"Turbine raptus ingenii."--Scaliger
[concluded.]
The next morning there was queer talk about Clarian. Mac and I stared at each other when we heard it at breakfast, but still kept our own counsel in silence. Some late walkers had met him in the moonlight, crossing the campus at full speed, hatless, dripping wet, and flying like a ghost.
"I tell you," said our informant, a good enough fellow, and one not prone to be violently startled, "he scared me, as he flitted past. His eyes were like saucers, his hair wet and streaming behind him, his face white as a chalk-mark on Professor Cosine's blackboard. Depend on it, that boy's either going mad or has got into some desperate scrape."
"Pshaw!" growled Mac, "you were drunk,--couldn't see straight."
"Mr. Innocence was returning from some assignation, I suspect", remarked Zoile.
"If he had been, you'd have encountered him, Mr. Zoile," said Mac, curtly.
But I noticed my chum did not like this new feature in the case.
After this, until the time of my receiving the lad's invitation, I neither saw nor had communication with Clarian, nor did any others of us. If he left his room, it was solely at night; he had his meals sent to him, under pretence of illness, and admitted no one, except his own servant. This fellow, Dennis, spoke of him as looking exceedingly feeble and ill; and also remarked that he had apparently not been to bed for some days, but was mixing colors, or painting, the whole time. I went to his door several times; but was invariably refused admittance, and told, kindly, but firmly, that he would not be interrupted. Mac also tried to see him, but in vain.
"I caught a glimpse of that boy's face at his window just now," said he, one day, coming in after recitation. "You may depend upon it, there's something terribly wrong. My God, I was horrified, Ned! Did you ever see any one drown? No? Well, I did once,--a woman. She fell overboard from a Chesapeake steamboat in which I was coming up the Bay, and sank just before they reached her. I shall never forget her looks as she came up the last time, turned her white, despairing, death-stricken face towards us, screamed a wild nightmare scream, and went down. Clarian's face was just like hers. Depend upon it, there's something wrong. What can we do?"
Nothing, indeed, save what we did,--wait, until that pleasant morning came round and brought me Clarian's note. I could scarcely brook the slow laziness with which the day dragged by, as if it knew its own beauty, and lingered to enjoy it. At last, however, the night came, the hour also, and punctually with it came Dr. Thorne, a kindly young physician, and a man of much promise, well- read, prompt, clear-headed, resourceful, and enthusiastically attached to his profession Mac tucked a volume of Shakspeare under his arm, and we made our way to Clarian's room forthwith. Here we found about a dozen students, all known to us intimately. They were seated close to one another, conversing in low tones, and betraying upon their faces quite an anxiety of expectation. The door of the bedroom was closed, the curtain was lowered, and the only light in the room came from a shaded lamp, which was placed upon a small table in the recess to the right of the picture.
"What is this for?" inquired Dr. Thorne, pointing to a sort of salver resting upon a low tripod directly in front of the picture.
"Where is Clarian?" asked I.
"He looks awful," someone began in a whisper, when the lad's feeble voice called out from the bedroom,--
"Is it Ned and Mac?"
The door was pulled open, and Clarian came towards us.
"I am glad to see you, my friends. Dr. Thorne, you are truly welcome. Pray, be seated. Mac, here is your place, you and your Shakspeare," said he, indicating the chair and table in the recess.
I had held out my hand to the lad, but he turned away without taking it, and began to adjust the cords that moved the curtain.
"The tripod, Dr. Thorne," said he, with a sickly smile, "is a--a mere fancy of mine,--childish,--but in the salver I shall burn some pyrotechnic preparations, while the picture is being exhibited, by way of substitute for daylight. Excuse me a moment," added he, as he went into the bedroom again.
"Blount," said Dr. Thorne, in my ear, "why have you permitted this? What ails that boy? If he is not cared for soon, he will go crazy. Hush!--here he comes,-- keep your eye on him."
Then, as Clarian came out, and stood in the bedroom doorway, quite near me, I remarked the terrible change since I had last seen him. He leaned against the door-frame, as if too weak to support himself erect; and I saw that his knees shook, his hands jerked, and his mouth twitched in a continual nervous unrest. He had on a handsome robe de chambre of maroon velvet, which he seldom wore about college, though it was very becoming to him, its long skirts falling nearly to his feet, while its ample folds were gathered about his waist, and secured with cord and tassel. His feet were thrust into neat slippers, and his collar rolled over a flowing black cravat à la Corsaire. His long hair, which was just now longer than usual, was evenly parted in the middle, like a girl's, and, combed out straight, fell down to his shoulders on either side. All this care and neatness of dress made the contrast of his face stand out the more strikingly. Its pallor was ghastly: no other word conveys the idea of it. His lips kept asunder, as we see them sometimes in persons prostrated by long illness, and the nether one quivered incessantly, as did the smaller facial muscles near the mouth. His eyes were sunken and surrounded by livid circles, but they themselves seemed consuming with the dry and thirsty fire of fever: hot, red, staring, they glided ever to and fro with a snake-like motion, as uncertain, wild, and painful, in their unresting search, as those of a wounded and captive hawk. The same restlessness, approaching in violence the ceaseless spasmodic habit of a confirmed Chorea, betrayed itself in all his movements, particularly in a way he had of glancing over his shoulder with a stealthy look of apprehension, and the frequent starts and shivers that interrupted him when talking. His voice also was changed, and in every way he gave evidence not only of disease of mind and body, but of a nervous system shattered almost beyond hope of reaction and recovery. Trembling for him, I rose and attempted to speak with him aside, but he waived me off, saying, with that sickly smile which I had never before seen him wear,--
"No, Ned,--you must not interrupt me to-night, neither you nor the rest,--for I am very weak and nervous and ill, and just now need all my strength for my picture, which, as it has cost me labor and pain,--much pain,--I wish to show in its best light. Macbeth's terror--it means more than it did the other night, Ned--but"--
Here he murmured an inarticulate word or two, recovering himself almost instantly, however, and resuming in a stronger voice,--
"Macbeth's doom is my picture. You will wonder I preferred the solid wall to canvas, perhaps,--but so did the genuine old artists. Lippo Lippi, and Giotto, and--why, Orcagna painted on graveyard walls; and I can almost fancy, sometimes, that this room is a vault, a tomb, a dungeon, where they torture people. Turn to the place, good Mac, Shakespeare's tragedy of 'Macbeth,' Act Third, Scene Fourth, and read the scene to us, as you know how to read; I will manage the accompaniments."
As he spoke, he touched the salver with a lighted match, so that a blue alcoholic flame flickered up before the curtain, making the poor lad's face seem more ghastly than ever.
"You must sit down, Clarian," cried Dr. Thorne, resolutely.
Clarian smiled again, that dim, uncertain smile, and answered,--
"Nay, Doctor, let me have my own way for an hour, and after that you shall govern me as your learned skill suggests. And do not be uneasy about my 'creamfaced' aspect, as I see Ned is: there is plentiful cause for it, beyond the feebleness of this very present, and to-night is not the first time I have worn these 'linen cheeks.' Read on, Mac."
