sible that a
lawyer with a practice truly immense, passing a great part of his
life in public and heated contests and in discussing and often
severely criticizing the motives and conduct of parties and
witnesses, should not make many enemies; but he was so essentially
modest, simple, gentlemanly, and tender, so considerate of the
feelings of others, so evidently trying to mitigate the pain which it
was often his duty to inflict, that we never heard of his searching
and subtile examination of witnesses, or his profound and exhaustive
analysis of character and motive, or his instantaneous and
irresistible retorts upon counsel, creating or leaving behind him, in
the bar or out of it, malice or ill-will in a human being. One of the
most touching and beautiful things we ever saw in a court-room would
have been in other hands purely painful and repulsive. It was his
examination of the wretched women who were witnesses in the Tirrell
case. His tact in eliciting what was necessary to be known, and which
they would have concealed, was forgotten and lost in his chivalrous
and Christian recognition of their common humanity, and in his
gentlemanly thoughtfulness that even they were still women, with
feelings yet sensitive to eye and word.

In jury-trials it would be foolish to judge style by severe or
classic standards. If an advocate have skill and insight and adequate
powers of expression, his style must yield and vary with the
circumstances of different cases and the minds of different juries
and jurors. When a friend of Erskine asked him, at the close of a
jury-argument, why he so unusually and iteratively, and with such
singular illustration, prolonged one part of his case, he said,--"It
took me two hours to make that fat man with the buff waistcoat join
the eleven!"

All men of great powers of practical influence over the minds of men
know how stupid and dull of apprehension the mass of mankind are; and
no one knows better than a great jury-lawyer in how many different
ways it is often necessary to present arguments, and how they must be
pressed, urged, and _hammered_ into most men's minds. He is
endeavoring to persuade and convince twelve men upon a question in
which they have no direct pecuniary or personal interest, and he must
more or less know and adapt his reasoning and his style to each
juror's mind. He should know no audience but the judge and these
twelve men. Retainers never seek and should not find counsel who