The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 33, July, 1860

Mr. Buckhurst refused the chair tendered him by Mac, and paced up and down the room in a state of immense perturbation.

"Well, I never!" said he, "well, I never! It taken me all aback, Sir," added he, turning to me. "Did you ever see anything like it? Why, he's jest like a gal! Dang it, Sir! my Molly a'n't half as nervous as he is. I hope he'll get well,–I raelly do, now. I wouldn't hev had it happen for I dunno what, now, indeed!" And he resumed his walk, repeating to himself, "Well, I never! Who'd 'a' judged 'twas a child like that?"

"May I beg to know what you refer to, Mr. Buckhurst?" asked Mac, with considerable impatience in his tones.

"Eh,–what? He's mighty delicate, a'n't he?" said the man, with his thumb indicating the next room.

"Very delicate indeed, Sir,–perhaps you can explain the cause of his present attack," said I, angrily; for I had begun to think, from Buckhurst's manner, that he had been guilty of some practical joke upon Clarian. I saw the fire of a similar suspicion blazing in Mac's eyes; and I fear, had our conclusions been verified, the worthy Mr. Buckhurst would have fared very badly at our hands, spite the laws of hospitality.

"What! did he never tell you? Of course not, though, being sick ever sence, and thinking me dead, too. Well, I'll tell you: but mind, you mustn't banter the child about it, for he can't stand it,–though it's only a joke. Might have been serious, to be sure, but, as things turns out, a pretty good joke, to my notion,–though I'm rael sorry he's been so bad about it."

Mac rose, removed his coat, and marched deliberately up to our guest. "See here, Sir," said he in his deepest bass voice, which his dark frown made still more ominous, "do you mean us to infer that you have been making that child Clarian the victim of any of your infernal jokes, as you style them?"

Buckhurst stared a moment, and then, seeming to comprehend the drift of Mac's words, burst into a hearty laugh.

"No, Sir!" he shouted, "the shoe's on the other foot, thank the Lord! The boy himself played the joke, or trick, whatever it was. Dr. Thorne tells me he was kind of crazy, from drinking laudanum, or some sech pisonous matter. Howsever that was, I'm sure he didn't do it in airnest,–thought so from the very first, –and now I've had a good look at his face, I'd swear to it"

"What did he do?" asked Mac, hurriedly.

Buckhurst laughed in that hearty way of his. Said he,–

"I'll wager you a stack of hay agin them books yander you couldn't guess in a week now. What d'ye think it was? Ho! ho! Why, why, the little rascal shoved me into the canawl!"

"Shoved you into the canal!" echoed I, while Mac, looking first at him, then at me, finally burst into a peal of laughter, shouting the while,–

"Bravo! There's your 'experience' philosophy, Ned Blount! Catch me teaching milksops again! Go on, Buckhurst, tell us all about it."

"Yes," said Mr. Buckhurst, apparently quite pleased to see that we laughed with him. "It don't look like it was in the nature of things, somehow, does it? Fact, though, he did indeed. Shoved me right in, so quick I didn't know what the Devil was the matter, until I soused kersplash! and see him taking out over the drawbridge like mad."

"When was that, Mr. Buckhurst?"

"Jest inside of a month ago, Sir, one night."

"Sapperment, Ned! that was the time of the 'herb Pantagruelion'!– Well, what were you doing on the canal at that hour?" asked Mac, slyly.

