Dallas

“ Dallas presently, “that it is so much less generous and noble than it imagines itself to be. It’s the man, only, who frames the new code and the man, only, who is to enlarge himself and run two or three loves abreast.” ”

“ To be strapped in a mining camp, for instance, was no more than a mild embarrassment. But to find oneself thirty-eight years old, friendless and without funds in a city the size of Dallas—well, that was more than an adventure, and it afforded a sort of excitement that he believed he could very well do without. Dallas was no open-handed frontier town; it was a small New York, where life is settled, where men are suspicious, and where fortunes are slow in the making. He wondered now if hard, fast living had robbed him of the punch to make a new beginning ”

“ It was in the library that he and May had always discussed the future of the children: the studies of Dallas and his young brother Bill, Mary's incurable indifference to "accomplishments," and passion for sport and philanthropy, and the vague leanings toward "art" which had finally landed the restless and curious Dallas in the office of a rising New York architect.
The young men nowadays were emancipating themselves from the law and business and taking up all sorts of new things. ”

“ As George Dallas turned from the broad smooth carriage-way, and went wandering over the green elastic turf of the carefully kept park, winding in and out through the boles of the grand old trees, treading now on a tender twig, again on a wild flower, now startling from her nest a brooding lark, anon stopping to listen to a burst of melody from some songster free from domestic cares, he was hardly recognizable as the man who had sat listening to Philip Deane's hard worldly talk at the Strand tavern the day before. ”

“ It is fitting that these two symbols of Dallas progress are united in the sponsorship of this meeting, for they represent the best qualities, I am told, of leadership and learning in this city — and leadership and learning are indispensable to each other. ”

“ Dallas was in 1900 the third city in population and the most important railway centre in Texas. It is a shipping centre for a large wheat, fruit and cotton-raising region, and the principal jobbing market for northern Texas, Oklahoma and part of Louisiana, and the biggest distributing point for agricultural machinery in the South-west. It is a livestock market, and one of the chief centres in the United States for the manufacture of saddlery and leather goods, and of cotton-gin machinery. ”

“ The distant hills rose like so many shrouded spectres over the dark and melancholy sea—their heads enveloped in broken wreaths of livid cloud; nature lay dead; and the very firmament, blackened with tempest, seemed a huge burial vault. The wind shrieked and wailed like an unhappy spirit among the turrets and chimneys of the old castle. Dallas undid the covering of the shot-hole that looked down on the manse, and then hastily shutting it, flung himself on his bed, where he lay with his face folded in the bedclothes. ”

“ At Dallas the scenery becomes much more rugged, and thence to Ouray, and Silverton, which is twenty miles from Ironton, the landscape is tumultuous; for nature is here in strange derangement, not to say chaotic dismemberment. It appeared an impossible feat to connect Ouray and Ironton by a stage-road, so tempestuously craggy is the interval, rent as it is by mighty chasm and spurred by amazing peaks of stones piled up into vast pyramids of confusion. ”

“ There is no lack of the right material, but it wants just a little stirring, and is useless for want of it. It is no time, Dallas, to be loitering away life when a bright prospect of honourable ambition and extensive usefulness is opening full before you. Wot you not that our neighbour the bishop, now a worn-out old man, has been confined to his room for the last week? And should my cousin of Tarbat and myself agree in recommending a successor, as we unquestionably shall, where think you lies the influence powerful enough to thwart us? ”

“ DALLAS, a city and county-seat of Dallas co., Tex.; on the Trinity River, and the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fé, the Houston and Texas Central, the Missouri, Kansas and Texas, the Texas and Pacific, Chicago, Rock Island and Gulf, the St. Louis Southwestern, the St. Louis and San Francisco, and other railroads; 32 miles E. of Fort Worth. It is the metropolis of N. Texas, and although comparatively a young city, is well laid out and substantially built. ”

“ Dallas always has a friendly word and a welcome for me. I have watched his business development during the past twenty-eight years, and it is no exaggeration when I say that he stands in the front rank among the successful growers of the country. ”

