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same opportunity to examine that I have, I submit whether I am not
right. It is proved that they were fresh. And they are shown to be
among the most efficient agents for removing the characteristic Signs
of blood. Dr. Wyman tells you water is as good for this pur-
pose as anything. Water was used most freely ; the Cochituate
was always running. The party had succeeded in removing all
other traces. That which confessedly was done would have been
more difficult than the removal of the traces of blood, if traces of
blood there were. If the mortal wound did produce an external effu-
sion of blood, to the extent that would seem to be implied by the
course of argument on the other side-which by no means appears
from the testimony, as a man may be stabbed in the xegion of the
heart, and all the effusion, or almost all of it, be within the chest-
here were the means of removing blood.
Much was said of the overalls. We did not introduce them. I
have no idea that he had on his overalls. I never made a point of it;
-so all that requires no answer.
Those skeleton keys ! Did he state truly where they came from,
or was there a connection between them and this transaction ? Was
the filing done by himself?-for, remember, they were filed. And
is it a probable fact that the keys that would open the dissecting-room
were picked up by him in the street, and carelessly thrown into that
drawer? We cannot trace the course of such a man's inexplicable
conduct, any more than you can trace the course of the serpent upon
the rock. But there are signs and indications which will not be lost
upon intelligent men.
Then we find that, in his private room, there were grapples, made
from fish-hooks, which had been purchased on the previous Tuesday;
and when you come to examine them, and take the whole testimony
in relation to them, you find that the first grapple was made of three
hooks. You will find that they had been used; that oxydation had
commenced upon them,-one ef them had become quite rusty.
Then one was made of two hooks; then one of but one. Then he
goes and purchases, on Friday, smaller hooks. All the time flitting
between the College and Cambridge, to keep up his alibi!-and then
you will determine for yourselves whether importance is to be given
to this fact of the fish-hooks.
You find, around the thigh of these remains, a piece of twinb,
which the Counsel have treated in a contemptuous manner, by saying,
if there had been a ball of twine, he would have been as likely to
have taken that as he would to have been there;--overlooking the fact
that that twine was not found down in that laboratory, nor in the
upper laboratory; but in the private room of Dr. Webster, to which
he alone had access, and in his private drawer. And I ask you
whether this does not connect him directly with the remains in the
tea-chest?
Then the mode in which that body was cut up! I have adverted
to the attempt to destroy it by alkalies. But I come to what is of
more importance than any other fact connected with the condition of
things in that laboratory. Dr. Webster, Gentlemen, carried in his
pocket the key of that privy, in the vault of which were found those
remains! That is a fact in this case which has not even been alluded
to by his Counsel. Gentlemen, I ask you to look at that key, when you
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