The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-09-14

Henry Asp of Guthrie. who conducted his defense. tells this story of Houston:
 He was the least concerned person at the trial, He was calm and never spoke a word during the trial and scarcely ever looked or paid the least attention to the witnesses. He was an accomplished artist and spent the whole time drawing pictures. He made pictures of Napoleon which were beautiful Then he vwould tear 1t up and draw picture of Napoleon again This was repeated a hundred times. Sometimes he would draw pictures of cowboys with guns in each hand shoot , ing
 It was not proven that he fired the shots. and he was acquitted. HoustOn's son drove the family COW to the pasture of an old man in Wood ward. The old man and boy had a quarrel, and the old man spat in the boys face. Temple Houston shot the old man. but he recovered. Houston was not so fortunate in this trial The judge fined him heavily and ordered him sent to jail until the fine was paid Houston calmly went back to prac- i tising law. He never served a day and no one made an attempt to take him to jail. They were afraid.
 "AP' Jennings swore he would kill Houston and would probably have done so had he not been arrested and sen- tenced to life imprisonment in the peni- tentiary. He got out after serving. six years and is now practising law at Lawton. This was the most sensa- tional case in the history of Oklahoma. It is said that "Al'' Jennings once went to Houston's home and raised his rife to shoot Houston, who sat at the table reading by lamp. Houstons wife passed between him and the table, and Jennings didn't have the heart to kill him before his own family. Once Red Tom," a well known Texas ranger, killed an inoffensive h. | dian while court was in session at Cheyenne. It was . cold blooded mur- der It was shown that the cow boy had shown no mercy. No tes- timony was introduced for the defense. Temple Houston rose to speak.
 Not one of you but remember" he said to the jury, "the time when with drawn lance and pended bow by the light of burning homes, these same fell
 lows were staying your wives and ohilden. Mercy! An, where was l Mercy! An, where was mercy then?" The people said at the start there
 would be hung jury. Houston kept on, twining his speech with garlands of metaphor No man could sway jury
 like Houston.
 1 After being out fifteen minutes the jury brought in verdict of acquittal. It was the way he conducted all his
 case, He iitroducted little evidence,
 but depended on his eloquence.
 Once in commenting on the testimony
 of a negro he declared:
 'Ie sits there manufacturing per- jury as gaily as ever a mockingbird
 sang its lay.''
 He represented both the House and Senate from the Panhandle of Texas, It
 was while he, was under the influence 1 of liquor he did most of his peculiar and characteristic things He was er- ] ratio, and when he decided upon a thing he did it with his whole soul.
 He was student of archaeology and had the finest collections of Indian curios in the West, He prepared
 beautiful lectures and delivered them at different, churches throughout
 Oklahoma. His life was unfortupnate, 1 and several years ago he passed out of the public eye.
 The Temple Houston of the past few NyaS aAakA AI i. R j.
 younger days. Occasionally there came the old fire to his eyes and the mingled honey and gall to his tongue, but he had not kept pace with the progress of the Southwest and was interesting mainly as a survival of the men and manners of the times that were. S"'
 His last days were spent in poverty
 Kansas City Journal.