“ When the railroad had missed Dallas and struck Gregory and the other two government townsites, Dallas was apparently doomed, and in a few months most of the business men had gone, and the business buildings, etc., had been moved to Gregory. This town, because of the fact that it was only five miles from the next county line—the county that had been opened and which contained the land that Jean Baptiste had secured for his relatives and bride—was, for a time, expected to become the terminus. ”

“ Dallas had begged her to play. Human hearts are certainly strange things. What were the Gainsboroughs to Miss Betty Frere? Nothing in the world, half an hour before; now? Now there was a vague suspicion of an enemy somewhere; a scent of rivalry in the air; an immediate rising of partisanship. Were these the people of whom Mrs. Dallas was afraid? against whom she craved help? She should have help. Was it not even a meritorious thing, to withdraw a young man from untoward influences, and keep him in the path marked out by his mother?
Miss Frere scented a battle like Job's war-horse. ”

“ Dallas proceeded to remedy the damage wrought by her tears, working dexterously with various little sticks and tubes, without any attempt at concealment, apparently without the slightest self-consciousness, although just beside her a prim, school-teacherish-looking little woman, middle-aged, observed her operations with interest. ”

“ It was an old room on which George Dallas looked--an old room with panelled walls, surmounted by a curious carved frieze and stuccoed roof, and hung round with family portraits, which gave it a certain grim and stern air, and made the gay hothouse flowers, with which it was lavishly decorated, seem out of keeping. Immediately opposite the window stood the entrance door, wide open, and flanked by the usual bevy of young men, who, from laziness or bashfulness, take some time to screw their courage up to dancing-point. ”

“ I wish I could have stayed a few days longer and seen just what would have happened when that woman appeared on the scene."
"What's the woman's story?"
"I don't know. I never heard of her before. Dallas is her name, from Boston."
"Poor girl. It's like having a ball and chain around her ankle to be obliged to drag a woman like that after her wherever she goes." ”

“ To Dallas, the spring brought renewed courage—and a vague longing. With the first mild evenings, she took to [Pg 184] venturing out, wrapped in her long cloak, for a lonely walk. In her love of the gloaming, she was like a wild thing. From birth, the twilights of the mesa had proved irresistible. When she was a child they soothed her little troubles; in womanhood, if sorrow pressed heavily, they brought her strength. The half light, the soft air, and the lack of sound were balm to her spirit.
Nightly she strayed up the coulée, eastward, south, or toward the river ”

“ Dallas’s head under the water.
“O! O! O! Oh!—hech! ech!” cried Mr. Dallas, panting for breath; “I’m a dead man! I’m a dead man! Oh, Lord forgie me for sellin’ pastes for precious stanes.”
“Come! is that all?” cried the Pensassenach, shaking him again.
“Hae mercy on me for sellin’ rock crystal for diamunts,” cried Dallas.
“Come! out with it all!” said the Pensassenach.
“Oh! Och! Forgie me for sellin’ bits o’ ayster shells for pearls,” cried Dallas again, “and [61] pinchbeck for gold; and watches wi’ worn out auld warks for new anes.”
“Come! nothing else to confess?” said the Pensassenach. ”

“ He brought up short and wrung himself out of her grasp. "Th' Fort! th' Fort! th' Fort!" he repeated in a frenzy. "Lawd-a-mighty, Dallas, y' make me sick!"
"It's Indians," she replied steadily. "They're coming too near to be comfortable. We got to have help."
He raised his fists and shook them. "Help an' fiddlesticks!" he blustered. "Thet ain't no Injuns! It's thet Shanty Town blackleg a-tryin' t' skeer us. Go look at th' groun'—go look at th' groun', Ah say. See if they's moccasin tracks thereabout. Ah bet y' won't fin' any!" He turned back to the scattered splinters, pulling Dallas after him. ”