"No, you needn't, now,–I see you wink at him,–honor bright. I'd been up to town, to take a mess o' clams at Giberson's, with maybe a sprinklin' of his apple-jack,–nothing else,–and I was on my way home,–to Skillman's tavern at the dépôt, you know,–and I'd jest stopped a piece, and was a-standing there, looking at the moon in the water, when he tipped me over. I tell you, I was mad when I crawled out wet as a rat; and if I'd ketched him then, you may depend upon it, I'd 'a' given his jacket a precious warming. As I said, he run off, but jest as I turned towards the tavern, I see him a-coming back, kinder wild-like; so I slipped behind a lumber-pile, hoping he might come over the bridge, so I could lay my fingers on him. The moon was about its highest, so I could see his face, plain as day,–white,–skim-milk warn't a circumstance to it,–and his eyes wide open as they could stretch. I tell you, he was wild! He looked up and down a bit, mumbled somethin' I couldn't make out, and then what do you think that boy did? Why, he jumped in, clothes and all, bold as a lion,–plainly to save me from drowning, and me all the time a-spyin' at him from behind a lumber-pile! He was sarching for me, I knowed, for he swum up and down jest about there for the space maybe of a quarter of an hour. And when he give it up at last, and come out, he kinder sunk down on the tow-path, and I heard him say plain enough, though he only whispered it,–jest like a woman actor I see down to York oncet, playin' in Guy something or other,–she was a sort of an old gypsy devil,–says he, 'I am a murderer, then!' Thinks I, 'Sonny, all but the murderer!' And as he stood up again, he 'peared to suffer so, his face was so white, and his knees so shaky, that I says to myself, 'Dan, you've carried the joke far enough.' So I sings out to him, and comes out from behind the lumber-stack, but, Lord bless ye! he jest peeped round over his shoulder oncet, gave a kind of chokin' scream like, and put out up the road as if the Devil was after him. I knowed it warn't no use to follow him, so I got on a dry shirt and went to bed. The next day I went home, and I'd mighty near forgot all about it, only today I came to see Dr. Thorne for somethin' to do my cold good, and he wantin' to know how I ketched it brought the whole matter back again."

"You're an old brick, Buckhurst!" cried Mac, giving the jovial farmer a thundering slap on the back, and a hearty grasp of his hand; "and you shall drink the boy's health with Ned and me this day, or I'll know the reason why. Ned Blount, a'n't it glorious? Said I not, you ill-omened bird, said I not, 'Il y a toujours un Dieu pour les enfans et pour les ivrognes'?–So you came down with Thorne to ease the poor little fellow's mind, did you, Buckhurst? That's right, and you shall see the picture, by Jove! And you'll say, when you see it, that such a picture were cheap at the cost of duckings for a dozen Buckhursts. Now tell me truly, what do you think made him push you in?

"Of course, it was the pison, Sir,–a baby like that wouldn't harm a flea. I thought maybe, until I see Dr. Thorne, that he done it out of mischieviousness, as boys will do, you know,–jest as they steal a feller's apples, and knock his turkeys of'n the roost,–but yander's not one of them kind; so he must 'a' been crazy, and I'm rael sorry he's been so bad put to about it,–I am, indeed."

Here the inner door was opened, and Thorne joined us, with a moisture about his eyes that he used afterwards to deny most vehemently.

"Buckhurst, he wants to see you; go in there," said he,–adding, in a lower tone, "Now, mind you, the child's delicate as spun glass; so be careful."

"Come in, Mr. Buckhurst," called Clarian.

The worthy farmer looked to right and left, as if he would much rather have made his escape, but, impelled by a shove from the Doctor, he ran his fingers through his coarse hair, and, with a very red and "I-wish-I-was-out-of-this" face, went in, closing the door behind him.

"Phew!" said Thorne, seating himself somewhat testily, after having filled and lighted a pipe,–"Phew! So that's over, and I a'n't sorry; it's as bad as reading the 'Diary of a Physician.' The boy will be all right now, and the lesson won't hurt him, though it has been a rough one. But no more metaphysics for him, Ned Blount! And, boys, let this be a warning to you. He's too brittle a toy to be handled in your rough fashion."

"You needn't tell us that, Thorne," said Mac, drawing a long breath. "Catch me kicking over children's baby-houses again, or telling 'em ghost-stories in the dark!"

"He vows never again to touch brush, crayon, or pencil; and if he is the devotee you describe him to be, Ned, I would not advise you to oppose him in his determination. You must keep him here till vacation, and next term he can exchange his room. Macbeth's company will never be very agreeable to him, I should judge; and it will not do to let him destroy the picture."

Thorne puffed away vigorously for a minute or two.

"That boy ought to turn preacher, Mac. He touched me nearer just now than I have been touched for an age.

"'His voice was a sweet tremble in mine ear,Made tunable with every saddest grief,Till those sad eyes, so spiritual and clear,'

almost persuaded me to follow the example of divine Achilles and 'refresh my soul with tears.' He has that tear-bringing privilege of genius, to a certainty."

