was the man’s nature, born with a heart capable of intense feeling, which had been educated to believe this weakness.  Coming very young away from his home and early associations, to live and mingle with strangers of a different race—­leaving the rural scenes and home associations which were forming and developing nature’s glorious gifts, to come to a profligate and heartless city—­the whole current of his susceptible nature was changed, and the feeling and good perverted and overshadowed, yet not entirely rooted out.  Hence the contradictions in his character.  Sometimes nature was too strong for art, and would break out in beauty, as the flower, rich in fragrance and delicate loveliness, when touched by the genial sun, will burst from the black and uninviting bud.

Upon one occasion, when there was a United States senator to be elected, and when the Democratic party held a majority in the Legislature, rendering it impossible for the Whigs to elect any member of their own party, yet, with the assistance of three from the Democratic party, could choose from this party any man they would select and unite upon—­they determined to propose Grymes, and had secured the requisite assistance from the Democracy.  I was a member, and a Whig, and was delegated to communicate the facts to Grymes.  I knew the Senate had been his ambition for years.  I knew he felt his powers would give him a position with the greatest of that body, and an immediate national reputation, and had no doubt of his cheerful acquiescence.  To my astonishment he assumed a grave and most serious manner.  “I am grateful, most grateful to you,” he said, “for I know this has been brought about by you, and that you sincerely desire to gratify me; but I cannot consent to be a candidate.  Most frankly will I tell you my reasons.  I admit it has been my desire for years.  It has been, I may say to you, my life-long ambition; but I have always coupled the possession of the position with the power of sustaining it reputably.  I was never ambitious of the silly vanity of simply being a senator and known as such; but of giving to it the character and dignity due it.  Louisiana is a proud State, her people are a noble and a proud people, they have a right to be so—­look at her!  With a soil and a climate congenial to the production of the richest staples now ministering to the luxuries and necessities of man—­with a river emptying into her commercial mart the productions of a world, her planters are princes, in feeling, fortune, and position.  At their mansions is dispensed a noble hospitality, rich in the feasts of body and mind, generous and open as was Virginia’s in her proudest days.  At Washington I would represent these, and the merchant-princes of her metropolis.  You have said, as eloquently as truly, ’There is but one Mississippi River; but one Louisiana; but one New Orleans on the face of the earth.’  As she is, and as her people are, I would represent her as her senator.