We sat there in the dim light, breathless, awed,--for all of us saw the boy's agony, and were the more shocked that we were unable to understand it,--until, at last, in a voice made more impressive by its tremor, Mac began to read the terrible text,--to read as I had never heard him read before, until a fair chill entered our veins and ran back to our shuddering hearts from sympathy. Then, as he read on and painted the king and murderer together, while his voice waxed stronger and fuller, we saw Clarian step forward to the salver and busy with its lambent flame, till it blazed up with a broad, red light, that, shedding a weird splendor upon all around, and lending a supernatural effect to the room's deep shadows, the picture's funereal aspect, and the unearthly pallor of the boy's countenance, startled our eyes like the painful glare of midnight lightning.
"Thou canst not say, I did it! Never shake
Thy gory locks at me!"
As the reader thrust the terror of these words upon us, all started back, for the curtain was plucked suddenly away, and there before us, not in Clarian's picture, it seemed, but in very truth, stood Macbeth, conscious of the murdered presence. Even the reader, absorbed as he was in his text, paused short, amazed; and I forgot that I had seen this picture, only knew that it was a living scene of terror. Doubtless much of this startling effect was the result of association, the agitation of anxiety, the influence of the impressive text, the suddenness of the apparition, the unusual light; but in the figure of Macbeth, at which alone we gazed, there was a life, a terrible significance, that outran all these causes. It was not in the posture, grand as that was,--not in the sin- stamped brow, rough with wrinkles like a storm-chafed sea,--not in the wiry hair, gray and half rising in haggard locks, like adders that in vain try to escape the foot that treads them down,--nor in the mouth, for that was hid behind the impotent guard of the upraised arm and clenched fist,--but in those painted eyes, into which, all-fascinated, we ever gazed, reading in them all that crouching terror, all the punishment of that spectral presence, all the poignant consciousness of his fate to whom such things could happen, to whom already his victims rise again,
"With twenty mortal murders on their crowns
And push us
from our stools!"
While I yet gazed, a sickening terror pervading me in the presence of these ghastly eyes, there came a voice, as if from afar,--"Read on!"--so consonant with the tone of my emotions, that I looked to see the figure itself take speech, until Mac, with a gasp, resumed. Still, as he read, the nightmare-spell possessed me, till a convulsive clutch upon my arm roused me, and instinctively, with the returning sense, I turned to Clarian.
Not too soon,--for then, in his own person, and in that strange glare, he was interpreting the picture to us. He stood, not thrown back like Macbeth, but drawn forward, on tiptoe, with neck reached out, form erect, but lax, one arm extended, and one long diaphanous finger pointing over our heads at something he saw behind us, but towards which, in the extremity of our terror, we dared not turn our eyes. He saw it,--more than saw it,--we knew, as we noted the scream swelling in his throat, yet dying away into an inarticulate breath ere it passed the blue and shaken lips,--he saw it, and those eyes of his, large enough in their wont, waxed larger still, wilder, madder with desperate affright, till every one of us, save the absorbed reader, recognized in them the nightmare horror of the picture,--knew that in Macbeth Clarian had drawn his own portrait! There he stood, drawn on, staring, pointing--
"Stop!" shouted Dr. Thorne, his voice hoarse and strident with emotion; but Mac, absorbed in his text, still read, flinging a fine and subtile emotion of scorn into the words,--
"O proper stuff!
This is the very painting of your
fear:
This"----
"Triple fool! be silent!" cried Dr. Thorne again, springing to his feet,-- while we, spell-bound, sat still and waited for the end. "Cease! do you not see?" cried he, seizing Mac.
But there stood Clarian yet, that red light upon his cheek and brow, that fixed stare of a real, unpainted horror in his speechless face, that long finger still pointing and trembling not,--there he stood, fixed, while one might count ten. Then over his blue lips, like a ghost from its tomb, stole a low and hissing whisper, that curdled our blood, and peopled all the room with dreadful things,--a low whisper that said,--
"Prithee, see there! behold! it comes! it comes!" Now he beckoned in the air, and called with a shuddering, smothered shriek,--"Come! I did it! come! Ha!" yelled he, plucking the spell from his limbs like a garment, and springing madly forward towards the door,--"Ha! touch me not! Off, I say, off!" He paused, gazed wildly round, flung his hand to his brow, and, while his eyes rolled till nothing but their whites were seen, while the purple veins swelled like mole- tracks in his forehead, and a bubbling froth began to gather about his lips, he tossed his arms in the air, gave shrieking utterance to the cry,--"O Christ! it is gone! it is gone!" and fell to the floor with a bound.
We sprang to him,--Thorne first of any.
"This is my place, gentlemen," said he, in quick, nervous tones. Then, taking the prostrate child into his arms, he carried him to his bed, laid him down, felt his pulse, and placed his head in Mac's arms. Returning then, he veiled the picture, flung the salver out of the window, and dismissed the huddled throng of frightened students, warning them to be silent as to the night's events. "Very likely Clarian will never see to-morrow; so be careful, lest you soil his memory."
"What does it mean, Thorne?" asked Mac, as the Doctor and I came again to the bedside. "It is nothing more than an overdose of cannabis or opium upon an excited nervous system, is it?"
Thorne looked at the delicate-limbed child who lay there in Mac's strong arms, wiped away the gathering froth from the lips, replaced the feebly quivering limbs, and, as he lingered over the pulse, replied,--
"He has been taking hashish?"
"He has taken it,--I do not say he is under its influence now."
"No,--he has not touched any stimulant. This is much worse than that,--this means epilepsy, Mac, and we may have to choose between death and idiocy."
He was still examining the boy, and showing Mac how to hold him most comfortably.
"If I could only get at the causes of this attack,--those, I mean, which lie deeper than the mere physical disorder,--if I could only find out what it is he has been doing,--and I could, easily, were I not afraid of directing suspicion towards him, or bringing about some unfortunate embarrassment"--
"What is it you suspect?" thundered Mac.
"Either some cruel trick has been played upon the boy, or he has been guilty of some act of madness"--
"Impossible!" cried we in a breath; "Clarian is as pure as Heaven."
"Look at him, Thorne!" said my good chum,--"look at the child's baby-face, so frank and earnest!--look at him! You dare not say an impure thought ever awoke in that brain, an impure word ever crossed those lips."
Dr. Thorne smiled sadly.
"There is no standard of reason to the enthusiast, my dear Mac; and here is one, of a surety. However, time will reveal; I wish I knew. Come, Ned, help me to mix some medicines here. Be careful to keep his head right, Mac, so as to have the circulation as free as possible."
While we were occupied in the front room, there came a stout double knock at the door, and when I opened it, Hullfish, the weather-beaten old constable of the borough, made his hesitating appearance. The Doctor gave me a quick glance, as if to say, "I told you so," and then returned the old man's bluff salutation. As soon as Hullfish saw him, he came forward with something like a sigh of relief, and said,--
"Ah, Doc, you here? 'Tar'n't a hoax, then, though I was mightily 'feared it was. Them students is the Devil for chivying of a feller,--beggin' your pardon, Mr. Blount. Have you got him yonder, Doctor?" said he, his keen eye noticing Mac and Clarian in the back room.
"What do you mean, Hullfish? Got whom?" asked Thorne, making me a sign to be quiet.
"The party, Sir, that was to be copped. I've got a blank warrant here, all right, and a pair of bracelets, in case of trouble."
"What fool's errand is this, old man?" asked the Doctor, sternly.
"What! you don't know about it? Lord! p'raps it's a sell, after all," said he, quite chopfallen. "But I've got my pay, anyhow, and there's no mistake in a V on the Princeton Bank. And here's the papers," said he, handing a note to the Doctor. "If that's slum, I'm done, that's all."
