, or on his trunk at a coaching-station,
the conspicuous letters "G. T. T." The laugh went round, and every
one who saw the inscription chuckled and said: "They've got it on
you, old hoss!" The three letters meant "gone to Texas"; and for
any man to go to Texas in those days meant his moral, mental, and
financial dilapidation. Either he had plunged into bankruptcy and
wished to begin life over again in a new world, or the sheriff had
a warrant for his arrest.

The very task of reaching Texas was a fearful one. Rivers that
overran their banks, fever-stricken lowlands where gaunt faces
peered out from moldering cabins, bottomless swamps where the mud
oozed greasily and where the alligator could be seen slowly moving
his repulsive form--all this stretched on for hundreds of miles to
horrify and sicken the emigrants who came toiling on foot or
struggling upon emaciated horses. Other daring pioneers came by
boat, running all manner of risks upon the swollen rivers. Still
others descended from the mountains of Tennessee and passed
through a more open country and with a greater certainty of self-
protection, because they were trained from childhood to wield the
rifle and the long sheath-knife.

It is odd enough to read, in the chronicles of those days, that
amid all this suffering and squalor there was drawn a strict line
between "the quality" and those who had no claim to be patricians.
"The quality" was made up of such emigrants as came from the more
civilized East, or who had slaves, or who dragged with them some