phens charmed them. Very often the two took different sides and opposed each other energetically. Yet at the same time they praised, admired, and loved each other, and were rarely estranged, even for a brief interval. In the midst of the secession fury there was a certain cold- ness; but after Stephens's great anti-secession speech Toombs led the cheering for the beloved enemy, though he remarked to a friend who complimented him on it,
The best of Stephens's affection, however, went to his family. His mother died when he was very young, but his love for his father's memory has a depth and tender- ness which is quite irresistible. Surely few sons could write, in old age, a tribute so impressive and so complete as the following: *' Never was human anguish greater than that which I felt upon the death of my father. He was the object of my love, my admiration, my reverence. It seemed to me impossible that I could live without him ; and the whole world for me w^as filled with the blackness of despair. . . . Whenever I was about to do something that I had never done before, the first thought that occurred to me was, what would my father think of this? . . . The principles and precepts he taught me
Even deeper and more absorbing was Stephens's love for his young half-brother, Linton, whom he educated, trained, and advised through boyhood and young man- hood, and who afterward became his closest confidant.
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