the tortious magnate for oppression. " How did you have the courage to beard the Lord Chief Justice? " Erskine was asked; and he answered, "At the moment of interruption I seemed to feel my little children tugging at my gown and whispering: 'Now, father, is the chance to get us bread and butter.'" No doubt young Graham, who had recently married one of New York's most famous belles, of high family connections, felt that his White defense was to become a turning incentive to future renown. In another re markably sensational murder case David Graham, Jr., was soon retained. One Polly Bodine was indicted for killing a relative and firing a residence to conceal the crime. The first trial, upon Staten Island, resulted in Graham procuring a jury disagreement. Venue being changed because of inability to there secure a new impartial jury, New York city was selected as fresh jurisdiction; and there Graham's client was convicted. Truth to say, he fought against strong circum stantial evidence, but he had laid a trap for the presiding judge — John W. Edmonds, author of Edmonds' New York Reports — in some ingenious requests for a charge; upon one of which that judge made a slip, and on writ of error, the conviction was set aside. Here comes opportunity for me to remark that Graham's ingenuity in framing requests to charge was ever remarkable. Bearing well in mind the decisive doctrine that although the ideas of such requests might be correct, yet if the annexed verbiage was faulty the requests might be denied without attaching to them competent exceptions, Mr. Graham was perfect as anceps syllabarum, and was therein as prudent, accurate, and careful a master of diction as Chief Jus tice Marshall was reputed to be — of whom John Sergeant is reported to have said : "Ponder well the rhetoric of his interrup tions and allusions during argument so as to meet him accurately." After procuring a new trial for his woman client, who was being as strongly anathematized by popular sentiment
as were in recent times Lizzie Borden and Liz zie Halliday, Mr. Graham procured another change of venue to a rural county, where his impassioned eloquence won an acquittal from a jury of astonished but delighted farmer-jurors. After this victory David Graham, Jr., found his reputation fully es tablished; and even New Jersey and Con necticut soon sent him retainers in criminal cases, over the heads of their own legal magnates. What manner of laudatory tra ditions are affixed in Boston to the con temporaneous career of Rufus Choate cling in New York about the memory of David Graham, Jr. These two juty orators re sembled each other in musical voice, choice emphasis, harmony of intonation, language of the eye, grace of gesture, fervid utterance, and in supplementing details — whereof they were equal masters — with eloquent generalizations in peroration. In a paper I have already had the honor of presenting to a former number of the Green Bag upon the topic of cross-examination, I took occasion to pronounce David Graham as Master of the Art of Cross-Examination. He eminently possessed the first essential of the art — an insinuating manner and method. He was a native diplomatist. He never lost his temper. He never made needless rep artees; but he was proficient in wit and sarcasm, and in the prudent use of the argumentum ad homincm. Like many social gallants who possess the faculty of impress ing every lady whom they address with the feeling that she alone is the object of his worship, Mr. Graham seemed to impress each juror with the notion that upon him exclusively were conferred his hopes of suc cess. He captured jurors singly and not sought them as a body. His abilities and nisi prius triumphs were, however, not con fined to criminal trials. He soon became sought after in civil suits; sometimes in those born of contracts, but mainly in such as savored of torts. But his instincts were rather of a defender than of a pursuer. Be
