In a court of justice, the audience are impartial; they really wish to sift the statements, and know what the truth is.  And, in the examination of witnesses, there usually leap out, quite unexpectedly, three or four stubborn words or phrases which are the pith and fate of the business, which sink into the ear of all parties, and stick there, and determine the cause.  All the rest is repetition and qualifying; and the court and the county have really come together to arrive at these three or four memorable expressions, which betrayed the mind and meaning of somebody.

In every company, the man with the fact is like the guide you hire to lead your party up a mountain or through a difficult country.  He may not compare with any of the party in mind, or breeding, or courage, or possessions, but he is much more important to the present need than any of them.  That is what we go to the court-house for,—­the statement of the fact, and the elimination of a general fact, the real relation of all the parties; and it is the certainty with which, indifferently in any affair that is well handled, the truth stares us in the face, through all the disguises that are put upon it,—­a piece of the well-known human life,—­that makes the interest of a court-room to the intelligent spectator.

I remember, long ago, being attracted by the distinction of the counsel, and the local importance of the cause, into the court-room.  The prisoner’s counsel were the strongest and cunningest lawyers in the Commonwealth.  They drove the attorney for the State from corner to corner, taking his reasons from under him, and reducing him to silence, but not to submission.  When hard-pressed, he revenged himself, in his turn, on the judge, by requiring the court to define what salvage was.  The court, thus pushed, tried words, and said everything it could think of to fill the time, supposing cases, and describing duties of insurers, captains, pilots, and miscellaneous sea-officers that are or might be,—­like a schoolmaster puzzled by a hard sum, who reads the context with emphasis.  But all this flood not serving the cuttle-fish to get away in, the horrible shark of the district-attorney being still there, grimly awaiting with his “The court must define,”—­the poor court pleaded its inferiority.  The superior court must establish the law for this, and it read away piteously the decisions of the Supreme Court, but read to those who had no pity.  The judge was forced at last to rule something, and the lawyers saved their rogue under the fog of a definition.  The parts were so well cast and discriminated, that it was an interesting game to watch.  The government was well enough represented.  It was stupid, but it had a strong will and possession, and stood on that to the last.  The judge had a task beyond his preparation, yet his position remained real; he was there to represent a great reality, the justice of states, which we could well enough see beetling over his head, and which his trifling talk nowise affected, and did not impede, since he was entirely well-meaning.