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