is piece of hyperbole was softened by
the fact that on two occasions, when the State needed money to supply
deficits, Toombs with other Georgians did come forward and lift the
pressure. Sometimes he talked in a random way, but responsibility always
sobered him. He was impatient of fraud and stupidity, often full of
exaggerations, but scrupulous when the truth was relevant. Always
strict and honorable in his engagements, he boasted that he never had a
dirty shilling in his pocket.

The men who "left the country for the country's good" and came South to
fatten on the spoils of reconstruction, furnished unending targets for
his satire. He declared that these so-called developers came for pelf,
not patriotism. "Why, these men," he said, "are like thieving elephants.
They will uproot an oak or pick up a pin. They would steal anything from
a button to an empire." On one occasion he was bewailing the degeneracy
of the times, and he exclaimed: "I am sorry I have got so much sense. I
see into the tricks of these public men too quickly. When God Almighty
moves me from the earth, he will take away a heap of experience. I
expect when a man gets to be seventy he ought to go, for he knows too
much for other people's convenience."

"I hope the Lord will allow me to go to heaven as a gentleman," he used
to say. "Some of these Georgia politicians I do not want to associate
with. I would like to associate with Socrates and Shakespeare."

During his arguments before the Supreme Court, General Toombs used to
abuse the Governor and the Bullock Legislature very roundly. The Court
adopted a rule that no lawyer should be allowed, while conducting his
case, to abuse a coordinate branch of the government. General Toombs was
informed that if he persisted in this practice he would be held for
contempt. The next time Toombs went before the Court he alluded to the
fugitive Governor in very sharp terms. "May it please your Honors, the
Governor has now absconded. Your Honors have put in a little rule to
catch me. In seeking to protect the powers that be, I presume you did
not intend to defend the powers that were."

The papers printed an account of an interview between General Gordon and
Mr. Tilden in 1880, Gordon told Tilden that he was sorry he could not
impart to Tilden some of his own strength and vitality. "So my brother
told me last year," answered Mr. Tilden. "I have since followed him to
the grave." Toombs read this and remarked that Tilden