An Unpublished Letter of Chancellor James Kent. all over the country. I have been twice with he (J) Canada & in every direction. I never had better health. I walk the battery uniformly before breakfast. I give a great many written opinions, & having got heartily tired of lecturing I abandoned it, & it was my son that pressed me to prepare a volume of lectures for the press. I had no idea of publishing them when I delivered them. I wrote over one volume & published it as you know. This led me to remodel & enlarge, & now the 3rd volume will be out in a few days, & I am obliged to write a ^.th to com plete my law. My reading now is as you may well sup pose, quite desultory, but still I read with as much zeal and pleasure as ever, I was never more engaged in my life than during the last Summer. I accepted the trust of re ceiver to the Franklin (insolvent) Bank, & it has occupied, & perplexed, & vexed me daily, & I had to write part of the 3rd vol ume, & search books a good deal for that 1 So in original.
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very object, and I have revised the proof sheet. If I had a convenient opportunity (though I do not see how I can have one) I would send the 3rd volume out to you, & another to our excellent friend, Governor Carroll, to whom I beg you will be so good as to present my best respects & the expression of my great esteem. Your suggestion of an Equity treatise con tains a noble outline of a great & useful work, but I cannot & will not enter on such a task. I have much more to lose than to gain & I am quite tired of Equity law. I have done my part, & choose to live more at my ease, & to be prepared for the approaching in firmities of age. — On reviewing what I have written, I had thoughts of burning it, I speak of myself too entirely, & it is entirely against my habit or taste, but I see no other way fairly to meet your desires. I am with great respect and good wishes, James Kent. Thomas Washington, Esq.
TEAR SHEDDING BEFORE THE JURY. IN a recent case decided by the Supreme Court of Tennessee a very novel question was raised with reference to the behavior of counsel in his argument to the jury.* On appeal from a verdict and judgment for the plaintiff, among other errors assigned was that discussed and disposed of by Judge Wilkes, who delivered the opinion of the court, in the following language : " It is next assigned as error," said the Judge, " that coun sel for plaintiff, in his closing argument, in the midst of a very eloquent and impassioned appeal to the jury, shed tears, and unduly excited the sympathies of the jury, in favor
- Ferguson v. Moore, decided at Nashville, February 6,
1897.
of the plaintiff, and greatly prejudiced them against defendant. Bearing upon this assign ment of error, we have been cited to no authority, and after diligent search we have been able to find none ourselves. The con duct of counsel in presenting their cases to juries is a matter which must be left largely to the ethics of the profession and the dis cretion of the trial judge. Perhaps no two counsel observe the same rules in presenting their cases to the jury. Some deal wholly in logic, — argument without embellishments of any kind. Others use rhetoric and occa sional flights of fancy and imagination. Others employ only noise and gesticulation, relying upon their earnestness and vehe
