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