vict it was necessary to prove the forgery and that the instrument had been uttered in Suffolk county, where the case was being tried. To my surprise before a witness had been called, Mr. Webster rose and said: 'May it please the court, we admit the forgery, so the evidence on this point will be unnecessary. We deny that the note was uttered in this county.' I was amazed at this admission. To me it seemed to be giving away the case. But the wisdom of it soon became apparent. The defendant was acquitted for want of proof on the question of utterance. If both the question of forgery and of the issue of the paper in the county had been presented, the jury might have regarded the forgery as the real question, and the defendant might not have escaped the punishment which he merited."-Hugh McCulloch's "Men and Measures of Half a Century," p. 19.

His Penetrating Look.

"His eyes, though deep-set, were so penetrating that few guilty men could endure their piercing gaze. One of his clients in a case of considerable importance informed him that he thought a witness on the other side intended to commit perjury. 'Point him out when he comes into the court room,' said Mr. Webster. The witness soon after appeared and took a seat in a swaggering manner, when looking towards the bar his eyes met those of Mr. Webster fixed steadily upon him. He immediately looked in another direction, but, as if fascinated, he soon turned his face

again towards Mr. Webster, to meet those deep, penetrating eyes, which doubtless seemed to him to read his very soul. He moved nervously in his seat for a few moments, then rose and left the court-house, to which he could not be induced to return."-McCulloch's "Men and Measures of Half a Century," p. 19.

Used the Products of Other Minds.

"Every indication we possess of his college life, as well as of his own repeated assertions, confirms the conclusion that nature had formed him to use the products of other men's toil, not to add to the common fund."-James Parton.

Came Near Abandoning the Law.

At one time he came near abandoning the law, as too high and perilous for him, and settling down as schoolmaster and clerk of a court.

Forty-Eight Before Developed.

He was forty-eight before his powers had reached their full development.

Lost Eighty-Five Dollars of His First Money.

Before leaving Boston he wrote to his friend Bingham, “If I am not earning my bread and cheese in exactly nine days after my admission, I shall certainly be a bankrupt." And so, indeed, it proved. With great difficulty he "hired" eighty-five dollars, as a capital to begin with, and this great sum was immediately lost in its transit by stage.

Forcible Language and Words.

Webster said: "The value, as well as the force, of a sentence depends chiefly upon the meaning, not its language; and great writing is that in which much is said in few words, and the words the simplest that will answer the purpose."

Not Original.

"He had less originality, whether of intellect or of will, than any other man of equal eminence that ever lived."-Parton.

cause.

His Charges and Income.

He gave advice in important cases for $20; his regular retaining fee was $500, his annual retainer, $100; his whole charge for conducting a case rarely exceeded $500; and the income of a whole year averaged about $20,000. Twenty years later he had gained a larger sum than that by the trial of a single But in 1820 such an income was immense, and probably not exceeded by that of any other lawyer in America. He received two fees of $25,000 each. His last fee was $11,000. There was one year in his Congressional life when he was kept out of the Supreme Court for four months by the high duty that devolved upon him of refuting Calhoun's nullification subtilties; but even in that year his professional income was more than $7,000.

His Extravagance.

Webster had two fancy farms of more than one thousand acres each; kept two hundred prize cattle, and seven hundred choice sheep; llamas, deer, and all rare fowls; a flower garden, one hundred acres in extent, and his books were worth $30,000; kept two or three yachts and a little fleet of smaller craft; was continually sending money in answer to begging letters, and gave his black man money enough to buy a very good house; added wings to his spacious house at Marshfield, and kept open house there and had half a dozen guests at a time, and died forty thousand dollars in debt.

A Lawyer's Life.

"Most lawyers in the United States," he once said, "live well, work hard, and die poor."

His Complexion.

"He had dark, jet black hair and eyes, and a complexion of burnt gunpowder; though all the rest of the children, except one, were remarkable for fairness of complexion and had sandy hair. Ezekiel, his elder brother by two years, was considered the handsomest man in the United States, and had a skin of singular fairness and light hair.”—From Parton's "Famous Americans," p. 61.

SIR RICHARD E. WEBSTER, ENGLAND.

(1842

Queen's Counsel, Member of Parliament for the Isle of Wight and ex-Attorney General for England in the last Tory administration (a $35,000 position, together with as much more in fees). Born December 22, 1842, educated at the Charterhouse, King's College, London, and Trinity College, Cambridge, whence he carried away the degree of Bachelor of Arts, third class honors in classics, a fair knowledge of mathematics, the reputation of being the best longdistance foot-racer in the university, and the good will of all. He is a son of the late Thomas Webster, Queen's Counsel, one of the most eminent patent barristers of his day. He was admitted a member of Lincoln's Inn in 1865, and to the bar in 1868, at which he rose rapidly, almost unprecedentedly, and patent, common law, privy council and House of Lords practice flowed in upon him. At thirty-six years of age he was made Queen's Counsel, believed to be the youngest man for many years who has received that high honor. Became Attorney General in 1885 under Lord Salisbury, which was sharply criticised by