The Doctor glanced at the scrap of paper, then handed it to me, asking, "Is that his handwriting?"
It was a note, requiring Mr. Hullfish. to privately arrest a person guilty of a capital offence, until now concealed. If he was not brought to Hullfish's house between nine and ten that night, then Hullfish was to proceed to No.-- North College, where he would be certain to find the party. The arrest must be made quietly. The handwriting was undoubtedly Clarian's, and I told Thorne as much.
"You see, gentlemen," said Hullfish, "I wouldn't 'a' taken no notice of it, ef it hadn't been for the money; but, thinks I, them students a'n't in the habit of sech costly jokes, and maybe there'll be some pinching to do, after all. So you mean to say it's a gam, do you, Doctor? May I be so bold as to inquire what yonder chap's holding on to 'tother about?"
"'Tother' is dangerously ill,--has a fit, Hullfish. He is the author of that note,--very probably was out of his mind when he wrote it."
"So? Pity! Very sick? Mayn't I see him?"
But, as he stepped forward, Thorne stood in the way and effectually intercepted his view. The constable smiled cunningly, as he drew back, and said,--
"You're sure 'ta'n't nothing else, then? Nobody's been getting rapped on the' head? Didn't see no blood, though,--that's true. Well, I don't like to be sold, that's a fact,--but there's no help for it. Here's the young man's change, Doctor,--warrant sixty-six, my fees one dollar."
Thorne carelessly asked if there had been any rows lately,--if he had heard of any one being hurt,--if they had been quiet recently along the canal; and being assured that there had been no disturbance of moment,--"only a little brush between Arch and Long Tobe, down to Gibe's,"--he handed the money back to Hullfish.
"Keep that yourself,--it is yours by rights. And, look you, mum's the word in this case, for two reasons: there's danger that the poor little fellow there is going to croak before long, and you'd be sorry to think you'd given trouble to a dead man; and what's more, if the boys get hold of this, there'll be no end of their chaffing. There's not a few of them would like to cook your goose for you,--I needn't tell you why; so, if you don't want them to get the flashest kind of a pull over you, why, you'll take my advice and keep dark."
"Nothing like slang, Ned, with the police or the prigging gentry. It gives them a wonderful respect for your opinion," said the Doctor, when Hullfish was gone. But his serious, almost stern look returned immediately, as he continued, --"Now to solve this mystery, and find out what this wretched boy has been doing. Come, you and Mac, help me to understand him."
When we had told the Doctor all we knew of the lad, he pondered long over our recital.
"One thing is certain," said he: "the boy is innocent in intention, whatever he has done, and we must stand by him,--you two particularly; for you are to blame, if he has got himself into any predicament."
"The boy has done nothing wrong, Thorne," said Mac, sturdily; "he may have been trapped, or got himself involved somehow, but he never could have committed any crime capable of superinducing such an attack as this."
The Doctor shook his head.
"You may be right, my friend,--and I hope you are, for the child's sake, for it will certainly kill him, if he has. But I never trust an intense imagination when morbidly excited, and I have read of some strange freaks done by persons under the influence of that infernal hashish. However, trust me, I shall find out what is the matter before long, and bring the boy round nicely. He is improving fast now, and all we have to do is to avert another attack."
Thank Heaven, in a day or two Clarian was pronounced to be out of danger, and promising rapid recovery. We had removed him to our rooms, as soon as the violence of the convulsion left him, in order to spare him the associations connected with his own abode. Still, the lad continued very weak, and Thorne said he had never seen so slight an attack followed by such extreme prostration. Then it did my heart good to see how my chum transformed himself into the tenderest, the most efficient of nurses. He laid aside entirely his brusque manner, talked in the softest tones, stole noiselessly about our rooms, and showed all the tender solicitude, all the quiet "handiness" of a gentle woman. I could see that Clarian loved to have him at his bedside, and to feel his caressing hand.
"You see, Ned," Mac would say, in a deprecatory tone that amused me vastly, "I really pity the poor little devil, and can't help doing all in my power for him. He's such a soft little ass,--confound Thorne! he makes me mad with his cursed suspicions!--and then the boy is out of place here in this rough-and- tumble tiltyard. Reminds me of a delicate wineglass crowded in among a ruck of aleflagons and battered quart-cups."
But, though we rejoiced to see that Clarian's health promised to be better than it had been for months, we did not fail to notice with regret and apprehension, that, as he grew physically better and mentally clearer, a darkening cloud settled over his whole being, until he seemed on the point of drowning in the depths of an irremediable dejection and despair. Besides this, he was ever on the point of telling us something, which he yet failed of courage to put into words; and Thorne, noticing this, when, one day, we were all seated round the bed, while the lad fixed his shaded, large, mournful eyes upon us with a painfully imploring look, said suddenly, his fingers upon Clarian's pulse,--
"You have something to say to us,--a confession to make, Clarian."
The boy flushed and shuddered, but did not falter, as he replied, "Yes."
"You must withhold it until you are well again. I know what it is."
Clarian quickly withdrew his hand from the Doctor's grasp.
"You know it, and yet here, touching me? Impossible! entirely impossible!"
"Oh, as to that," said Thorne, with a cool shrug of the shoulders, "you must remember that our relations are simply those of physician and patient. Other things have nought to do with it. And, as your physician, I require you to withhold the matter until you are well enough to face the world."
"No,--I must reap where I have sown. I have no right to impose upon my friends any longer."
"Bad news travel fast enough, Clarian, and there is no wisdom in losing a friend so long as you can retain him."
"I do not see the force of your reasoning, Dr. Thorne. I have enough to answer for, without the additional contumely of being called an impostor."
"For your mother's sake, Clarian, I command you to wait. Spare her what pain you can, at least."
"My mother! Oh, my God, do not name her! do not name her!"
And he burst into the only tears I ever saw him shed, hiding his face in the bed-clothes, and sobbing piteously.
"What does this mean?" said Mac, as soon as we were where Clarian could not hear us. "What have you found out?"
"Positively nothing more than you know already," answered Thorne.
"Nothing?" echoed Mac, very indignantly; "you speak very confidently for one having such poor grounds."
"My dear Mac," said Thorne, kindly, "do you think I am not as much concerned about Clarian as you are? Positively, I would give half I own to arrive at a satisfactory solution of this mystery. But what can we do? The boy believes himself a great criminal. Do you not see at once, that, if we permit him to confess his crime, he will insist upon taking himself out of our keeping,-- commit suicide, get himself sent to the madhouse, or anyhow lose our care and our soothing influence? We cannot relieve him until we restore his strength and composure. All we can do now is to watch him, soothe him, and by all means stave off this confession until he is stronger. It would kill him to face a charge now. I am inquiring quietly, and, if anything serious has happened, shall be sure to find out his connection with it."
