this vehement and overpowering method he possessed great
practical gifts. He had the knack of unraveling accounts, and while not
technically skilled in bookkeeping, had a general and accurate knowledge
which gave him prestige, whether in intricate civil or criminal cases.
He was a rash talker, but the safest of counselors, and practiced his
profession with the greatest scruple. On one occasion he said to a
client who had stated his case to him: "Yes, you can recover in this
suit, but you ought not to do so. This is a case in which law and
justice are on opposite sides."

The client told him he would push the case, anyhow.

"Then," replied Mr. Toombs, "you must hire someone else to assist you in
your damned rascality."

On one occasion a lawyer went to him and asked him what he should charge
a client, in a case to which Mr. Toombs had just listened in the
courthouse.

"Well," said Toombs, "I should have charged a thousand dollars; but you
ought to have five thousand, for you did a great many things I could not
have done."

Mr. Toombs was strict in all his engagements. His practice remained with
him, even while he was in Congress, and his occasional return during the
session of the Superior Court of the Northern Circuit gave rise at one
time to some comment on the part of his opponents, the Democrats. The
nominee of that party, on the stump, declared that the demands upon Mr.
Toombs's legal talent in Georgia were too great to admit of his strict
attendance to public business in Washington. When Mr. Toombs came to
answer this point, he said: "You have heard what the gentleman says
about my coming home to practice law. He promises, if elected to
Congress, he will not leave his seat. I leave you to judge,
fellow-citizens, whether your interest in Washington will be best
protected by his continued presence or his occasional absence." This hit
brought down the house. Mr. Toombs's addresses to the Supreme Court were
models of solid argument. During the early days of the Supreme Court of
Georgia, it was a migratory body; the law creating it tended to
popularize it by providing that it should hold its sessions in the
different towns in the State convenient to the lawyers. The court once
met in the little schoolroom of the Lumpkin Law School in Athens. One of
the earliest cases heard was a land claim from Hancock County, bristling
with points and involving about $100,000 worth of property. A. H.
Stephens, Benjamin H. Hill, H