, sent him one hundred
dollars, and received the opinion.

[Illustration: THEOPHILUS PARSONS, CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT OF
MASSACHUSETTS.]

He was engaged in a heavy case which gave rise to many encounters
between himself and the opposing counsel, Mr. Sullivan. During Parson's
speech Sullivan picked up Parson's large black hat and wrote with a
piece of chalk upon it: "This is the hat of a d--d rascal." The lawyers
sitting round began to titter, which called attention to the hat, and
the inscription soon caught the eye of Parsons, who at once said: "May
it please your honour, I crave the protection of the Court, Brother
Sullivan has been stealing my hat and writing his own name upon it."

Parsons was considered a strong judge, and somewhat overbearing in his
attitude towards counsel. One day he stopped Dexter, an eminent
advocate, in the middle of his address to the jury, on the ground that
he was urging a point unsupported by any evidence. Dexter hastily
observed, "Your honour, did you argue your own cases in the way you
require us to do?"--"Certainly not," retorted the judge; "but that was
the judge's fault, not mine."

Patrick Henry, "the forest-born Demosthenes," as Lord Byron called him,
was defending an army commissary, who, during the distress of the
American army in 1781, had seized some bullocks belonging to John Hook,
a wealthy Scottish settler. The seizure was not quite legal, but Henry,
defending, painted the hardships the patriotic army had to endure.
"Where was the man," he said, "who had an American heart in his bosom
who would not have thrown open his fields, his barbs, his cellars, the
doors of his house, the portals of his breast, to have received with
open arms the meanest soldier in that little band of famished patriots?
Where is the man? _There_ he stands; and whether the heart of an
American beats in his bosom, you gentlemen are to judge." He then
painted the surrender of the British troops, their humiliation and
dejection, the triumph of the patriot band, the shouts of victory, the
cry of "Washington and liberty," as it rang and echoed through the
American ranks, and was reverberated from vale to hill, and then to
heaven. "But hark! What notes of discord are these which disturb the
general joy and silence, the acclamations of victory; they are the notes
of _John Hook_, hoarsely bawling through the American camp--'Beef! beef!
beef!'"

* * * * *

It is