Though we rebelled against the Doctor's conclusions, we could not but see the prudence of the course he advised, and so we sat down to watch our poor little friend, gnawed with bitter anxiety, and feeling a sad consciousness that the disease itself under which he suffered was beyond our skilfullest surgery, and one that inevitably threatened the saddest consequences. A man has grand powers of recovery, so long as his spirit is free; but let him once be persuaded that his soul is chained down forever in adamantine fetters, and, though, like Prometheus, he may endure with silence, patience, even divinely, he is nevertheless utterly incapable of any positive effort towards recuperation. His faith becomes, by a subtile law of our being, his fact; the mountain is gifted with actual motion, and rewards the temerity of his zeal by falling upon him and crushing him forever. Such a person moves on, perchance, like a deep, noble river, in calm and silence, but still moves on, inevitably destined to lose himself in the common ocean. And this was the promise of Clarian's case. Whatever was his hidden woe, however trivial its rational results, or baseless its causes, it had beyond remedy seized upon his soul, and we knew, that, unless it could be done away with at the source, the end was certain: first the fury, then the apathy of madness. He was no longer tortured with a visible haunting presence, such as had borne him down on that fatal night, but we saw plainly that he had taken the spectre into his own breast, and nursed it, as a bosom serpent, upon his rapidly exhausting energies.
Happily for us,--ere Clarian was quite beyond recovery, while Mac still tore his hair in rage at his own impotence, while the Doctor still pursued his researches with the sedateness of a philosopher, and I was using what power I had to alleviate my little friend's misery,--that subtile and mysterious agency, which, in our blindness and need, we term Chance, interposed its offices, rolled away the cloud from the mystery, and, like a good angel, rescued Clarian, even as he was tottering upon the very brink of the dismal precipice to whose borders he had innocently strayed.
I shall never forget that pleasant June day. It was the first time that Clarian had been out since his illness; and I was his single companion, as he strayed slowly along through the college grounds, leaning tremulously upon my arm, dragging his feet languidly over the pebbled walks, and drinking in the warm, fresh, quivering air with a manner that, although apathetic, still spoke of some power of enjoyment. It was during the hour for the forenoon recitation, and the elm-shaded campus was entirely free of students. As Clarian walked along, his eyes bent down, I heard him murmuring that delicious verse of George Herbert's,--
"Sweet day! so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky!
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night,
For thou must die!"
"'For thou must die,'--so sad! And yet the thought itself of death is not that which saddens us so, do you think, Ned?" he went on, I hearing his words without heeding them,--for I was looking just then towards the outer gate next the President's house, through which I saw Dr. Thorne coming rapidly, accompanied by a stout, middle-aged man, having the dress and appearance of a well-to-do farmer,--"Not the thought, simply, 'Thou must die,'" repeated Clarian, in his plaintive murmur, "but the feeling that all this decay and death is of ourselves, and could be averted by ourselves, had we only self-control, could we only keep ourselves pure, and so be ever near God and of Him. There's cause for a deeper melancholy, poignanter tears than ever Jacques shed."
Dr. Thorne and his companion were now quite near, coming towards us on the same path, when I saw the stranger slap his thigh energetically and catch Thorne by the arm, while he exclaimed in tones of boisterous surprise,--
"Why, there's the very little chap, as I'm alive!"
I had half a glimpse of the Doctor's seizing his companion and clapping one hand over his mouth, as if to prevent him from saying more,--but it was too late. At the sound of the man's voice I felt Clarian bound electrically. He looked up,--over his face began to come again that terrible anguish of the night of the picture, but the muscles seemed too weak to bring it all back,--he grew limp against me,--his arms hung inert at his side,--a word that sounded like "Spare me!" gurgled in his throat,--a feeble shudder shook him, and, ere I could interpose my arm, he sank in a heap at my feet, white, and cold, and lifeless. Before I had raised him, Thorne and the man sprang to my aid, and the latter, bending over with eager haste, took the thin white hands in his own, half caressing them, half fearing to grasp them, speaking to him the while in tones of frightened entreaty, that, on any other occasion, would have been ludicrous enough.
"Come, now, my little man," said he,--"come, don't be afeard, don't be afeard of me! Dan Buckhurst won't harm ye, not for the world, poor child! Come, stand up! 'Twas all a joke. Come, come!--My God! Doctor, he a'n't dead, is he?" cried he to Thorne, in horror.
"If he is, you have killed him, you damned old fool, you!" responded Thorne, impetuously, thrusting the man aside with an angry gesture, and bending down to examine the lad's inert form. "Thank God, Ned," said he at last, "it is only a swoon this time, and we'll soon have him all right. We must get him to bed, though. Here, Buckhurst, you are the strongest; stop whimpering there, you old jackanapes, and bring him along."
Buckhurst quickly obeyed, lifting Clarian up in his arms as gently and tenderly as if he had been an infant, and following Thorne, who led the way to our rooms. There the lad was placed upon the bed with which he had become only too familiar, and the Doctor, by means of his restoratives, soon had the satisfaction of recalling breath and motion. As soon as the boy's sighs gave evidence of returning vitality, Thorne thrust us all from the room, including Mac, who had now come in from class, saying to Buckhurst,--
"Now, Sir, tell them all about it,--and wait here; I shall want you presently." With which words he closed the door upon us, and returned to his patient.
Mr. Buckhurst refused the chair tendered him by Mac, and paced up and down the room in a state of immense perturbation.
"Well, I never!" said he, "well, I never! It taken me all aback, Sir," added he, turning to me. "Did you ever see anything like it? Why, he's jest like a gal! Dang it, Sir! my Molly a'n't half as nervous as he is. I hope he'll get well,--I raelly do, now. I wouldn't hev had it happen for I dunno what, now, indeed!" And he resumed his walk, repeating to himself, "Well, I never! Who'd 'a' judged 'twas a child like that?"
"May I beg to know what you refer to, Mr. Buckhurst?" asked Mac, with considerable impatience in his tones.
"Eh,--what? He's mighty delicate, a'n't he?" said the man, with his thumb indicating the next room.
"Very delicate indeed, Sir,--perhaps you can explain the cause of his present attack," said I, angrily; for I had begun to think, from Buckhurst's manner, that he had been guilty of some practical joke upon Clarian. I saw the fire of a similar suspicion blazing in Mac's eyes; and I fear, had our conclusions been verified, the worthy Mr. Buckhurst would have fared very badly at our hands, spite the laws of hospitality.
"What! did he never tell you? Of course not, though, being sick ever sence, and thinking me dead, too. Well, I'll tell you: but mind, you mustn't banter the child about it, for he can't stand it,--though it's only a joke. Might have been serious, to be sure, but, as things turns out, a pretty good joke, to my notion,--though I'm rael sorry he's been so bad about it."
Mac rose, removed his coat, and marched deliberately up to our guest. "See here, Sir," said he in his deepest bass voice, which his dark frown made still more ominous, "do you mean us to infer that you have been making that child Clarian the victim of any of your infernal jokes, as you style them?"
Buckhurst stared a moment, and then, seeming to comprehend the drift of Mac's words, burst into a hearty laugh.
"No, Sir!" he shouted, "the shoe's on the other foot, thank the Lord! The boy himself played the joke, or trick, whatever it was. Dr. Thorne tells me he was kind of crazy, from drinking laudanum, or some sech pisonous matter. Howsever that was, I'm sure he didn't do it in airnest,--thought so from the very first, --and now I've had a good look at his face, I'd swear to it"
"What did he do?" asked Mac, hurriedly.
Buckhurst laughed in that hearty way of his. Said he,--
"I'll wager you a stack of hay agin them books yander you couldn't guess in a week now. What d'ye think it was? Ho! ho! Why, why, the little rascal shoved me into the canawl!"
