The patience required for taking testimony is needful also in

cross-examination. Not only children and slow-witted folk, but
also bright persons often answer only ``yes'' and ``no,''[1] and these
bare answers demand a patience most necessary with just this bareness,
if the answers are to be pursued for some time and consecutively.
The danger of impatience is the more obvious inasmuch as
everyone recognizes more or less clearly that he is likely to set the
reserved witness suggestive questions and so to learn things that the
witness never would have said. Not everybody, indeed, who makes
monosyllabic replies in court has this nature, but in the long run,
this common characteristic is manifest, and these laconic people
are really not able to deliver themselves connectedly in long speeches.
If, then, the witness has made only the shortest replies and a coherent
well-composed story be made of them, the witness will,
when his testimony is read to him, often not notice the untruths
it might contain. He is so little accustomed to his own prolonged
discourse that at most he wonders at his excellent speech without
noticing even coarse falsehoods. If, contrary to expectation, he
does notice them, he is too chary of words to call attention to them,
assents, and is glad to see the torture coming to an end. Hence,
nothing but endless patience will do to bring the laconic witness
to say at least enough to make his information coherent, even
though brief. It may be presented in this form for protocol.


Section 6. (d) Presuppositions of Evidence-Taking.


One of the most important rules of evidence-taking is not to