the lightnings of wrath and scorn and irony; then suddenly the
soft rays of sweetness and persuasion for the jury. He could
coax, intimidate, terrify; and his questions cut like knives."
The author of "Bench and Bar in Massachusetts", who was in college
with him, says of him: "During the five years of his practice
at the Middlesex Bar he underwent such an initiation into the
profession as no other county could furnish. Shrewdness, energy,
resource, strong nerves and mental muscles were needed to ward
off the blows which the trained gladiators of this bar were
accustomed to inflict. With the lessons learned at the Middlesex Bar
he removed to Boston in 1847, where he became associated with
the Honorable Joseph Bell, the brother-in-law of Rufus Choate,
and began a career almost phenomenal in its success. His management
of cases in court was artistic. So well taken were the preliminary
steps, so deeply laid was the foundation, so complete and
comprehensive was the preparation of evidence and so adroitly
was it brought out, so carefully studied and understood were the
characters of jurors,--with their whims and fancies and
prejudices,--that he won verdict after verdict in the face of
the ablest opponents and placed himself by general consent at
the head of the jury lawyers of the Suffolk Bar." Adjectives less
ambiguous and more uncomplimentary than "shrewd" were also applied
to him, and his manner of dominating his juries did not always
call forth praise from his contemporaries. In one of the newspaper
obituaries at the time of his death it is admitted that he had
been "charged with resorting to tricks unbecoming the dignity of
a lawyer," but the writer adds that it is an open question if
some, or indeed all of them were not legitimate enough, and might
not have been paralleled by the practices of some of the ablest
of British and Irish barristers. Both in law and in business--for