"Shoved you into the canal!" echoed I, while Mac, looking first at him, then at me, finally burst into a peal of laughter, shouting the while,--
"Bravo! There's your 'experience' philosophy, Ned Blount! Catch me teaching milksops again! Go on, Buckhurst, tell us all about it."
"Yes," said Mr. Buckhurst, apparently quite pleased to see that we laughed with him. "It don't look like it was in the nature of things, somehow, does it? Fact, though, he did indeed. Shoved me right in, so quick I didn't know what the Devil was the matter, until I soused kersplash! and see him taking out over the drawbridge like mad."
"When was that, Mr. Buckhurst?"
"Jest inside of a month ago, Sir, one night."
"Sapperment, Ned! that was the time of the 'herb Pantagruelion'!-- Well, what were you doing on the canal at that hour?" asked Mac, slyly.
"No, you needn't, now,--I see you wink at him,--honor bright. I'd been up to town, to take a mess o' clams at Giberson's, with maybe a sprinklin' of his apple-jack,--nothing else,--and I was on my way home,--to Skillman's tavern at the dépôt, you know,--and I'd jest stopped a piece, and was a-standing there, looking at the moon in the water, when he tipped me over. I tell you, I was mad when I crawled out wet as a rat; and if I'd ketched him then, you may depend upon it, I'd 'a' given his jacket a precious warming. As I said, he run off, but jest as I turned towards the tavern, I see him a-coming back, kinder wild-like; so I slipped behind a lumber-pile, hoping he might come over the bridge, so I could lay my fingers on him. The moon was about its highest, so I could see his face, plain as day,--white,--skim-milk warn't a circumstance to it,--and his eyes wide open as they could stretch. I tell you, he was wild! He looked up and down a bit, mumbled somethin' I couldn't make out, and then what do you think that boy did? Why, he jumped in, clothes and all, bold as a lion,--plainly to save me from drowning, and me all the time a-spyin' at him from behind a lumber-pile! He was sarching for me, I knowed, for he swum up and down jest about there for the space maybe of a quarter of an hour. And when he give it up at last, and come out, he kinder sunk down on the tow-path, and I heard him say plain enough, though he only whispered it,--jest like a woman actor I see down to York oncet, playin' in Guy something or other,--she was a sort of an old gypsy devil,--says he, 'I am a murderer, then!' Thinks I, 'Sonny, all but the murderer!' And as he stood up again, he 'peared to suffer so, his face was so white, and his knees so shaky, that I says to myself, 'Dan, you've carried the joke far enough.' So I sings out to him, and comes out from behind the lumber-stack, but, Lord bless ye! he jest peeped round over his shoulder oncet, gave a kind of chokin' scream like, and put out up the road as if the Devil was after him. I knowed it warn't no use to follow him, so I got on a dry shirt and went to bed. The next day I went home, and I'd mighty near forgot all about it, only today I came to see Dr. Thorne for somethin' to do my cold good, and he wantin' to know how I ketched it brought the whole matter back again."
"You're an old brick, Buckhurst!" cried Mac, giving the jovial farmer a thundering slap on the back, and a hearty grasp of his hand; "and you shall drink the boy's health with Ned and me this day, or I'll know the reason why. Ned Blount, a'n't it glorious? Said I not, you ill-omened bird, said I not, 'Il y a toujours un Dieu pour les enfans et pour les ivrognes'?--So you came down with Thorne to ease the poor little fellow's mind, did you, Buckhurst? That's right, and you shall see the picture, by Jove! And you'll say, when you see it, that such a picture were cheap at the cost of duckings for a dozen Buckhursts. Now tell me truly, what do you think made him push you in?
"Of course, it was the pison, Sir,--a baby like that wouldn't harm a flea. I thought maybe, until I see Dr. Thorne, that he done it out of mischieviousness, as boys will do, you know,--jest as they steal a feller's apples, and knock his turkeys of'n the roost,--but yander's not one of them kind; so he must 'a' been crazy, and I'm rael sorry he's been so bad put to about it,--I am, indeed."
Here the inner door was opened, and Thorne joined us, with a moisture about his eyes that he used afterwards to deny most vehemently.
"Buckhurst, he wants to see you; go in there," said he,--adding, in a lower tone, "Now, mind you, the child's delicate as spun glass; so be careful."
"Come in, Mr. Buckhurst," called Clarian.
The worthy farmer looked to right and left, as if he would much rather have made his escape, but, impelled by a shove from the Doctor, he ran his fingers through his coarse hair, and, with a very red and "I-wish-I-was-out-of-this" face, went in, closing the door behind him.
"Phew!" said Thorne, seating himself somewhat testily, after having filled and lighted a pipe,--"Phew! So that's over, and I a'n't sorry; it's as bad as reading the 'Diary of a Physician.' The boy will be all right now, and the lesson won't hurt him, though it has been a rough one. But no more metaphysics for him, Ned Blount! And, boys, let this be a warning to you. He's too brittle a toy to be handled in your rough fashion."
"You needn't tell us that, Thorne," said Mac, drawing a long breath. "Catch me kicking over children's baby-houses again, or telling 'em ghost-stories in the dark!"
"He vows never again to touch brush, crayon, or pencil; and if he is the devotee you describe him to be, Ned, I would not advise you to oppose him in his determination. You must keep him here till vacation, and next term he can exchange his room. Macbeth's company will never be very agreeable to him, I should judge; and it will not do to let him destroy the picture."
Thorne puffed away vigorously for a minute or two.
"That boy ought to turn preacher, Mac. He touched me nearer just now than I have been touched for an age.
"'His voice was a sweet tremble in mine ear,
Made tunable with every
saddest grief,
Till those sad eyes, so spiritual and clear,'
almost persuaded me to follow the example of divine Achilles and 'refresh my soul with tears.' He has that tear-bringing privilege of genius, to a certainty."
And so it seemed, indeed; for presently the worthy Mr. Buckhurst made his reappearance in quite a sad state, mopping his red face and swollen eyes most vigorously with a figured cotton handkerchief, and proclaiming, with as much intelligibility as the cold in his head and the peculiar circumstances of the case would admit of, that he'd "be dagg'd ef he hadd't raver be chucked idto two cadawls dad 'ave dat iddocedt baby beggid his pardod about de codfouded duckid! Wat de hell did he care about gittid wet, he'd like to kdow? Dodsedse!--'twad all dud id fud, adyhow!"
---"And now you, my dear, dear friends," said Clarian, turning his sad, full eyes upon us, and calling us to his side, and to his arms.
But I shall draw a veil over that interview.
That night, after we had talked long and lovingly together, and were now sitting, each absorbed in his own thoughts, and emulating the quiet that reigned around college, Clarian softly joined us, and placed an open book in Mac's hands.
"Will you, dear Mac?" murmured he.
Then Mac, all full of solemn emotion, read through the grand periods of the Church Litany, and when he had finished, Clarian, with a thrilling "Let us pray," offered up such a thanksgiving as I had never heard, praying to the kind Father who had so mercifully extricated him, that our paths might still be enlightened, and our walks made humble and righteous.
"Clarian," said Mac, after a pause, when we were again on our feet,--he laid his hands on the boy's shoulders, as he spoke, and looked into his eyes,-- "Clarian, would it have happened, if you had not taken that foul drug?"
Clarian shuddered, and covered up his face in his hands.
