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TRIAL OF JOHN W. WEBSTER. 369
him. I wrote the billet in haste, merely begging him to give me more
time, and not to call during my lecture; but that, if he would wait until
afterpay lecture of Friday, I should then be quite at leisure to talk with
him. The billet was handed to Littlefield, not sealed, but hastily folded,
and given him. I certainly should not have done this, had my inten-
tions been wrong towards Dr. Parkman. Nor should I have called at
his house in the morning, and in presence of his servant have inquired
if he received my b.llet, and if I should see him after my lecture, as
I did.
The hour at which I desired Dr. Parkman to call was that which
I had long been in the habit of naming to persons as the one when I
should be generally disengaged; and I had often told the janitor to
name the same to persons calling at the College to see me previous +o
or during any lecture.
In the course of one of my lectures of the week, on chemical affinity
and the changes in the appearance and properties of bodies by their
action upon each other, I used a quantity of nitric oxide gas, which,
after standing over water for some time, is colorless; on mingling it
with equally colorless oxygen, the mixture becomes of a very deep yellow
color, a new gas being formed, which new gas has also a new property;
viz., of being absorbed by water. To exhibit this, I prepared a quantity
of the gas by the action of nitric acid upon copper. Great heat is
developed during the action, and the glass retort containing the materials
is very liable to crack. The action of the acid upon tthe copper gives
rise to a green liquid; viz., nitrate of copper.
This process is one I have been in the habit of conducting several
times each year, not only for obtaining the gas, but also the nitrate
of copper,-a salt in much use for various chemical purposes. The green
liquid I was accustomed to pour out into an earthen evaporating dish,
to evaporate on the sand bath, and crystallize. Whenever the retort
cracked from the heat, I invariably took it quickly out of the room, on
account of its unpleasant odor and its injurious effect upon any brass
or metallic apparatus, of which there was much in the room. I ran
with the cracked retort down stairs, and threw it, with its contents,
into one of the sinks or furnace ash-pits. It was from the nitrate
dropping from the cracked retort that the spots of green liquid were
produced upon the stairs.
The bunch of filed keys which was found, was picked up by me in
Fruit street one afternoon during the summer, as I was going to the
College; and was carelessly thrown aside on entering my room, and
was never thought of again, until, upon their meeting my eye some
time after, I took them up, and was about throwing them out of the
window, when it occurred to me they might be found and applied to
improper use; I therefore put them in a cupboard in the back room.
I had not seen them for months until they were produced in Court; and
I had never applied one of them to any lock.
The key of the dissecting-room had been brought to me by the janitor,
in consequence of my having taken a friend who was desirous of seeing
the rooms, museum, &c., to the dissecting-room, to which we were unable
to gain admission,-the lock upon the door being a peculiar one. Men-
tioning this to the janitor afterwards, and that I might have occasion
to show the rooms to some friend or stranger, he brought me this key.
It was hung up, and I never had occasion to use it, and never have
done so.
There were many brass keys in my drawer, some of which, it
appeared, fitted locks upon various doors; but of which I was previously
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