s to win: the first, to overcome the determination of the
jury to steel themselves against his influence; the second, to
convince their judgments. Mr. Choate's self-surrender was so complete
that they soon forgot him, because he forgot himself in his case;
nothing personally demonstrative or antagonistic induced obstinacy or
opposition, and every door was soon wide open to sympathy and
conviction. If an advocate is conceited, or vain, or self-important,
or if he thinks of producing effects as well for himself as for his
client, or if his nature is hard and unadaptive,--great abilities
display these qualities, instead of hiding them, and they make a
refracting medium between a case and the minds of a jury. Mr. Choate
was more completely free from them than any able man we ever knew.
Any one of them would have been in complete contradiction to the
whole composition and current of his nature. Though conscious of his
powers, he was thoroughly and lovingly modest. It was because he
thought so little of himself and so much of his client that he never
made personal issues, and was never diverted by them from his strict
and full duty. Instead of "greatly finding quarrel in a straw," where
some supposed honor was at stake, he would suffer himself rather than
that his case should suffer. Early in his practice, when a friend
told him he bore too much from opposing counsel without rebuking
them, he said: "Do you suppose I care what those men say? I want to
get my client's case." Want of pugnacity too often passes for want of
courage. We have seen him in positions where we wished he could have
been more personally demonstrative, and (to apply the language of the
ring to the contests of the court-room) that he could have stood
still and struck straight from the shoulder; but when we remember how
perfectly he saw through and through the faults and foibles of men,
how his mischievous and genial irony, when it touched personal
character, stamped and characterized it for life, and how keen was
the edge and how fine the play of every weapon in his full armory of
sarcasm and ridicule, (of which his speech in the Senate in reply to
Mr. McDuffie's personalities gives masterly exhibition,) we are
thankful that his sensibility was so exquisite and his temper so
sweet, that he was a delight instead of a terror, and that he was
loved instead of feared. Delicacy should be commensurate to power,
that each may be complete. It would seem almost impos