have been honest all their lives can't have become such desperate rogues
all of a sudden." "But I cannot take the case," persisted Mr. Webster;
"I am worn to death with over-work. I have not had any real sleep for
forty-eight hours. Besides, I know nothing of the case." "It's hard, I
can see," continued the leader of the delegation; "but you're a New
Hampshire man, and the _neighbors_ thought that you would not allow two
innocent New Hampshire men, however humble they may be in their
circumstances, to suffer for lack of your skill in exposing the wiles of
this scoundrel Goodridge. The _neighbors_ all desire you to take the
case." That phrase "the neighbors" settled the question. No resident of
a city knows what the phrase means. But Webster knew it in all the
intense significance of its meaning. His imagination flew back to the
scattered homesteads of a New England village, where mutual sympathy and
assistance are the necessities, as they are the commonplaces, of village
life. The phrase remotely meant to him the combination of neighbors to
resist an assault of Indian savages, or to send volunteers to the war
which wrought the independence of the nation. It specially meant to him
the help of neighbor to neighbor, in times of sickness, distress,
sorrow, and calamity. In his childhood and boyhood the Christian
question, "Who is my neighbor?" was instantly solved the moment a matron
in good health heard that the wife of Farmer A, or Farmer B, was
stricken down by fever, and needed a friendly nurse to sit by her
bedside all night, though she had herself been toiling hard all day.
Every thing philanthropists mean when they talk of brotherhood and
sisterhood among men and women was condensed in that homely phrase, "the
neighbors." "Oh!" said Webster, ruefully, "if the neighbors think I may
be of service, of course I must go";--and, with his three companions, he
was soon seated in the stage for Ipswich, where he arrived at about
midnight. The court met the next morning; and his management of the case
is still considered one of his masterpieces of legal acumen and