This Day in Texas History:
It is Thursday March 13, 2014. It is the 72th day of 2014. There are 293 days left in the year. Today we will look at a poem published in the March 13, 1830 issue of “The Texas Gazette”. It is in the upper left column of the paper. The Texas Gazette. (Austin, Tex.), Vol. 1, No. 13, Ed. 1, Saturday, March 13, 1830. Click on the picture and it will enlarge where you can clearly read it.
THE TEXAS HUNTER
The sun was up, the wind blew mild,
All nature seem’d to wear a smile,
When William, with gun, repair’d,
Toward the Rio San Bernard,
In quest of game of speed or flight,
For his and Mary’s meat that night.
Long William toil’d, ere he could find,
An object tit—it was the hind,
When back in eagerness he drew
The cock, and then pull’d trigger too,
When ere the smoke had clear’d his eyes,
His wish’d for dead did deer did arise.
To loading his gun again,
The anxious huntsman then began,
But the first ball and patching drew,
And this before he’s charg’d her too,
“When lest” said he, “I lose some time,
I think of it, and now I’ll prime.”
The last maneuver was shot pan,
Meanwhile the deer before him stands,
“Oh, now you’re mine,” said William, low,
if my old gun don’t snap or blow;”
But when the flint and steel had clash’d,
what think you! William’s gun it flash’s.
In haste, our hunter had forgot,
To put in powder or the shot,
He sighted on an empty gun,
Which flash’d, and then the deer did run;
And Will retun’d to Mary’s seat,
Without a single piece of meat.
The story amounts to this,
As all my readers will insist,
That William’s powder, patch and ball,
Were not put in the gun at all,
As if they suffer’d much from drought,
He’d place the whole load in his mouth.
Citation: Cotten, Godwin Brown, editor. The Texas Gazette. (Austin, Tex.), Vol. 1, No. 13, Ed. 1, Saturday, March 13, 1830, Newspaper, March 13, 1830; digital images, (http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth80040/ : accessed March 11, 2014), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, http://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, Austin, Texas.
