THE ART OF CROSS-EXAMINATION
man, who he feared was against him, for an hour at a time. After he had piled up proof and persuasion all together, one of his favorite expressions was, "But this is only half my case, gentlemen, I go now to the main body of my proofs."
Like Scarlett, Erskine was of medium height and slender, but he was handsome and magnetic, quick and nervous, "his motions resembled those of a blood horse—as light, as limber, as much betokening strength and speed." He, too, lacked the advantage of a college education and was at first painfully unready of speech. In his maiden effort he would have abandoned his case, had he not felt, as he said, that his children were tugging at his gown. "In later years," Choate once said of him; "he spoke the best English ever spoken by an advocate." Once, when the presiding judge threatened to commit him for contempt, he replied, "Your Lordship may proceed in what manner you think fit; I know my duty as well as your Lordship knows yours." His simple grace of diction, quiet and natural passion, was in marked contrast to Rufus Choate, whose delivery has been described as "a musical flow of rhythm and cadence, more like a long, rising, and swelling song than a talk or an argument." To one of his clients who was dissatisfied with Erskine's efforts in his behalf, and who had written his counsellor on a slip of paper, "I'll be hanged if I don't plead my own cause," Erskine quietly replied, "You'll be hanged if you do." Erskine boasted that
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