James Bowie

“ Mr George Lyon, the subject of the song, and the only surviving member of the family, is now resident at Snowdoun House, Stirling.
[68] This song is here printed for the first time.
[69] Mr James Chambers, of Peebles, who died in 1824.
[70] A song of this title was composed by Robert Fergusson.
[71] Mr James Bowie, of Paisley, to whom we are under obligations for supplying curious and interesting information regarding several of the bards of the west, kindly furnished the particulars of the above memoir. ”

“ But there was no end to Tammie’s tongue.
“Weel,” said he, “speaking o’ the brig, I’ll tell you a gude story about that. Auld Jamie Bowie, the potato merchant, that lived at the Gate-end, had a horse and cart that met wi’ an accident just at the turn o’ the corner yonder; and up cam a chield sair forfaughten, and a’ out of breath, to Jamie’s door, crying like the prophet Jeremiah to the auld Jews, ‘Rin, rin away doun to the Cow Brig; for your cart’s dung to shivers, and the driver’s killed, as weel as the horse!’
“James ran in for his hat ”

“ No. no! I didn’t draw my Bowie-knife and give battle! Of course not! First of all, there wasn’t the time—for remember, the whole thing, from the jarring of the unseen door to the end of the little intermezzo, didn’t take more than two seconds; and, furthermore, what chance is there for a quiet Bostonian with a Bowie—a Bowie he isn’t used to handle, on top of it—against two big, hairy roughs with six yards of curved, razor-sharp steel between them? ”

“ But, great as Tammas was on religious questions, a pillar of the Auld Licht kirk, the Shorter Catechism at his finger-ends, a sad want of words at the very time when he needed them most incapacitated him for prayer in public, and it was providential that Bowie proved himself a man of parts. ”

“ But Bowie did not shrink. He said to himself, "If the Spaniard's hate is so fiendish, why, he shall have his bellyful before we end." All was ready, and a crowd stood by. Bowie may tell the rest himself, as he related it a dozen years after to Forrest, whose blood curdled while he listened:
"We confronted each other with mutual watch, motionless, for a minute or two. I felt that it was all over with me, and a slight chill went through my breast, but my heart was hot and my brain was steady, and I resolved that at all events he should die too. Every fight is won in the eye first. ”

“ They were about to declare honor satisfied and to shake hands, when a dispute arose among their friends, and before it was over, fifteen were killed and six were badly injured. Bowie distinguished himself by stabbing a man to death with a knife made from a large file. The weapon was afterwards sent to Philadelphia and there fashioned into the deadly knife which has ever since been known by his name. The prospect of trouble in Texas naturally attracted him, he was made colonel of militia there, and dispatched to The Alamo with a small force by General Houston early in 1836. ”

“ No! he shall have a square fight for every life lie gets”; and the calm, gentlemanly Bowie was suddenly transformed into a flashing, vehement, furious avenger. He laid his knife and pistols on the table, his steel-blue eyes scintillated as if they were lightning; his handsome mouth, his long, white hands, his whole person radiated wrath and expressed the utmost lengths of invincible courage and insatiable hatred.
“Gentlemen,” answered Travis, “I go with Crockett and Bowie. If we hold the Alamo, it is a deed well done. ”

“ This was my first sight of Bowie Bushyager. Everybody in Monterey County, and lots of other people will remember what the name of Bowie Bushyager once meant; but it meant very little more than that of his brother, Pitt Bushyager, who got up, grumbling and cursing when Bowie shook him awake. Bowie was say twenty-eight then, and a fine specimen of a man in build and size. ”

“ Bowman succeeded in preserving a manly composure. At any rate, when I came downstairs, it was in a broken voice that he wished me the compliments of the season, and a little later on, when he paid his visit of ceremony at breakfast, he was far from cheerful: even Byronic, I might almost say, in his outlook on life.
"I don't know," he said, "if you think with me, sir; but every Christmas as comes round the world seems a hollerer thing to me. Why, take an example now from what lays under my own eye. There's my servant Eliza—been with me now for going on fifteen years. ”

