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TRIAL OF JOHN W. WEBSTER. 229
mesmeriser, the cab, and the blood.-Dr. Henchman has been a witness
for the Government, and might have been asked if such a story had been
told at his shop; but no sucn inquiry was made, and you may therefore
unhesitatingly believe that it was. Mr. Littlefield replied that there
were so many flying stories in circulation that he did not know what
to think. Such was the simple conversation between these parties, when
the foundation of the College-wall was half undermined, and while
Littlefield was meditating the completion of the breach, and with it
the condemnation and ruin of the man with whom he was so quietly
conversing! This is the last time he saw Dr. Webster before Trenholrn
and Starkweather came there in the afternoon; and it is remarkable,
as it seems to me, that from that time forward, though the breach in the
wall was on that day to be completed and the overwhelming discovery
to be made, we do not learn from him in all the details or in any part
of his testimony, that he knew whether Dr. Webster was within, or was
absent from, the College, or that he went to ,any of his doors to ascertain
the fact. And, for aught that is stated, or testified of by him, I cannot
see but that he commenced his work upon the wall, and set his wife upon
guard to watch against the advent of Dr. Webster, without having first
taken the slightest precaution to ascertain if he was not then personally
present in his laboratory.
But now he procures more fitting and effectual tools from Mr. Fuller,
and resumes his labors upon the wall. Mark the peculiar reasons which
he now assigns for entering upon the work. It was, he says, because he
could not go up town without being told that the body' was under the
Medical College; he went to work there, he says also, to satisfy his own
mind as well as the public. He was moved more by other considerations
than those prevailing suspicions which he had adopted so early, and so
faithfully cherished. And though he had divulged them, on what he
deemed fitting occasions, first to his wife, and afterwards to Dr. Hana-
ford, his hired man, Mrs. Harlow, and Trenholm; and on Friday, to Drs.
Bigelow and Jackson, the last of whom solemnly said to him, " Do it
before you sleep,"-yet he was moved to the resumption of his labors by
those minor and almost trifling reasons to which I have just adverted!
And in what state of mind and with what feelings were those labors
renewed? He was engaged in a work as serious as that which occupies
you in this most painful and solemn trial; he was to find in the dark
recesses of the vault he was opening, the body of a most respected citizen
who had been foully murdered; and, by finding that, was to bring out
proof against another respected citizen, which, upon a charge of murder,
would consign him to an ignominious grave. Yet mark his language to
the Fullers; he joked about it as he took the tools to go on with his
work.
He descended to the wall, and proceeded to complete the breach which
he had commenced. At length, Starkweather and Kingsley, and after-
wards Trenholm, came to his house; and he was interrupted, and discon-
tinued his labor. But the work was nearly accomplished; a hole of the
size of the bar had already been made, and he had scarcely more to do
than to apply its force once more and complete the breach. He came up,
however, and entered into conversation with these officers of the police.
Starkweather put this question, as he testifies, though Littlefield omitted
to mention it, " Has every place in this building been searched? " to which
Mr. Littlefield replied, " Yes, except the privy of Dr. Webster." As a
reason for this inquiry, you will recollect Littlefield says that suspicions
that the body was concealed in the College were nearly universal. We
need not stop to consider how far they had been fomented by the agency
of Littlefield himself. He told Starkweather, that every place in the Col-
lege had been searched except the privy. " Well," said Starkweather,
" let us then search that now." " No," was the reply of Littlefield, " we
cannot do it now; the Doctor has got the key-the key of his apartments
-and we cannot do it to-day; " upon which Starkweather said they would
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