THE ART OF CROSS-EXAMINATION
try, and a subtlety the Leontine Gorgias might have envied. It was about two car-wheels, which to common eyes looked as like as two eggs; but Mr. Choate, by a fine line of argument between tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee, and a discourse on 'the fixation of points' so deep and fine as to lose itself in obscurity, showed the jury there was a heaven-wide difference between them. 'But,' said Mr. Webster, and his great eyes opened wide and black, as he stared at the big twin wheels before him, 'gentlemen of the jury, there they are—look at 'em;' and as he pronounced this answer, in tones of vast volume, the distorted wheels seemed to shrink back again into their original similarity, and the long argument on the 'fixation of points' died a natural death. It was an example of the ascendency of mere character over mere intellectuality; but so much greater, nevertheless, the intellectuality."[1]
Jeremiah Mason was quite on a par with either Choate or Webster before a jury. His style was conversational and plain. He was no orator. He would go close up to the jury-box, and in the plainest possible logic force conviction upon his hearers. Webster said he "owed his own success to the close attention he was compelled to pay for nine successive years, day by day, to Mason's efforts at the same Bar." As a cross-examiner he had no peer at the New England Bar.
In the history of our own New York Bar there have
- ↑ "Reminiscences of Rufus Choate," Parker.
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