Winter Rain

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How solemn and beautiful is the thought that the earliest pioneer of civilization, the van-leader of civilization, is never the steamboat, never the railroad, never the newspaper, never the Sabbath-school, never the missionary—but always whiskey! … Westward the Jug of Empire takes its way!

—Mark Twain

The Texas Rangers … had an off and on existence ever since 1823, when Stephen F. Austin formed a band of ten Rangers to protect the first American settlements from Indians…. From that time on—throughout all their ups and downs, disappearances and reappearances—the Rangers were irregulars. They were irregular as hell, in everything except getting the job done.

—Oliver Knight

The more Indians we can kill this year, the less will have to be killed the next war.

—General William Tecumseh Sherman

Destiny is nothing more than the unforeseen coincidence of events, the emergence into action of hidden forces which, in a complex and disordered society … no contemporary can be expected to discern.

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