144 CONFEDERATE PORTRAITS
well dinner, when he mentions having been ordered to avoid the excitement of active practice : "I need hardly tell an audience like this that to tell me or any person of a nature like mine to abstain from all possible excitement is to tell him to cease the active exercise of the profession ; for without the ardor of forensic contest what is the pro- fession worth? " ^^
He liked excitement in the form of games also ; liked billiards and whist. Russell even records as Washington scandal that he lost the major part of his very large in- come at cards.^*^ His biographer denies this, but in rather mild fashion, asserting that he was " not a rabid gam- bler," ^1 and Benjamin himself seems rather less con- cerned at the accusation than at Russell's ingratitude in making it.^^
On graver points of morals I find no trace of any charge against Benjamin whatever. But, in spite of his immense capacity for work, he was generally known as a lover of ease and good living. This, assuredly no vice in itself, came almost to appear like one in the last hungry months of the Confederacy. Very characteristic of the man, more so, perhaps, than she meant it, is Mrs. Davis's little sketch: "He used to say that with bread made of Crenshaw's flour, spread with paste made from English walnuts from an immense tree in our grounds, and a glass of McHenry sherry, of which we had a scanty store, ' a man's patriotism became rampant.' " ^^ Alfriend, also, gives us a significant touch : ** Mr. Benjamin loved
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