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 I70 CONFEDERATE PORTRAITS

I have for myself, which is more than many mortals I ever knew could say for themselves." ^2 guj- ^h^. merits require no such emphasis. They are great and indis- putable. Probably few persons of his means have done more for others than Stephens did. He was constantly educating young men, so that all those of promise in his home town appealed to him and many from outside. During the war he was devoted in his attendance upon prisons and hospitals, visiting them often with fruit and flowers, which, I think, was inventing a charming func- tion for that generally useless functionary, a vice-presi- dent. " Whenever I see a head at an iron grate, my heart is interested," ^3 he wrote, before he had passed four months behind an iron grate himself. It may be noted that one of the points in which he differed from the Gov- ernment was his belief that prisoners of war should be set free, since the Confederacy was not able to provide for them properly. If sometimes, with men as with ani- mals, his heart outran his head, who will blame him ? It is worth while to be fooled occasionally by vice and idle- ness, worth while to be " like a ship otherwise stanch but eaten up by barnacles that he cannot dislodge " for the sake of winning the slave's simple eulogy : " He is kind to folks that nobody else will be kind to. Mars Alex is kinder to dogs than mos' folks is to folks." ^^

It is to be observed here, further, that Stephens's charity went much back of the hand. Oftentimes the fingers spread widely when the heart is tight shut, and

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