Judge Tabor: "I was an associate editor of the New York _Beacon_ with Col. John Fellows, then (1836) advanced in years but retaining all the vigor and fire of his manhood. He was a ripe scholar, a most agreeable companion, and had been the correspondent and friend of Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and John Quincy Adams, under all of whom he held a responsible office. One of his productions was dedicated, by permission, to Adams and was republished and favorably received in England. Colonel Fellows was the soul of honor and inflexible in his adhesion to truth. He was intimate with Paine during the whole time he lived after returning to this country, and boarded for a year in the same house with him. I also was acquainted with Judge Herttell of New York city, a man of wealth and position, being a member of the New York Legislature, both in the Senate and Assembly, and serving likewise on the judicial bench. Like Colonel Fellows he was an author and a man of unblemished life and irreproachable character. These men assured me of their own knowledge derived from constant personal intercourse during the last seven years of Paine's life that he never kept any company but what was entirely respectable, and that all accusations of drunkenness were grossly untrue. They saw him under all circumstances and _knew_ that he was never intoxicated. Nay, more, they said for that day he was even abstemious." W. J. Hilton (1877): "It is over twenty years ago that professionally I made the acquaintance of John Hogeboom, a justice of the peace of Rensselaer county, New York. He was then over seventy years of age and had the reputation of being a man of candor and integrity. He was a great admirer of Paine. He told me that he was personally acquainted with him and used to see him frequently during the last years of his life in the city of New York, where Hogeboom then resided. I asked him if there was any truth in the charge that Paine was in the habit of getting drunk. He said that it was utterly false; that he never heard of such a thing during the lifetime cf Mr. Paine and did not believe anyone else did." Mr. Lovet (Proprietor of City Hotel, New York): "Paine boarded for a time at my hotel. He drank the least of all my boarders." Gilbert Vale says: "We know more than twenty persons who were more or less acquainted with Mr. Paine, and not one of whom ever saw him in liquor." "We know that he was not only temperate in after life, but even abstemious." "He was accused of offenses he had never committed and of conduct impossible to him."--_Library of the World's Best Literature_. "That he was a very likeable man is shown... by the prediction of the brilliant Home Tooke that whoever should be at a certain dinner party, Paine would be sure to say the best things said; and by the friendships he made so easily. In middle age, at least, he was fastidious in his dress, inclined to elegance in his manners, and attractive in looks."--_Ibid_.