Mary" and "Cousin Emma" (John's wife) about the trials of these infant prodigies in croup and measles. His care for business and domestic affairs of his nephews was unfailing. "I was exceedingly anxious to know how you were fixed up for the reception of Cousin Emma; whether you had got your furniture moved in time to occupy your house that night," he writes, on John's moving to Atlanta in 1869, a young lawyer making up as well as he could for time lost in the war. "How are you getting on in your practice?" "I have no objection to association of my name with yours in bringing the case. It is just such a case as I like to plead. From the facts stated, your client has been greatly wronged." The following, written eight days after John reached Atlanta, repeats advice given to Linton years before:

I am glad to hear you have got a case. This is your first in your new location, and I can not do better than to repeat that a young man's first cases at the law are the most important to him he will ever have. His reputation is at stake. It should be a leading object with him to succeed in them beyond expectation. He ought to take no case except such as he believes on investigation to be right.

This to John, in 1870, is a blow at graft:

What Mr. meant by what he said to you about the State Road, I cannot conjecture. I do not wish you to have anything to do with him. Lobbying before a corrupt legislature is one of the lowest and meanest businesses anybody can engage in. A legal opinion, professionally given, has no sort of impropriety in it. I have given such in more cases than one. In such, I represent a client's interest before the Legislature as I

would before a court. But this is a very different thing from becoming interested in procuring legislation not as a matter of legal right and duty but of policy, and that, too, without any consideration of the public interests. Were I a member of the Legislature, I should advocate a sale or lease of the State Road if I could get it effected upon proper terms, but nothing could induce me as an attorney to accept a fee or reward from outside parties to procure such legislation. If a question of law should arise as to how such a lease or sale was to be perfected, I should not hesitate to charge a proper professional fee for giving an opinion. But I could never be induced to offer an opinion to influence the Legislature to sell or lease the road. That, in my judgment, would be exceedingly reprehensible. I hope you will even have nothing to do with parties who can make such propositions to you.

It happened that the road was leased later in the year, and Mr. Stephens took an interest to the "extent of his property." The next year, there was a cry of "swindle." When information seeming to show that the State had been cheated in the lease was received by Mr. Stephens, he promptly deeded his holdings back to the Commonwealth.

He named one condition to his candidacy for governor that the public did not know; it was that John and "Cousin Emma" should enter the Mansion with him: "I shall die there, and I want you to close my eyes,' he said. They did not care to give up their cozy home for that temporary abode, but they went with him; and it was a great pleasure to him to have them there and to hear the children pattering about the place. He proudly made John Adjutant-General of Georgia, a position which the gallant ex-Confederate held with credit to him

self and to his State, under successive governors until failing health compelled him to resign the year before his death in 1887. Never in the history of the Mansion before or since have so many needy people and so many tramps been fed there in the same period of time-or perhaps any period - as during Mr. Stephens's residence. "Cousin Emma" dutifully endeavoured to keep the gubernatorial nose from the grindstone. One morning she entered his room, where he was dictating to his secretary, and proudly displayed her accounts, showing a good saving in housekeeping expenses for the month. "Uncle Alex" praised her thrift, and turning to his secretary, said: "Seidell, add $25 to the check in that last letter for the woman who asked me to help her."

From the Sesqui-Centennial in Savannah, where the people greeted him lovingly, Mr. Stephens came back to the Mansion to die. Sunday at dawn, March 4, 1883, after a brief illness, he breathed his last. Thursday, he was laid to rest in a vault in Oakland Cemetery pending removal of his remains to Crawfordville, where he now sleeps in the grounds at Liberty Hall.*

While he lay in state in the Capitol in Atlanta, many of the poorest class of whites came from a distance to pay their respects. Many Negroes came. Never before in the history of Atlanta was there such a funeral procession as the long line of military and civic bodies and mourning populace which followed him to the tomb. Not only in Georgia, not only in the South, was pub

The ownership of Liberty Hall is now vested in the Stephens Monumental Association, which is seeking to establish at Crawfordville, as a memorial to Mr. Stephens, a school for poor boys and girls. The Daughters of the Confederacy have some oversight of the dwelling and will doubtless have final charge of it and arrange for its preservation as a National shrine.

lic tribute paid to his memory. In far-off Vermont, State offices were closed on the day of his funeral and the National flag was displayed at half-mast over the Capitol. When the news of his death reached Washington City, the House of Representatives unanimously adopted a resolution expressing "hearthfelt sympathy with the people, not only of Georgia, but of the whole country, in the loss of a statesman and a patriot."

THE END

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