And so it seemed, indeed; for presently the worthy Mr. Buckhurst made his reappearance in quite a sad state, mopping his red face and swollen eyes most vigorously with a figured cotton handkerchief, and proclaiming, with as much intelligibility as the cold in his head and the peculiar circumstances of the case would admit of, that he'd "be dagg'd ef he hadd't raver be chucked idto two cadawls dad 'ave dat iddocedt baby beggid his pardod about de codfouded duckid! Wat de hell did he care about gittid wet, he'd like to kdow? Dodsedse!–'twad all dud id fud, adyhow!"

––"And now you, my dear, dear friends," said Clarian, turning his sad, full eyes upon us, and calling us to his side, and to his arms.

But I shall draw a veil over that interview.

That night, after we had talked long and lovingly together, and were now sitting, each absorbed in his own thoughts, and emulating the quiet that reigned around college, Clarian softly joined us, and placed an open book in Mac's hands.

"Will you, dear Mac?" murmured he.

Then Mac, all full of solemn emotion, read through the grand periods of the Church Litany, and when he had finished, Clarian, with a thrilling "Let us pray," offered up such a thanksgiving as I had never heard, praying to the kind Father who had so mercifully extricated him, that our paths might still be enlightened, and our walks made humble and righteous.

"Clarian," said Mac, after a pause, when we were again on our feet,–he laid his hands on the boy's shoulders, as he spoke, and looked into his eyes,– "Clarian, would it have happened, if you had not taken that foul drug?"

Clarian shuddered, and covered up his face in his hands.

"Do not ask me, dear Mac! do not ask me! Oh, be sure, my aims, I thought, were noble, and myself I thought so pure!–but–I cannot say, Mac, I cannot say.

"'We are so weak, we know our motives leastIn their confused beginning.'"

"At least, Clarian," said Mac, after a while, his deep voice wonderfully refined with strong emotion, "at least, the picture was not painted in vain. Even as it is in the play, Banquo died that his issue might reign after him; and this lesson of ours will bear fruit far mightier than the trifling pains of its parturition. Ay, Clarian, your picture has not been vainly painted.–And now, Ned," said he, rising, "we must put our baby to bed; for he is to wake early to- morrow, and know himself a man!"

SPRING

Doves on the sunny eaves are cooing,The chip-bird trills from the apple-tree,Blossoms are bursting and leaves renewing,And the crocus darts up the spring to see.Spring has come with a smile of blessing,Kissing the earth with her soft warm breath,Till it blushes in flowers at her gentle caressing,And wakes from the winter's dream of death.Spring has come! The rills, as they glisten,Sing to the pebbles and greening grass;Under the sward the violets listen,And dream of the sky as they hear her pass.Coyest of roses feel her coming,Swelling their buds with a promise to her,–And the wild bee hears her, around them humming,And booms about with a joyous stir.Oaks, that the bark of a century covers,Feel ye the spell, as ye groan and sigh?Say,–does her spirit that round you hoversWhisper of youth and love gone by?Windows are open,–the pensive maidenLeans o'er the sill with a wistful sigh,Her heart with tender longings o'erladen,And a happy sadness, she knows not why.For we and the trees are brothers in nature;–We feel in our veins the season's thrillIn hopes that reach to a higher stature,In blind dim longings beyond our will.Whence dost thou come, O joyous spirit?From realms beyond this human ken,To paint with beauty the earth we inherit,And soften to love the hearts of men?Dear angel! that blowest with breath of gladnessThe trump to waken the year in its grave,Shall we not hear, after death's deep sadness,A voice as tender to gladden and save?Dost thou not sing a constant promiseThat joy shall follow that other voice,–That nothing of good shall be taken from us,But all who hear it shall rise, to rejoice?

