both knew a dying woman. She did die but a few months later. He was by no
means a politician after my fancy or approval, but to the end of his days I
was his friend and could never bring myself to join in the repeated public
outcries against him.

Early in the fifties Willard's Hotel became a kind of headquarters for the
two political extremes. During a long time their social intercourse
was unrestrained--often joyous. They were too far apart, figuratively
speaking, to come to blows. Truth to say, their aims were after all not
so far apart. They played to one another's lead. Many a time have I seen
Keitt, of South Carolina, and Burlingame, of Massachusetts, hobnob in the
liveliest manner and most public places.

It is certainly true that Brooks was not himself when he attacked Sumner.
The Northern radicals were wont to say, "Let the South go," the more
profane among them interjecting "to hell!" The Secessionists liked to prod
the New Englanders with what the South was going to do when they got to
Boston. None of them really meant it--not even Toombs when he talked about
calling the muster roll of his slaves beneath Bunker Hill Monument; nor
Hammond, the son of a New England schoolmaster, when he spoke of the
"mudsills of the North," meaning to illustrate what he was saying by the
underpinning of a house built on marshy ground, and not the Northern work
people.

Toombs, who was a rich man, not quite impoverished by the war, banished
himself in Europe for a number of years. At length he came home, and
passing the White House at Washington he called and sent his card to the
President. General Grant, the most genial and generous of men, had him come
directly up.