"Do not ask me, dear Mac! do not ask me! Oh, be sure, my aims, I thought, were noble, and myself I thought so pure!--but---I cannot say, Mac, I cannot say.
"'We are so weak, we know our motives least
In their confused
beginning.'"
"At least, Clarian," said Mac, after a while, his deep voice wonderfully refined with strong emotion, "at least, the picture was not painted in vain. Even as it is in the play, Banquo died that his issue might reign after him; and this lesson of ours will bear fruit far mightier than the trifling pains of its parturition. Ay, Clarian, your picture has not been vainly painted.--And now, Ned," said he, rising, "we must put our baby to bed; for he is to wake early to- morrow, and know himself a man!"
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Mr. Choate's mind was so complex, peculiar, and original,--so foreign in temperament and spirit to the more representative traits of New England character,--so large, philosophic, and sagacious in vision and survey of great questions, and so dramatic and vehement in their exposition and enforcement,--so judicial and conservative in always maintaining in his arguments the balance and relation of interdependent principles, and so often in details marring the most exquisite poetry with the wildest extravagancies of style,--so free from mere vulgar tricks of effect, and so full of imaginative tricksiness and surprises,-- so mischievous, subtle, mysterious, elusive, Protean,--that it is no wonder he has been more admired and more misunderstood than any eminent American of his time. It was because of these unaccustomed qualities of mind that matter-of-fact lawyers and judges came slowly but surely to Mr. Webster's conclusion, that he was "the most accomplished of American lawyers," whether arguing to courts or juries. In the same way, critically correct but unimaginative scholars, who "can pardon anything but a false quantity,"--who "see the hair on the rope, but not the rope," and detect minute errors, but not poetic apprehension,--admitted at last the fulness and variety of his scholastic attainments. And perhaps the finest tribute to the power and subtlety of his influence was, that, to the last, juries, who began cases by steeling themselves against it, and who ended by giving him their verdicts, maintained that they were not at all influenced by him,--so profound, so complete, and so unconscious had been the spell this man of genius had woven around them.
When it is remembered that a great lawyer in the United States is called upon (as he is not in England) to practise in all our courts, civil and criminal, law, equity, and admiralty, and, in addition to all the complicated questions between parties, involving life, liberty, and property, arising therein, that he is to know and discuss our whole scheme of government, from questions under its patent laws up to questions of jurisdiction and constitutional law,--it will be seen what a field there is for the exhibition of the highest talents, and how few lawyers in the country can become eminent in all these various and important departments of mental labor. In their whole extent Mr. Choate was not only thoroughly informed as a student and profound as a reasoner, but his genius produced such a fusion of imagination and understanding as to give creativeness to argumentation and philosophy to treatment of facts.
We propose to try to give some idea of those mental characteristics and peculiarities in which he differed from other lawyers, and to indicate some salient points of his genius and nature which went to make up so original and interesting an individuality. Immense labor and talent will no more produce genius or its results, than mere natural genius, without their aid and instrumentality, can reach and maintain the highest rank in any of the great departments of life or thought. With true genius, imagination is, to be sure, paramount to great and balanced faculties; but genius is always demonstrating its superiority to talent as well by its greater rapidity and certainty in seizing, arranging, and holding facts, and by the extent of its acquisitions, as by its superior philosophic and artistic grasp and vision.
Though Mr. Choate was so much more than a mere lawyer, it was in court that he displayed the full force and variety of his powers. Hic currus et arma. We shall, however, speak more especially of his jury-trials, because in them more of his whole nature was brought into play, and because of them and of his management of them there is and can be no full record. The arguments and triumphs of the great advocate are almost as evanescent and traditionary as the conversation of great talkers like Coleridge. In what we have to say we cannot be expected to call up the arguments and cases themselves, and we must necessarily be confined to a somewhat general statement of certain mental qualities and characteristics which were of the secret of his power. We shall be rewarded, if we succeed in giving in mere outline some explanation of the fact, that so much of interest and something of mystery attach themselves throughout the country to his name and genius.
A jury-trial is in itself dramatic; but mere eloquence is but a small part of what is demanded of a great advocate. Luther Martin and Jeremiah Mason were the most eminent American examples of the very many great jury-lawyers who were almost destitute of all that makes up popular eloquence. A jury-lawyer is of course greater with it, but he can do entirely without it. Almost all great trials appeal to the intellects rather than to the passions of jurors. What an advocate needs first is thorough knowledge of law, and that adaptiveness and readiness of faculty which are never surprised into forgetfulness or confusion, so that he can instantly see, meet, reason upon, and apply his legal learning to the unexpected as well as the expected points of law and evidence as they arise in a case. Secondly, he must have thorough knowledge of human nature: he must not only profoundly discuss motives in their relations to the laws of the human mind, and practically reconcile motives with conduct as they relate to the parties and witnesses in his cases, but he must prepare, present, develop, guide, and finally argue his case, within the rules of law, with strict reference to its effect upon the differing minds of twelve men. It would be difficult to name any other field of public mental effort which demands and gives scope for such variety of faculty and accomplishment.
Whatever may have been Mr. Choate's defects of character or of style, no competent judge ever saw his management of any case in court, from its opening to its close, without recognizing that he was a man of genius. It mattered not whether the amount involved was little or great, whether the parties were rich or poor, wise or ignorant, whether the subject-matter was dry or fertile,--such were his imaginative insight, his knowledge of law and of human nature, his perfection of arrangement, under which every point was treated fully, but none unduly, his consummate tact and tactics, his command of language in all its richness and delicacy to express the fullest force and the nicest shades of his meaning, and his haggard beauty of person and grace of nature, that every case rose to dramatic dignity and to its largest relations to law, psychology, and poetry; and thus, while giving it artistic unity and completeness, he all the more enforced his arguments and insured his success. How widely different in method and surroundings from the poet's exercise of the creative faculty in the calm of thought and retirement, on a selected topic and in selected hours of inspiration, was his entering, with little notice or preparation, into a case involving complicated questions of law and fact, with only a partial knowledge of the case of his antagonist! met at point after point by unexpected evidence and rulings of law, often involving such instantaneous decisions as to change his whole combinations and method of attack; examining witnesses with unerring skill, whom he was at once too chivalrous and too wise to browbeat; arguing to the court unexpected questions of law with full and available legal learning; carrying in his mind the case, and the known or surmised plan of attack of his antagonist, and shaping his own case to meet it; holding an exquisitely sensitive physical and mental organization in such perfect control as never to be irritated or disturbed; throwing his whole force on a given point, and rising to a joyousness of power in meeting the great obstacles to his success; and finally, with little or no respite for preparation, weaving visibly, as it were, before the mental eye, from all these elicited materials, his closing argument, which, as we have said, was all the more effective, because profound reasoning and exquisite tact and influence were involved in it as a work of art.