“ He's not a man to be frightened, I can tell you."
"I should think not," said Joshua Brown, with a laugh; "but now, Mr. Bowes, as all things are clear, and as we understand each other, I have nothing more to say, only that you must not go out of town till I tell you; and you must come and see me to-morrow morning at ten o'clock."
Mingy Bowes promised.
"I am very punctual," said the pedlar, with a meaning look; "and, as I shall certainly want to speak with you, if you don't come I must look for you, and get people to help me." ”

“ Bowie's own calculations continually went on beyond the dangers of the road.
"I've got to reach Houston," he said, "and set him at work with those dollars. We can make up a force to come again with. I can trust Crockett and Travis. We can have our pick of men. ”

“ His effort was heroic, but except in the case of Madame Bovary, a masterpiece, he imparted something to his works (it was as if he had covered them with metallic plates) which made them sink rather than sail. He had a passion for perfection of form and for a certain splendid suggestiveness of style. He wished to produce perfect phrases, perfectly interrelated, and as closely woven together as a suit of chain-mail. He looked at life altogether as an artist, and took his work with a seriousness that never belied itself. ”

“ His scrupulosity of conscience was proverbial, and men listened to Chancellor Bowie not merely for entertainment, for he was an attractive speaker, but they listened believing. Back of his utterances lay a life of unvarying integrity derived from a spirit of piety, which none dared gainsay, and the lineaments of his classic face bore a conviction which was itself convincing. When the life of a man is so pitched that the most obstinate opponent is made to respect his views, such a man is an engine of power in public life. ”

“ Miss Bowers now lives quietly at her home in Philadelphia, singing in public only on special occasions. She is, of course, still a devoted lover of the art of which she has been so fine an exponent; while she yet possesses, through voice and method, the power to charm an audience. ”

“ Mr. Bowman looked at me sharply for a moment, and then passed in a flash from solemn sympathy to impassioned declamation. ‘When I think,’ he said, ‘of the language that man see fit to employ to me in this here parlour over no more a matter than a cask of beer—such a thing as I told him might happen any day of the week to a man with a family—though as it turned out he was quite under a mistake, and that I knew at the time, only I was that shocked to hear him I couldn’t lay my tongue to the right expression.’
He stopped abruptly and eyed me with some embarrassment. ”

“ Bowers was induced to engage in public performances more for the purpose of demonstrating by them the capacity of colored persons to take rank in music with the most highly cultured of the fairer race than for that of making a mere personal display of his highly-rated musical abilities, and for the attainment of the enjoyment which they would naturally be supposed to afford him. ”

“ Bowers resides at present in Philadelphia, and is a little past forty years of age. He sings as well now136 as ever; some think better than ever. He appears occasionally in public, but only in company with the first artists, as he firmly believes in maintaining always for himself and others a high musical standard. His voice ranges within a semitone of two octaves. ”

“ All the while we thus lavish our indifference the spirit of the author of “Madame Bovary,” in the cross-light of the old room above the Seine, is trying to the last admiration for the thing itself. That production puts the matter into a nutshell: “Madame Bovary,” subject to whatever qualification, is absolutely the most literary of novels, so literary that it covers us with its mantle. It shows us once for all that there is no intrinsic call for a debasement of the type. ”

“ As an added fillip, his colorful story of the Bowie knife is included.
Warren Hunter, one of Texas’ outstanding artists, has provided striking illustrations that catch the spirit of the stories and recall days quite remote from the modern scene, yet separated from us by only a few decades.
Thus, with a glance backward, The Steck Company brings you warm greetings for the 1953 season. In the words of Dobie, “Generous feelings and cheering words are never trite. Merry Christmas!” ”

“ Bowdoin would probably have never condoned a theft, once discovered; and James Bowdoin wasted his time in hinting they might make it good.
"Confound it, sir," said the father, "it's the making it good to Jamie, not the making it good to us, that counts,—don't you see?"
"You do suspect him, then?"
"Not a bit,—not one whit, sir!" cried the father. "I know him better. And I hate a low, suspicious habit of mind, sir, with all my heart!"
"You once said, sir, years ago (do you remember?) , that but one thing—love—could make a man like Jamie go wrong." ”

