Tell how they sent the news of the completion of the Erie Canal.  What did Samuel Morse say to himself?  Tell about Morse as a painter.  What did he want to find?  What was he talking about on his voyage back to America?  What is a telegraph?  How can you make a small wire telegraph?  What did Professor Morse make?  How did he live?  What did he do in 1839?  How did he get help about his telegraph?  What did he ask Congress to do?  What did some men in Congress say?  What news did Miss Annie Ellsworth bring him?  What was the first message sent by telegraph in 1844?  How many miles of telegraph are there now in the United States?  Is there a telegraph line under the sea?  What is said about the telephone?

GENERAL SAM HOUSTON (1793-1863)

229.  Sam Houston and the Indians; Houston goes to live with the Indians.—­When General Jackson whipped the Indians in Alabama,[1] a young man named Sam Houston[2] fought under Jackson and was terribly wounded.  It was thought that the brave fellow would certainly die, but his strong will carried him through, and he lived to make himself a great name in the southwest.

Although Houston fought the Indians, yet, when a boy, he was very fond of them, and spent much of his time with them in the woods of Tennessee.

Long after he became a man, this love of the wild life led by the red men in the forest came back to him.  While Houston was governor of Tennessee (1829) he suddenly made up his mind to leave his home and his friends, go across the Mississippi River, and take up his abode with an Indian tribe in that part of the country.  The chief, who had known him as a boy, gave him a hearty welcome.  “Rest with us,” he said; “my wigwam is yours.”  Houston stayed with the tribe three years.

[Illustration:  SAM HOUSTON.]

[Footnote 1:  See paragraph 216.]

[Footnote 2:  Sam Houston (Hew’ston):  he always wrote his name Sam Houston; he was born near Lexington in Rockbridge County, Virginia.]

230.  Houston goes to Texas; what he said he would do; the murders at Alamo[3]; the flag with one star; what Houston did; Texas added to the United States; our war with Mexico.—­At the end of that time he said to a friend, “I am going to Texas, and in that new country I will make a man of myself.”  Texas then belonged to Mexico; and President Andrew Jackson had tried in vain to buy it as Jefferson bought Louisiana.  Houston said, “I will make it part of the United States.”  About twenty thousand Americans had already moved into Texas, and they felt as he did.

War broke out between Texas and Mexico, and General Sam Houston led the Texan soldiers in their fight for independence.  He had many noted American pioneers[4] and hunters in his little army:  one of them was the brave Colonel Travis[5] of Alabama; another was Colonel Bowie[6] of Louisiana, the inventor of the “bowie knife”; still another was Colonel David Crockett of Tennessee, whose motto is a good one for every young American—­“Be sure you’re right, then—­go ahead.”  These men were all taken prisoners by the Mexicans at Fort Alamo—­an old Spanish church in San Antonio—­and were cruelly murdered.