“ He had no forgiveness, no charity, for his father. He told his mother and his older sister Fanny that he wished they could dispose of the ruined thing his father had made of the Dallas reputation as easily as they could dispose of the ruined thing he had made of his body. But no, the reputation they must wear tied round their necks for everybody to see, and stare at, and keep away from. Obliged as he was to bear his father's name (why had his parents handicapped him thus?) he could never hope to succeed in any large way, he said; for who would ever trust a man with the name of Stephen Dallas? ”

“ And did I nurse him and feed him and——"
"Thalia, Thalia!" Dallas groaned. "Stop it! Oh, my dear, don't you see how hard you are making it for me?"
She turned her lurid eyes to his.
"And don't you suppose that you are making it hard for me, and have been right along, with your everlasting talk of James, James, James! Oh, Dallas, Dallas, it is you that I love! Just you, you, you! I have never loved anybody else! I shall never love any one else! Oh, my dear, my dear!" She began to sob, and her body swayed back and forth and threw dancing shadows on the cabin walls. ”

“ Dallas.
'Stopped for luncheon,' said her husband.
'And we did our work thoroughly, mamma,' added Pitt. 'You must take time, if you want to see anything.'
'Well,' said Betty, 'I must say, if this is what it means, to live in an old country, I am thankful I live in a new one.'
'What now?' asked Mr. Dallas. 'What's the matter?'
'Mrs. Dallas was wiser, that she did not go,' Betty went on. '"I have supped fall of horrors." Really I have read history, but that gives it to one diluted. I had no notion that the English people were so savage.'
'Come, come! no worse than other people,' Mr. ”

“ Again Mrs. Hill-Dixon, seeing and wondering at the strange pallor on every face, came to the rescue, rising, with a rustle of silks and laces, and saying:
“Indeed, Dallas; we must be saying good-by, for I am due at a reception within ten minutes.” ”

“ During my visit they held their celebrated fete known as "The Maifest," which lasted two days, and the gay and fantastic procession in which all professions and trades were represented made it almost as gorgeous as a carnival.
From Waco we went to Dallas, which is located upon Trinity River, and is the Metropolis of Northern Texas. There was little to note in my stay there, except the amusingly antagonistic reasons assigned by two men for not giving me their patronage. Their business houses were upon the same side of one street, and not very remote from each other. ”

“ Dallas looks round him triumphantly. He does not exactly smile, for what he is going to say is really rather dreadful, but he has the eager, pleased look which all good story-tellers have when they have come to the point of their story. ”

“ Dallas was the richest woman in the West Indies, that she had one fair and marriageable daughter, and that mother and daughter were under the influence of a negress called Dido, who was a profound believer in the cult of Obi. I determined, therefore, to bend the negress to my will by means of the Voodoo stone, and to marry the daughter. Unfortunately, Mrs. Dallas and her child were in England. So thither I went in order to prosecute my suit, and obtain a rich wife in the person of Miss Isabella Dallas. ”

“ These new allies were certainly something formidable, if we may trust the pictures and descriptions in Dallas's History. The chasseur was a tall, meagre, swarthy Spaniard or mulatto, lightly clad in cotton shirt and drawers, with broad straw-hat and moccasins of raw hide; his belt sustaining his long, straight, flat sword or machete, like an iron bar sharpened at one end ”

“ Dallas, smiling at her.
“Better than anything,” said Cassy.
“I know it is a responsibility,” Mrs. Dallas went on, “and that one always feels more or less uneasy if he or she is given charge of another’s belongings, but you need use only the rooms at the back of the house, and I am sure everything will be in much better condition than if the house were left closed. Mr. Dallas will only sleep there when he is in town, so you will not have to think of meals for him, and, oh yes, whenever you think there is need of extra cleaning you are at liberty [Pg 150] to call upon Martha Collins ”

“ LA RÉUNION, THE COLONY
La Réunion was located three to four miles west of the Dallas county court house near what is generally termed the “Old Fort Worth-Dallas Pike,” on the south bank of the Trinity River. The ground is now occupied by a small settlement, Cement City, and several farms. The soil is poor as compared with other lands surrounding Dallas, but the location is very attractive as to scenery. The hills and valleys are still partly wooded with elm and blackjack, and must have been more so eighty years ago. ”