that three weeks of humanitarian service. He goes straight as an arrow
to the bosom of Him who said: "I was sick and ye visited Me." Life for
life. Blood for blood. Substitution!

In the legal profession I see the same principle of self-sacrifice. In
1846, William Freeman, a pauperized and idiotic negro, was at Auburn,
N.Y., on trial for murder. He had slain the entire Van Nest family.
The foaming wrath of the community could be kept off him only by armed
constables. Who would volunteer to be his counsel? No attorney wanted
to sacrifice his popularity by such an ungrateful task. All were
silent save one, a young lawyer with feeble voice, that could hardly
be heard outside the bar, pale and thin and awkward. It was William H.
Seward, who saw that the prisoner was idiotic and irresponsible, and
ought to be put in an asylum rather than put to death, the heroic
counsel uttering these beautiful words:

"I speak now in the hearing of a people who have prejudged prisoner
and condemned me for pleading in his behalf. He is a convict, a
pauper, a negro, without intellect, sense, or emotion. My child with
an affectionate smile disarms my care-worn face of its frown whenever
I cross my threshold. The beggar in the street obliges me to give
because he says, 'God bless you!' as I pass. My dog caresses me with
fondness if I will but smile on him. My horse recognizes me when I
fill his manger. What reward, what gratitude, what sympathy and
affection can I expect here? There the prisoner sits. Look at him.
Look at the assemblage around you. Listen to their ill-suppressed
censures and their excited fears, and tell me where among my neighbors
or my fellow-men, where, even in his heart, I can expect to find a
sentiment, a thought, not to say of reward or of acknowledgment, or
even of recognition? Gentlemen, you may think of this evidence what