RUFUS CHOATE

Mr. Choate's mind was so complex, peculiar, and original,–so foreign in temperament and spirit to the more representative traits of New England character,–so large, philosophic, and sagacious in vision and survey of great questions, and so dramatic and vehement in their exposition and enforcement,–so judicial and conservative in always maintaining in his arguments the balance and relation of interdependent principles, and so often in details marring the most exquisite poetry with the wildest extravagancies of style,–so free from mere vulgar tricks of effect, and so full of imaginative tricksiness and surprises,– so mischievous, subtle, mysterious, elusive, Protean,–that it is no wonder he has been more admired and more misunderstood than any eminent American of his time. It was because of these unaccustomed qualities of mind that matter-of-fact lawyers and judges came slowly but surely to Mr. Webster's conclusion, that he was "the most accomplished of American lawyers," whether arguing to courts or juries. In the same way, critically correct but unimaginative scholars, who "can pardon anything but a false quantity,"–who "see the hair on the rope, but not the rope," and detect minute errors, but not poetic apprehension,–admitted at last the fulness and variety of his scholastic attainments. And perhaps the finest tribute to the power and subtlety of his influence was, that, to the last, juries, who began cases by steeling themselves against it, and who ended by giving him their verdicts, maintained that they were not at all influenced by him,–so profound, so complete, and so unconscious had been the spell this man of genius had woven around them.

When it is remembered that a great lawyer in the United States is called upon (as he is not in England) to practise in all our courts, civil and criminal, law, equity, and admiralty, and, in addition to all the complicated questions between parties, involving life, liberty, and property, arising therein, that he is to know and discuss our whole scheme of government, from questions under its patent laws up to questions of jurisdiction and constitutional law,–it will be seen what a field there is for the exhibition of the highest talents, and how few lawyers in the country can become eminent in all these various and important departments of mental labor. In their whole extent Mr. Choate was not only thoroughly informed as a student and profound as a reasoner, but his genius produced such a fusion of imagination and understanding as to give creativeness to argumentation and philosophy to treatment of facts.

We propose to try to give some idea of those mental characteristics and peculiarities in which he differed from other lawyers, and to indicate some salient points of his genius and nature which went to make up so original and interesting an individuality. Immense labor and talent will no more produce genius or its results, than mere natural genius, without their aid and instrumentality, can reach and maintain the highest rank in any of the great departments of life or thought. With true genius, imagination is, to be sure, paramount to great and balanced faculties; but genius is always demonstrating its superiority to talent as well by its greater rapidity and certainty in seizing, arranging, and holding facts, and by the extent of its acquisitions, as by its superior philosophic and artistic grasp and vision.

Though Mr. Choate was so much more than a mere lawyer, it was in court that he displayed the full force and variety of his powers. Hic currus et arma. We shall, however, speak more especially of his jury-trials, because in them more of his whole nature was brought into play, and because of them and of his management of them there is and can be no full record. The arguments and triumphs of the great advocate are almost as evanescent and traditionary as the conversation of great talkers like Coleridge. In what we have to say we cannot be expected to call up the arguments and cases themselves, and we must necessarily be confined to a somewhat general statement of certain mental qualities and characteristics which were of the secret of his power. We shall be rewarded, if we succeed in giving in mere outline some explanation of the fact, that so much of interest and something of mystery attach themselves throughout the country to his name and genius.

A jury-trial is in itself dramatic; but mere eloquence is but a small part of what is demanded of a great advocate. Luther Martin and Jeremiah Mason were the most eminent American examples of the very many great jury-lawyers who were almost destitute of all that makes up popular eloquence. A jury-lawyer is of course greater with it, but he can do entirely without it. Almost all great trials appeal to the intellects rather than to the passions of jurors. What an advocate needs first is thorough knowledge of law, and that adaptiveness and readiness of faculty which are never surprised into forgetfulness or confusion, so that he can instantly see, meet, reason upon, and apply his legal learning to the unexpected as well as the expected points of law and evidence as they arise in a case. Secondly, he must have thorough knowledge of human nature: he must not only profoundly discuss motives in their relations to the laws of the human mind, and practically reconcile motives with conduct as they relate to the parties and witnesses in his cases, but he must prepare, present, develop, guide, and finally argue his case, within the rules of law, with strict reference to its effect upon the differing minds of twelve men. It would be difficult to name any other field of public mental effort which demands and gives scope for such variety of faculty and accomplishment.

