Occasional public drunken squabbles are not the only evidence that during these last years Burns’s nerves were often exacerbated. The loyal Syme once undertook to rebuke him for some of his wild doings and sayings. His language was too strong--telling the story afterwards he admitted, ‘I may have spoken daggers, but I meant none.’ The poet, his face black with anger, fumbled with his sword-cane. Syme, half laughing, half serious, exclaimed, ‘What! and in my own house, too!’ The conscience-stricken Burns flung away the cane, burst into tears, and positively grovelled in contrition on the flagstone floor. It is not a pleasant scene, and though the vividness with which it stayed in Syme’s memory is indication enough that it was exceptional, it cannot be ignored. No man, drunk or sober, whose nerves were normal could have behaved so. Fortunately the vividness of Syme’s memory is not the only proof that such conduct was exceptional. Others besides Syme who were nearest to Burns in his last years concur in their loyalty and affection. At the end of 1790 Alexander Findlater reported to his official superior, Supervisor Corbet, that Burns was ‘an active, faithful & zealous officer’, gave ‘the most unremitting attention to the duties of his office (which, by the bye is more than I at first looked for from so eccentric a Genius)’, and might ‘be considered a credit to the profession’. And the judgment which Findlater thus expressed at the beginning of the poet’s Excise career he reaffirmed after his death. Others testified to their regard in deeds as well as words. Though Burns continued to display his life-long preference for the company of extravagant and _outré_ sorts of people the best men in the Excise were the ones who esteemed him most. John Lewars, for example, brother of the Jessie of the songs, was a man of some education, and above the level of the common riding-officer. His father had been Collector at Dumfries, and thus a man of standing in the community. Burns called Lewars ‘a young fellow of uncommon merit--indeed, by far the cleverest fellow I have met with in this part of the world’, and Lewars reciprocated the poet’s affection by service to him and his family during his illness and after his death. And that Burns’s long absence from duty did not bear more heavily on him was due to the kindness of Adam Stobbie, a young expectant who throughout the spring of 1796 performed Burns’s rounds without pay, that the poet might continue to draw his full salary.