Mr. Wellman is famous for following this precept himself and, with one eye significantly cast upon the jury, is likely to lead his witness a merry dance until the latter is finally “bogged” in a quagmire of absurdities.  Not long ago, shortly after the publication of his book, the lawyer had occasion to cross-examine a modest-looking young woman as to the speed of an electric car.  The witness seemed conscious that she was about to undergo a severe ordeal, and Mr. Wellman, feeling himself complete master of the situation, began in his most winsome and deprecating manner: 

“And how fast, Miss, would you say the car was going?”

“I really could not tell exactly, Mr. Wellman.”

“Would you say that it was going at ten miles an hour?”

“Oh, fully that!”

“Twenty miles an hour?”

“Yes, I should say it was going twenty miles an hour.”

“Will you say it was going thirty miles an hour?” inquired
Wellman with a glance at the jury.

“Why, yes, I will say that it was.”

“Will you say it was going forty?”

“Yes.”

“Fifty?”

“Yes, I will say so.”

“Seventy?”

“Yes.”

“Eighty?”

“Yes,” responded the young lady with a countenance absolutely devoid of expression.

“A hundred?” inquired the lawyer with a thrill of eager triumph in his voice.

There was a significant hush in the court-room Then the witness, with a patient smile and a slight lifting of her pretty eyebrows, remarked quietly: 

“Mr. Wellman, don’t you think we have carried our little joke far enough?”

There is no witness in the world more difficult to cope with than a shrewd old woman who apes stupidity, only to reiterate the gist of her testimony in such incisive fashion as to leave it indelibly imprinted on the minds of the jury.  The lawyer is bound by every law of decency, policy and manners to treat the aged dame with the utmost consideration.  He must allow her to ramble on discursively in defiance of every rule of law and evidence in answer to the simplest question; must receive imperturbably the opinions and speculations upon every subject of both herself and (through her) of her neighbors; only to find when he thinks she must be exhausted by her own volubility, that she is ready, at the slightest opportunity, to break away again into a tangle of guesswork and hearsay, interwoven with conclusions and ejaculation.  Woe be unto him if he has not sense enough to waive her off the stand!  He might as well try to harness a Valkyrie as to restrain a pugnacious old Irishwoman who is intent on getting the whole business before the jury in her own way.

In the recent case of Gustav Dinser, convicted of murder, a vigorous old lady took the stand and testified forcibly against the accused.  She was as “smart as paint,” as the saying goes, and resolutely refused to answer any questions put to her by counsel for the defence.  Instead, she would raise her voice and make a savage onslaught upon the prisoner, rehearsing his brutal treatment of the deceased on previous occasions, and getting in the most damaging testimony.