He had the temperament of the great actors,--that of the elder Kean and the elder Booth, not of Kemble and Macready,--and, like them, had the power of almost instantly passing into the nature and thought and emotion of another, and of not only absolutely realizing them, but of realizing them all the more completely because he had at the same time perfect self-direction and self- control. The absurd question is often asked, whether an actor is ever the character he represents throughout a whole play. He could be so, only if insane. But every great actor and orator must be capable of instantaneous abandonment to his part, and of as instantaneous withdrawal from it,--like the elder Booth, joking one minute at a side-scene and in the next having the big tears of a realized Lear running down his cheeks. An eminent critic says,--"Genius always lights its own fire,"--and this constant double process of mind,--one of self- direction and self-control, the other of absolute abandonment and identification,--each the more complete for the other,--the dramatic poet, the impassioned orator, and the great interpretative actor, all know, whenever the whole mind and nature are in their highest action. Mr. Choate, therefore, from pure force of mental constitution, threw himself into the life and position of the parties and witnesses in a jury-case, and they necessarily became dramatis personae, and moved in an atmosphere of his own creation. His narrative was the simplest and most artistic exhibition of his case thus seen and presented from the point of their lives and natures, and not from the dry facts and points of his case; and his argument was all the more perfect, because not exhibited in skeleton nakedness, but incorporated and intertwined with the interior and essential life of persons and events. It was in this way that he effected the acquittal of Tirrell, whom any matter-of-fact lawyer, however able, would have argued straight to the gallows; and yet we have the highest judicial authority for saying that in that case he did his simple technical duty, without interposing his own opinions or convictions. We shall say a word, before we close, of the charge that he surrendered himself too completely to his client; but to a great degree the explanation and the excuse at once lie in this dramatic imagination, which was of the essence of his genius and influence, and through which he lived the life, shared the views, and identified himself with a great actor's realization, in the part of his client.
In making real to himself the nature, life, and position of his client,--in gathering from him and his witnesses, in the preparation and trial of his case, its main facts and direction, as colored or inflamed by his client's opinions, passions, and motives,--and in seeking their explanation in the egotism and idiosyncrasy which his own sympathetic insight penetrated and harmonized into a consistent individuality,--he, of course, knew his client better than his client knew himself; he conceived him as an actor conceives character, and, in a great measure, saw with his eyes from his point of view, and, in the argument of his case, gave clear expression and consistent characterization to his nature and to his partisan views in their relations to the history of the case. We have seen his clients sit listening to the story of their own lives and conduct, held off in artistic relief and in dramatic relation, with tears running down cheeks which had not been moistened by the actual events themselves, re-presented by his arguments in such coloring and perspective.
As a part of this power of merging his own individuality in that of his client was his absolute freedom from egotism, conceit, self-assertion, and personal pride of opinion. Such an instance is, of course, exceptional. Nearly all the eminent jury-lawyers we have known have been, consciously or unconsciously, self-asserting, and their individuality rather than that of their clients has been impressed upon juries. An advocate with a great jury-reputation has two victories to win: the first, to overcome the determination of the jury to steel themselves against his influence; the second, to convince their judgments. Mr. Choate's self-surrender was so complete that they soon forgot him, because he forgot himself in his case; nothing personally demonstrative or antagonistic induced obstinacy or opposition, and every door was soon wide open to sympathy and conviction. If an advocate is conceited, or vain, or self- important, or if he thinks of producing effects as well for himself as for his client, or if his nature is hard and unadaptive,--great abilities display these qualities, instead of hiding them, and they make a refracting medium between a case and the minds of a jury. Mr. Choate was more completely free from them than any able man we ever knew. Any one of them would have been in complete contradiction to the whole composition and current of his nature. Though conscious of his powers, he was thoroughly and lovingly modest. It was because he thought so little of himself and so much of his client that he never made personal issues, and was never diverted by them from his strict and full duty. Instead of "greatly finding quarrel in a straw," where some supposed honor was at stake, he would suffer himself rather than that his case should suffer. Early in his practice, when a friend told him he bore too much from opposing counsel without rebuking them, he said: "Do you suppose I care what those men say? I want to get my client's case." Want of pugnacity too often passes for want of courage. We have seen him in positions where we wished he could have been more personally demonstrative, and (to apply the language of the ring to the contests of the court-room) that he could have stood still and struck straight from the shoulder; but when we remember how perfectly he saw through and through the faults and foibles of men, how his mischievous and genial irony, when it touched personal character, stamped and characterized it for life, and how keen was the edge and how fine the play of every weapon in his full armory of sarcasm and ridicule, (of which his speech in the Senate in reply to Mr. McDuffie's personalities gives masterly exhibition,) we are thankful that his sensibility was so exquisite and his temper so sweet, that he was a delight instead of a terror, and that he was loved instead of feared. Delicacy should be commensurate to power, that each may be complete. It would seem almost impossible that a lawyer with a practice truly immense, passing a great part of his life in public and heated contests and in discussing and often severely criticizing the motives and conduct of parties and witnesses, should not make many enemies; but he was so essentially modest, simple, gentlemanly, and tender, so considerate of the feelings of others, so evidently trying to mitigate the pain which it was often his duty to inflict, that we never heard of his searching and subtile examination of witnesses, or his profound and exhaustive analysis of character and motive, or his instantaneous and irresistible retorts upon counsel, creating or leaving behind him, in the bar or out of it, malice or ill-will in a human being. One of the most touching and beautiful things we ever saw in a court-room would have been in other hands purely painful and repulsive. It was his examination of the wretched women who were witnesses in the Tirrell case. His tact in eliciting what was necessary to be known, and which they would have concealed, was forgotten and lost in his chivalrous and Christian recognition of their common humanity, and in his gentlemanly thoughtfulness that even they were still women, with feelings yet sensitive to eye and word.
In jury-trials it would be foolish to judge style by severe or classic standards. If an advocate have skill and insight and adequate powers of expression, his style must yield and vary with the circumstances of different cases and the minds of different juries and jurors. When a friend of Erskine asked him, at the close of a jury-argument, why he so unusually and iteratively, and with such singular illustration, prolonged one part of his case, he said,-- "It took me two hours to make that fat man with the buff waistcoat join the eleven!"
All men of great powers of practical influence over the minds of men know how stupid and dull of apprehension the mass of mankind are; and no one knows better than a great jury-lawyer in how many different ways it is often necessary to present arguments, and how they must be pressed, urged, and hammered into most men's minds. He is endeavoring to persuade and convince twelve men upon a question in which they have no direct pecuniary or personal interest, and he must more or less know and adapt his reasoning and his style to each juror's mind. He should know no audience but the judge and these twelve men. Retainers never seek and should not find counsel who address jurors with classical or formal correctness. Napoleon, at St. Helena, after reading one of his bulletins, which had produced the great and exact effect for which he had intended it, exclaimed,--"And yet they said I couldn't write!"
