Toombs met Abraham Lincoln while he was in Congress. He related that Mr. Lincoln once objected to sitting down at table because he was the thirteenth man. Toombs told him that it was better to die than to be a victim to superstition. At the Hampton Roads Conference, President Lincoln expressed to Judge Campbell his confidence in the honesty and ability of Robert Toombs. He was a great reader. General Toombs often said that if the whole English literature were lost, and the Bible and Shakespeare remained, letters would not be much the poorer. Shakespeare was his standard. He was fond of Swedenborg, and in his early youth relished Tom Paine. General Toombs had a great affinity for young men, upon whom he exerted a great influence. He once said to a party of friends that gambling was the worst of evils because it impoverished the pocket while it corrupted the mind. "How about drinking, General?" he was asked. "Well, if a man is old and rich he may drink, for he will have the sympathy of his sober friends and the support of his drinking ones." CHAPTER XXXI. HIS LAST DAYS. In 1880 General Toombs appeared in Atlanta, and addressed the Georgia Legislature in behalf of the candidacy of General A. R. Lawton for the United States Senate. His appearance, as he walked up the aisle, grim, venerable, and determined, awoke wild applause. He preserved his power of stirring the people whenever he spoke, but his speech was not as racy and clear as it had been. "This was one of the occasions," to quote from a distinguished critic of Toombs, "when the almost extinct volcano glowed again with its wonted fires--when the ivy-mantled keep of the crumbling castle resumed its pristine defiance with deep-toned culverin and ponderous mace; when, amid the colossal fragments of the tottering temple, men recognized the unsubdued spirit of Samson Agonistes."