198 CONFEDERATE PORTRAITS
to town, he can stay at my house. If he is n't respect- able, we don't want him here at all." ^s How charming is the phrase, quoted by Reed, with which he made right a momentary awkwardness of unexpected guests at table.
- ' O, I do not object to having more friends than room;
it is usually the other way in this world." ^^ He was sen- sitive, emotional, ready to respond to any stimulus of affection or pathos. " In speaking of the death of Mr. Brooks the other day in the Senate, he broke out in weeping and had to stop," writes Stephens.^^ The warmth and whole-heartedness of his friendship show in his words about Crittenden : *' The very prince of good fellows. I know not his superior on all the earth, in all those qualities of head and heart which we must love and respect " ; ^^ and Gabriel Toombs's passionate outburst reflects something of the feeling of those who had inti- mate personal relations with his brother : ** While I am entirely independent of my brother in the sense the world calls independent, no mortal perhaps was ever more de- pendent upon another for happiness, than I am upon him." 37 These vital, abounding natures win a devotion which paler souls can never know.
Toombs's religious experience seems to have been rather elementary, but sincere. It was amusingly mixed with the impetuosity which characterized him in every- thing. When his wife was dying, he had some talks on serious subjects with the family doctor, who was anxious to put him in the right way. "Why, doctor, I am a
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