kindling with his subject, turned upon him and poured down a stream of burning invective like lava upon his head; when he depicted the villainy and barbarity of his bold atrocities; when he pictured, in dark and dismal colors, the fate which awaited him, and the awful judgment to be pronounced at another Bar upon his crimes when he should be confronted with his innocent victims; when he fixed his gaze of concentrated power upon him, the strong man's face relaxed; his eyes faltered and fell; until, at length, unable to bear up under self-conviction, he hid his head beneath the bar, and exhibited a picture of ruffianly audacity cowed beneath the spell of true courage and triumphant genius.

In his early practice in Mississippi, in closing a touching and eloquent appeal to the jury on behalf of a client whose life was trembling in the balance, Prentiss said:

"I have somewhere read that when God in His eternal councils conceived the thought of man's creation, he called to him the three ministers who wait constantly upon the throne, Justice, Truth, and Mercy, and thus addressed them:

666 Shall we make man?'

"Then said Justice, 'O God, make him not, for he will trample upon Thy laws.'

"Truth made answer also, 'O God, make him not, for he will pollute Thy sanctuaries.'

"Then Mercy, dropping upon her knees and looking up through her tears, exclaimed 'O God, make him. I will watch over him through all the dark paths he may have to tread.'

"Then God made man and said to him: 'Thou art the child of Mercy; go and deal in mercy with thy brother.'"

In speaking of Mr. Webster's marvellous power over a jury, Mr. Hubbard told me that he was present during the trial of a once celebrated divorce case in one of the courts of Boston. The husband was the complainant, and the alleged ground the one of recognized sufficiency in all countries. Mr. Webster was the counsel for the husband; Rufus Choate for the wife. As an advocate, the latter has had few equals, no superiors, at the American bar. In the case mentioned, with a distressed woman for a client, what was dearer than life, her reputation, in the balance, it may well be believed that the wondrous powers of the advocate were in requisition to the utmost.

At the conclusion of Choate's speech, as Mr. Hubbard assured me, the case of the injured husband appeared hopeless. It seemed impossible that such a speech could be successfully answered.

The opening sentence, in deep and measured tones, of Webster in reply, the prelude to an unrivalled argument and to victory, was:

"Saint Paul in the twenty-fourth verse of the seventh chapter of his wondrous Epistle to the Romans says: 'O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?' You alone, gentlemen, can deliver this wretched man from the body of this dead woman!"

What in word-painting can exceed the following from an address by Robert G. Ingersoll?

"A little while ago, I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon a magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, almost fit for a dead deity and gazed upon the sarcophagus of black Egyptian marble, where rest the ashes of that restless man. I leaned over the balustrade and thought about the career of the greatest soldier of the modern world.

"I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine contemplating suicide. I saw him at Toulon; I saw him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris; I saw him at the head of the army in Italy; I saw him crossing the bridge of Lodi with the tricolor in his hand; I saw him in Egypt in the shadow of the Pyramids; I saw him conquer the Alps and mingle the eagles of France with the eagles of the crags; I saw him at Marengo, at Ulm, and Austerlitz; I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter's withered leaves; I saw him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster- driven by a million bayonets back upon Paris clutched like a wild beast banished to Elba. I saw him escape and retake an empire by the force of his genius. I saw him upon the frightful field of Waterloo, where Chance and Fortune combined to wreck the fortunes of their former king, and I saw him at St. Helena, with his hands crossed behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea.

"I thought of the orphans and widows he had made, of the tears that had been shed for his glory, and of the only woman who ever loved him, pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition; and I said I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes; I would rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over the door, and the grapes growing

purple in the rays of the autumn sun; I would rather have been that poor peasant with my loving wife by my side, knitting as the day died out of the sky, with my children about my knee and their arms about me; I would rather have been that man and gone down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust, than have been that imperial impersonation of force and murder."

In his eloquent eulogy upon Abraham Lincoln, my neighbor and friend, Hon. Isaac N. Phillips, said:

"He lived with Nature and learned of her. He toiled, but his toil was never hopeless and degrading. His feet were upon the earth but the stars shining in perennial beauty were ever above him to inspire contemplation. He heard the song of the thrush, and the carol of the lark. He watched the sun in its course. He knew the dim paths of the forest, and his soul was awed by the power of the storm."

The closing sentences of Senator Ingalls's tribute to a departed colleague were sombre indeed:

"In the democracy of Death all men are equal. There is neither rank, nor station, nor prerogative, in the republic of the grave. At that fatal threshold the philosopher ceases to be wise, and the song of the poet is silent. There Dives relinquishes his riches and Lazarus his rags; the creditor loses his usury, and the debtor is acquitted of his obligation; the proud man surrenders his dignity, the politician his honors, the worldling his pleasures. Here the invalid needs no physician, and the laborer rests from unrequited toil. Here at last is Nature's final decree of equity. The wrongs of time are redressed, and injustice is expiated. The unequal distribution of wealth and honor, capacity, pleasure, and opportunity, which makes life so cruel and inexplicable a tragedy, ceases in the realms of Death. The strongest has there no supremacy, and the weakest needs no defence. The mightiest captain succumbs to the invincible adversary who disarms alike the victor and the vanquished."

In his day Edward Everett was the most gifted of American orators. His style, however, to readers in "these piping times of peace," seems a trifle stilted. What orator of the twentieth century would attempt such a sentence as the following from Everett's celebrated eulogy upon Washington:

"Let us make a national festival and holiday of his birthday; and ever, as the twenty-second of February returns, let us remember that, while with these solemn and joyous rites of observance we celebrate the great anniversary, our fellow-citizens