pse we have of him is as a slender lad,
with dark eyes and hair slightly touched with auburn, flying through the
village, and sometimes carrying on his pony behind him his little
brother to school.

He was always in good health. He boasted that he never took medicine
until he was thirty-four years old. His mother said that he grew up
almost without her knowledge, so little trouble had he given her. He was
a fine horseman. Possibly this practice had much to do with his good
spirits and physical strength.

In his younger days he rode sixty-five miles to Milledgeville, covering
the distance in one day, and was fresh enough to attend a dance at
night. He delighted in fox-hunting, although never a racer or in any
sense a sporting man. During the earlier years of his career he
practiced law in the saddle, as was the custom with the profession at
that time, and never thought of riding to court on wheels until later in
life. Throughout his active participation in the Civil War he rode his
famous mare, "Gray Alice," and was a striking figure as, splendidly
mounted and charged with enthusiasm, he plunged along the lines of the
Army of Northern Virginia. In his long wandering from capture in 1865,
he was in the saddle six months, riding to and from the wilds of
northeast Georgia to the swamps of the Chattahoochee. There was
something in his picturesque figure upon the horse which suggests John
Randolph of Roanoke.

His first training was at what was known as an "old field school,"
taught by Welcome Fanning, a master of good attainments and a firm
believer in the discipline of the rod. Afterward, Robert Toombs was
drilled by a private tutor, Rev. Alexander Webster--an adjunct professor
of the University of Georgia and a man of high repute as scholar and
instructor. Mr. Webster was the friend and early preceptor of Alexander
H. Stephens.

Young Toombs was christened Robert Augustus, and carried his middle name
until 1840, when he seems to have dropped it as a useless piece of
furniture. There is a report that some of his political foes, playing
upon his initials, saddled him with the sobriquet of "Rat." Having
out-grown one nickname he was prepared to shed another.

Young Toombs proved to be a great reader. Most of his learning developed
in the Humanities; and a cultured visitor from Maryland who once stopped
at his father's house declared that this boy of fourteen was better
posted in history than anyone he had ever seen.