It is well known that public men in Washington, out of business hours, are visited without formal introduction or letters, especially upon their reception-days, and that the privilege of a single interview implies no distinction to the visitor.  The urbanity and frankness with which proper approaches are met, especially by the Southern leaders, are also well known.  Young men, with unprejudiced minds, upon whom public characters are always anxious to impress the stamp of their own principles, are perhaps received with quite as much frankness as others.

* * * * *

The first interview sought was with Mr. Toombs, the most daring and ingenuous, and perhaps the most gifted in eloquence of the Southern leaders, whose house, at that time, was a lofty building upon F Street, only two doors from the residence of Mr. Seward.  A negro servant, who, with all the blackness of a native African, yet with thin lips and almost the regular features of a Caucasian, appeared to the writer to be possibly the descendant of one of the superior, princely African tribes, showed the way to an unoccupied parlor.  The room was luxuriously furnished with evidences of wealth and taste:  a magnificent pianoforte, several well-chosen paintings, and a marble bust of some public character standing upon a high pedestal of the same material in the corner, attracting particular attention, and a pleasant fire in the open grate making the December evening social.  A step presently heard in the hall, elastic, buoyant, and vigorous, was altogether too characteristic of Mr. Toombs’s portly, muscular, confident, and somewhat dashing figure, to be mistaken for any other than his own.  Mr. Toombs appeared to be now about forty-five years of age, but carried in his whole mien the elastic vigor, and irresistible self-reliance, frankness, decision, and sociality of character, which mark his oratory and his public career.  His good-evening, and inquiry concerning the college named on the card of the writer, were in a tone that at once placed his visitor at ease.

“Your first visit to Washington, Mr. ——?”

“Yes, Sir.  Like others, I have been attracted by the political crisis, and the purpose of studying it from unprejudiced sources.”

“Crisis?  Oh, that’s past.”

The writer will not soon forget the tone of perfect confidence and nonchalance with which this was uttered.  The time was the last week of December, 1860.

“You are confident, then, Sir, that fifteen States will secede?”

“Secede?  Certainly,—­they must secede.  You Northerners,—­you are from a Northern college, I believe,”—­referring to the writer’s card,—­“you Northerners wish to make a new Constitution, or rather to give such an interpretation to the old one as to make it virtually a new document.  How can society be kept together, if men will not keep their compacts?  Our fathers provided, in adopting their Constitution,