“ Ord cried. "You don't understand! You must defend the Alamo! This is the turning point in the winning of the west! If Houston is beaten, Texas will never join the Union! There will be no Mexican War. No California, no nation stretching from sea to shining sea! This is the Americans' manifest destiny. You are the hope of the future ... you will save the world from Hitler, from Bolshevism—"
"Crazy as a hoot owl," Bowie said sadly. "Ord, you and Travis got to look at it both ways. We ain't all in the right in this war—we Americans got our faults, too." ”

“ Boon said, “you can’t now talk of literature without going through James. James is unavoidable. James is to criticism what Immanuel Kant is to philosophy—a partially comprehensible essential, an inevitable introduction. If you understand what James is up to and if you understand what James is not up to, then you are placed. You are in the middle of the critical arena. You are in a position to lay about you with significance. ”

“ In England he had married Joan Beaufort, daughter of the Earl of Somerset, who lived to avenge him on his murderers with unheard-of cruelties.
When a man of James's intellect, character, and experiences writes a poem on his own taking at sea by faithless foes, his own long captivity, and his own love-story, we naturally expect something of poignant personal interest. ”

“ James Bowdoin's (or Mr. James's, as Jamie McMurtagh and others in the bank always called him; it was his father who was properly Mr. James Bowdoin, and his grandfather who was Mr. Bowdoin) —after Mr. James's Commencement Day; and it was the day after Mr. James's engagement as junior clerk in the counting-room; and it was the day after Mr. James's engagement to be married; and it was the day but one after Mr. James's class's supper at Mr. Porter's tavern in North Cambridge. Ah, they did things quickly in those days; ils savoient vivre. ”

“ In fact, Mr. Bowman did accompany us on our exploration, but though I am sure his genuine wish was to be helpful, I am afraid he did not contribute to the serious side of it. He appeared to be under the impression that we were likely to meet either Uncle Henry or the person responsible for his disappearance, walking about the fields—and did a great deal of shading his eyes with his hand and calling our attention, by pointing with his stick, to distant cattle and labourers. ”

“ Col. Bowie (injured by a fall from the platform the day preceding the assault) is seen lying on a couch. Enter Col. Travis and Col. Crockett.
Bowie.
Hail, brave companions, hail! Thermopylae
Has by your valor been eclipsed to-day.
Oh! that your gallant deeds might have been seen
By the admiring gaze of humanity.
Alas! performed here in the western wild,
They will escape the writer's graphic pen!
Yet,—to have saved the land, the rising nation,
That consciousness will ever be your part. ”

“ Our differently compacted and more variously endowed Bob, who had strained much at every tether, was so eager and ardent that it made for him a positive authority; but what most recurs to me of his start in the 45th, or of my baffled vision of it, is the marvel of our not having all just wept, more than anything else, either for his being so absurdly young or his being so absurdly strenuous—we might have had our choice of pretexts and protests. ”

“ He gives them the benefit of the goose-step as he goes; he throws back his head and distends his fingers, presenting to the ladies a back expressive of more consciousness of his fine figure than of the lovely mirth that the artist has depicted in their faces. Lovely is their mirth indeed, and lovely are they altogether. Mr. Abbey has produced nothing more charming than this bright knot of handsome, tittering daughters of burghers, in their primeval pelisses and sprigged frocks. ”

“ As the state of public feeling then was, Mr. Potter thought himself obliged to accept the challenge; and having the choice of weapons according to the code of honor—and thinking it was best to make serious work of it—he chose bowie-knives. Mr. Pryor promptly declined, if I remember rightly, on the plea that the bowie-knife was not a civilized weapon. But as his declination, which was perhaps reasonable enough, was made to appear as a backdown on the part of a Southern “fire-eater,” it started a guffaw all over the North, and Mr. Potter woke up to find himself the hero of the hour. ”