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It was said there vi o~1er mate who resembled Dr. Parkman.
What!-say this aftet'~`;pending ten days of debate upon the fact
that he was so remarkable a man that his lifeless remains
could not be mistaken ? Why may not the bystanders of
the college have seen this alter ego, instead of the Simon
Pure, as well as the witnesses in the streets ?
We come now to the course of the various Counsels, of the
judge, and of the jury.
The silence and timidity of cross-examination evinced by the
counsel for the defence, at an early stage of the proceedings, be-
tokened to the lawyer spectator that in all probability they had in
reserve certain evidence which would completely break down the
case of the prosecution ; but when the proceedings were closed,
the conclusion was irresistible that this silence and timidity were
akin to the course of an inexperienced. attorney, rather than of the
practiced barrister. Or, perhaps, when we number the years which
the counsel have passed at the bar, each of them thought more of
playing the polished gentleman than discharging the duty of the
enthusiastic advocate ; and kept ever in mind that decorum
and courtesy were more important than the acquittal of their client
Their cross-examinations were almost solely upon the matters of
the direct testimony. It cannot be said, as in some States it could
be urged, that this was their rule of action. In Massachusetts, as
in this State, have been adopted the length and breadth of the
English rule which allows an introduced witness to be examined in
cross by leading questions upon the whole case, and not limited to
the matters upon which he has already been examined in chief.
Had the honorable counsel in remembrance the rule of the United
States Supreme Court forbidding this ; and had he forgotten the
antagonistic rule of his own State, early laid down in a case where
a namesake of his own client figured, that of Webster vs. Lee, in
5 Mass. Rep., at p. 334 ?
In perusing the evidence, the legal, and even the popular reader,
asks at every page :-why was not this matter and that circumstance
diligently pressed ?
Was delicacy so much at stake, and the nerves of court and jury
so refined, that the relatives swearing to the hair and the legs could
not be pressed more rigidly for their means of knowledge ? How
often bad the land agent and the brother-in-law seen the hair they
swore to ? When Kingsley testified to asking for a pen, and to hav-
ing Littlefield hand him the reed one which subsequently figured so
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