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 196 CONFEDERATE PORTRAITS

Toombs, turning to Scott, '*the Union owes you ten thousand dollars." ^e These outbursts must have done Toombs more harm than any one else, as the rodomon- tade about calling the roll of his slaves at Bunker Hill Monument, or the careless remark, " We are the gentle- men of this country," which gave rise to William Whit- more's pamphlet of " The Cavalier Dismounted," or the stuffing of an innocent English peer with monstrous tales of slaveholding obliquity which were afterwards recorded

Yet there is general agreement that Toombs was one of the most brilliant and fascinating of talkers, and Lin- ton Stephens, no bad judge, says: "Toombs, or Tom Thomas, can, and frequently do, speak more witticisms in one night than Rabelais in a lifetime wrote." ^s

The sunniest, the sweetest, the most winning picture of Toombs and his laughter is that admirably given by Mrs. Davis. " During the time of the highest excitement over the compromise measures, when Mr. Toombs was on his feet twenty times a day, he rose at daylight, took French lessons with his daughter, and became a good French scholar so far as reading the language went. He would sit with his hands full of the reporter's notes on his speeches for correction, with ' Le Medecin Malgre Lui* in the other hand, roaring over the play. I said to him, ' I do not see how you can enjoy that so much.' He an- swered, * Whatever the Almighty lets his geniuses create, He makes some one to enjoy : these plays take all the

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