The true Yankee is suspicious of eloquence, and "stops a metaphor like a suspected person in an enemy's country." A stranger, who looked in for a few minutes upon one of Mr. Choate's jury-arguments, and saw a lawyer with a lithe and elastic figure of about five feet and eleven inches, with a face not merely of a scholarly paleness, but wrinkled all over, and, as it were, scathed with thought and with past nervous and intellectual struggles, yet still beautiful, with black hair curling as if from heat and dewy from heightened action and intensity of thought and feeling, and heard a clear, sympathetic, and varying voice uttering rapidly and unhesitatingly, sometimes with sweet caesural and almost monotonous cadences, and again with startling and electric shocks, language now exquisitely delicate and poetic, now vehement in its direct force, and again decorated and wild with Eastern extravagance and fervor of fancy, would have thought him the last man to have been born on New England soil, or to convince the judgments of twelve Yankee jurors. But those twelve men, if he had opened the case himself, had been quietly, simply, and sympathetically led into a knowledge of its facts in connection with its actors and their motives; they had seen how calmly and with what tact he had examined his witnesses, how ready, graceful, and unheated had been his arguments to the court, and how complete throughout had been his self-possession and self-control; they had, moreover, learned and become interested in the case, and were no longer the same hard and dispassionate men with whom he had begun, and they knew, as the casual spectator could not know, how systematically he was arguing while he was also vehemently enforcing his case. He, meanwhile, knew his twelve men, and what arguments, appeals, and illustrations were needed to reach the minds of one or all. He did not care how certain extravagances of style struck the critical spectator, if they stamped and riveted certain points of his case in the minds of his jury. With the keenest perception of the ridiculous himself, he did not hesitate to say things which, disconnected from his purpose, might seem ridiculous. One consequence of these audacities of expression was, that, when it became necessary for him to be iterative, he was never tedious. They gave full play to his imaginative humor and irony, and to his poetic unexpectedness and surprises. A wise observer, hearing him try a case from first to last, while recognizing those higher qualities of genius which we have before described, saw, that, for all the purposes of persuasion and argumentation, for conveying his meaning in its full force and in its most delicate distinctions and shadings, for analytic reasoning or for the "clothing upon" of the imagination, for all the essential objects and vital uses of language, his style was perfect for his purpose and for his audience. His excesses came from surplus power and dramatic intensity, and were pardoned by all imaginative minds to the real genius with which they were informed.
Every great advocate must, at times, especially in the trial of capital cases, be held popularly responsible for the acquittal of men whom the public has prejudged to be guilty. This unreasoning, impulsive, and irresponsible public never stops to inform itself; never discriminates between legal acumen and pettifogging trickery, between doing one's full duty to his client and interposing or misrepresenting his own personal opinions; and never remembers that the functions of law and the practice of law are to prevent and to punish crime, to ascertain the truth, and to determine and enforce justice,--that trial by jury, and the other means and methods through which justice is administered, are founded in the largest wisdom, philanthropy, and experience,--that they cannot work perfectly, because human nature is imperfect, but they constitute the best practical system for the application of abstract principles of right to the complicated affairs of life which the world has yet seen, and which steadily improves as our race improves,--and that every great lawyer is aiding in elucidating truth and in administering justice, when doing his duty to his client under this system. Our trial by jury has its imperfections; but, laying aside its demonstrated value and necessity in great struggles for freedom, before and since the time of Erskine, no better scheme can be devised to do its great and indispensable work. The very things which seem to an uninformed man like rejection or confusion of truth are a part of the sifting by which it is to be reached. The admission or rejection of evidence under sound rules of law, the presenting of the whole case of each party and of the best argument which can be made upon it by his counsel, the charge of the judge and the verdict of the jury,--all are necessary parts of the process of reaching truth and justice. Counsel themselves cannot know a whole case until tried to its end; their clients have a right to their best services, within the limits of personal honor; and lawyers are derelict in duty, not only to their clients, but to justice itself, if they do not present their cases to the best of their ability, when they are to be followed by opposing counsel, by the judge, and by the jury. The popular judgment is not only capricious,--it not only assumes that legal precedents, founded in justice for the protection of the honest, are petty technicalities or tricks through which the dishonest escape,--it is not only formed out of the court-room, with no opportunity to see witnesses and hear testimony, often very different in reality from what they seem in print,--but it visits upon counsel its ignorant prejudices against the theory and practice of the law itself, and forgets that lawyers cannot present to the jury a particle of evidence except with the sanction of the court under sound rules of law, and that the law is to be laid down by the court alone.
A man thoroughly in earnest in any direction is more or less a partisan. Histories are commonly uninfluential or worthless, unless written with views so earnest and decided as to show bias. As the greater interests of truth are best subserved by those whose zeal is commensurate to their scope of mind, so it is a part of the scheme of jury-trials, that, within the limits we have named, counsel shall throw their whole force into their cases, that thus they may be presented fully in all lights, and the right results more surely reached. The scheme of jury-trials itself thus providing for a lawyer's standing in the place of his client and deriving from him his partisan opinions, and for urging his case in its full force within the limits of sound rules of law, it almost invariably follows, that, the greater the talent and zeal of the advocate, and the more he believes in the views of his client, the more liable he is to be charged with overstating or misstating testimony. Mr. Choate never conceived that his duty to his client should carry him up to the line of self-surrender drawn by Lord Brougham; but, recognizing his client's full and just claims upon him, entering into his opinions and nature with the sympathetic and dramatic realization we have described, he could not faithfully perform the prescribed and admitted duty of the advocate,--necessarily, with him, involving his throwing the whole force of his physical and intellectual vitality into every case he tried,--without being a vehement partisan, or without being sometimes charged with misstating evidence or going too far for his client. Occasionally this may have been true; but we see the explanation in the very quality of his genius and temperament, and not in conscious or intentional wrong-doing.
His ability and method in his strictly legal arguments to courts of law are substantially indicated in what we have already said. His manner, however, was here calm, his general views of his subject large and philosophic, his legal learning full, his reasoning clear, strong, and consequential, his discrimination quick and sure, and his detection of a logical fallacy unerring, his style, though sometimes fairly open to the charge of redundancy, graceful and transparent in its exhibition of his argument, and his mind always at home, and in its easiest and most natural exercise, when anything in his case rose into connection with great principles.
While exhibiting in his jury-trials, as we have shown, this double process of absolute identification and of perfect supervision and self-control,--of instantaneous imaginative dips into his work, and of as instantaneous withdrawal from it,--of purposely and yet completely throwing himself in one sentence into the realization of an emotion, thus perfectly conveying his meaning while living the thought, and yet coming out of it to see quicker than any one that it might be made absurd by displacement,--he always had, as it were, an air-drawn, circle of larger thought and superintending relation far around the immediate question into which he passed so dramatically. Within this outer circle, attached and related to it by everything in the subject-matter of real poetic or philosophic importance, was his case, creatively woven and spread in artistic light and perspective; and between the two (if we do not press our illustration beyond clear limits) was a heat-lightning-like play of mind, showing itself, at one moment, in unexpected flashes of poetic analogy, at another in Puck-like mischief, and again in imaginative irony or humor.
As he recovered himself from abandonment to some part of his case or argument to guide and mould the whole, so, going into his library, he could, as completely, for minutes or for hours, banish and forget his anxieties and dramatic excitements, and pass into the cooling air and loftier and purer stimulations of the great minds of other times and countries and of the great questions that overhang us all. His mind, capacious, informed, wise, doubting, "looking before and after," here found its highest pleasures, and its little, but most loved repose. "The more a man does, the more he can do"; and, notwithstanding his immense practice, and that by physical and intellectual constitution he couldn't half do anything, he never allowed a day of his life to pass, without reading some, if ever so little, Greek, and it was a surprise to those who knew him well to find that he kept up with everything important in modern literature. Rising and going to bed early, taking early morning exercise, having a strong constitution, though he was subject to sudden but quickly overcome nervous and bilious illness, wasting no time, caring nothing for the coarser social enjoyments, leading, out of court, a self- withdrawn and solitary life, though playful, genial, and stimulating in social intercourse, with a memory as tenacious and ready as his apprehension was quick, with high powers of detecting, mastering, arranging, and fusing his acquisitions, and of penetrating to the centre of historical characters and events,--it is not strange, though he may not have been critically exact and nice in questions of quantity and college exercises, that his scholarship was large and available in all its higher aims and uses.