His conversation was as remarkable as his efforts at the bar.  It was original, fresh, and suggestive; never dull or indifferent.  He never talked when he had nothing to say.  He was particularly agreeable, edifying, and instructive to all about him; and this was the charm of the social intercourse in which he was connected.

As a professional man, Mr. Mason’s great ability lay in the department of the common law.  In this part of jurisprudence he was profoundly learned.  He had drunk copiously from its deepest springs; and he had studied with diligence and success the departures from the English common law which had taken place in this country, either necessarily, from difference of condition, or positively, by force of our own statutes.  In his addresses, both to courts and juries, he affected to despise all eloquence, and certainly disdained all ornament; but his efforts, whether addressed to one tribunal or the other, were marked by a degree of clearness, directness, and force not easy to be equalled.  There were no courts of equity, as a separate and distinct jurisdiction, in New Hampshire, during his residence in that State.  Yet the equity treatises and equity reports were all in his library, not “wisely ranged for show,” but for constant and daily consultation; because he saw that the common law itself was growing every day more and more liberal, that equity principles were constantly forcing themselves into its administration and within its rules; that the subjects of litigation in the courts were constantly becoming, more and more, such as escaped from the technicalities and the trammels of the common law, and offered themselves for discussion and decision on the broader principles of general jurisprudence.  Mr. Mason, like other accomplished lawyers, and more than most, admired the searching scrutiny and the high morality of a court of equity; and felt the instruction and edification resulting from the perusal of the judgments of Lord Hardwicke, Lord Eldon, and Sir William Grant, as well as of those of great names in our own country, not now among the living.

Among his early associates in New Hampshire, there were many distinguished men.  Of those now dead were Mr. West, Mr. Gordon, Edward St. Loe Livermore, Peleg Sprague, William K. Atkinson, George Sullivan, Thomas W. Thompson, and Amos Kent; the last of these having been always a particular personal friend.  All of these gentlemen in their day held high and respectable stations, and were eminent as lawyers of probity and character.

Another contemporary and friend of Mr. Mason was Mr. Timothy Bigelow, a lawyer of reputation, a man of probity and honor, attractive by his conversation, and highly agreeable in his social intercourse.  Mr. Bigelow, we all know, was of this State, in which he filled high offices with great credit; but, as a counsellor and advocate, he was constant in his attendance on the New Hampshire courts.  Having known Mr. Bigelow from my early youth, I have pleasure in recalling the mutual regard and friendship which I know to have subsisted between him and the subject of these remarks.  I ought not to omit Mr. Wilson and Mr. Betton, in mentioning Mr. Mason’s contemporaries at the bar.  They were near his own age, and both well known as lawyers and public men.