"
"Ladies whose bright eyes
Rain influence."
"But who the limits of that power shall trace,
Which a brave people into life can bring,
Or hide at will, for freedom combating
By just revenge inflamed?"
For many years there had never been any doubt in the mind of
Robert Worth as to the ultimate destiny of Texas, though he was
by no means an adventurer, and had come into the beautiful
land by a sequence of natural and business-like events. He
was born in New York. In that city he studied his profession,
and in eighteen hundred and three began its practice in an
office near Contoit's Hotel, opposite the City Park. One day
he was summoned there to attend a sick man. His
patient proved to be Don Jaime Urrea, and the rich Mexican
grandee conceived a warm friendship for the young physician.
At that very time, France had just ceded to the United States
the territory of Louisiana, and its western boundary was a
subject about which Americans were then angrily disputing.
They asserted that it was the Rio Grande; but Spain, who
naturally did not want Americans so near her own territory,
denied the claim, and made the Sabine River the dividing line.
And as Spain had been the original possessor of Louisiana, she
considered herself authority on the subject.
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