He had not then left off tobacco, but he chewed it incessantly, and a spray of the juice fell around him when he was speaking. Once while he was haranguing at the hustings, a drunken man beneath the edge of the platform on which he was standing, rudely told him in a loud voice not to let his pot boil over. Toombs, looking down, saw that his interrupter had flaming red hair: "Take your fire from under it, then," he answered. In another stump speech he was earnestly denying that he had ever used certain words now charged against him. A stalwart, rough fellow--one of Choate's bulldogs with confused ideas--rose, and asserted he had heard him say them. When and where was asked. The man gave time and place, and added tauntingly, "What do you say to that?" Toombs rejoined, "Well, I must have told a d--d lie." A rival candidate, really conspicuous and celebrated for his little ability, in a stump debate pledged the people that if they would send him to congress he would never leave his post during a session to attend the courts, as he unjustifiably charged Toombs with habitually doing. The latter disposed of this by merely saying, "You should consider which will hurt the district the more, his constant presence in, or my occasional absence from, the house." In another discussion this same opponent charged him with having voted so and so. Replying, Toombs denied it. The other interrupted him, and sustained his charge by producing the _Globe_; and he expressively exclaimed, "What do you think of that vote?" Toombs answered without any hesitation--nothing ever confused him--"I think it a d--d bad vote. There are more than a hundred votes of mine reported in that big book. He has evidently studied them all, and this is the only bad one he can find. Send _him_ to congress in my place, the record will be exactly inverted; it will be as hard to find a good one in his votes as it is now to find a bad one in mine."