Whatever may have been Mr. Choate's defects of character or of style, no competent judge ever saw his management of any case in court, from its opening to its close, without recognizing that he was a man of genius. It mattered not whether the amount involved was little or great, whether the parties were rich or poor, wise or ignorant, whether the subject-matter was dry or fertile,–such were his imaginative insight, his knowledge of law and of human nature, his perfection of arrangement, under which every point was treated fully, but none unduly, his consummate tact and tactics, his command of language in all its richness and delicacy to express the fullest force and the nicest shades of his meaning, and his haggard beauty of person and grace of nature, that every case rose to dramatic dignity and to its largest relations to law, psychology, and poetry; and thus, while giving it artistic unity and completeness, he all the more enforced his arguments and insured his success. How widely different in method and surroundings from the poet's exercise of the creative faculty in the calm of thought and retirement, on a selected topic and in selected hours of inspiration, was his entering, with little notice or preparation, into a case involving complicated questions of law and fact, with only a partial knowledge of the case of his antagonist! met at point after point by unexpected evidence and rulings of law, often involving such instantaneous decisions as to change his whole combinations and method of attack; examining witnesses with unerring skill, whom he was at once too chivalrous and too wise to browbeat; arguing to the court unexpected questions of law with full and available legal learning; carrying in his mind the case, and the known or surmised plan of attack of his antagonist, and shaping his own case to meet it; holding an exquisitely sensitive physical and mental organization in such perfect control as never to be irritated or disturbed; throwing his whole force on a given point, and rising to a joyousness of power in meeting the great obstacles to his success; and finally, with little or no respite for preparation, weaving visibly, as it were, before the mental eye, from all these elicited materials, his closing argument, which, as we have said, was all the more effective, because profound reasoning and exquisite tact and influence were involved in it as a work of art.

He had the temperament of the great actors,–that of the elder Kean and the elder Booth, not of Kemble and Macready,–and, like them, had the power of almost instantly passing into the nature and thought and emotion of another, and of not only absolutely realizing them, but of realizing them all the more completely because he had at the same time perfect self-direction and self- control. The absurd question is often asked, whether an actor is ever the character he represents throughout a whole play. He could be so, only if insane. But every great actor and orator must be capable of instantaneous abandonment to his part, and of as instantaneous withdrawal from it,–like the elder Booth, joking one minute at a side-scene and in the next having the big tears of a realized Lear running down his cheeks. An eminent critic says,–"Genius always lights its own fire,"–and this constant double process of mind,–one of self- direction and self-control, the other of absolute abandonment and identification,–each the more complete for the other,–the dramatic poet, the impassioned orator, and the great interpretative actor, all know, whenever the whole mind and nature are in their highest action. Mr. Choate, therefore, from pure force of mental constitution, threw himself into the life and position of the parties and witnesses in a jury-case, and they necessarily became dramatis personae, and moved in an atmosphere of his own creation. His narrative was the simplest and most artistic exhibition of his case thus seen and presented from the point of their lives and natures, and not from the dry facts and points of his case; and his argument was all the more perfect, because not exhibited in skeleton nakedness, but incorporated and intertwined with the interior and essential life of persons and events. It was in this way that he effected the acquittal of Tirrell, whom any matter-of-fact lawyer, however able, would have argued straight to the gallows; and yet we have the highest judicial authority for saying that in that case he did his simple technical duty, without interposing his own opinions or convictions. We shall say a word, before we close, of the charge that he surrendered himself too completely to his client; but to a great degree the explanation and the excuse at once lie in this dramatic imagination, which was of the essence of his genius and influence, and through which he lived the life, shared the views, and identified himself with a great actor's realization, in the part of his client.

In making real to himself the nature, life, and position of his client,–in gathering from him and his witnesses, in the preparation and trial of his case, its main facts and direction, as colored or inflamed by his client's opinions, passions, and motives,–and in seeking their explanation in the egotism and idiosyncrasy which his own sympathetic insight penetrated and harmonized into a consistent individuality,–he, of course, knew his client better than his client knew himself; he conceived him as an actor conceives character, and, in a great measure, saw with his eyes from his point of view, and, in the argument of his case, gave clear expression and consistent characterization to his nature and to his partisan views in their relations to the history of the case. We have seen his clients sit listening to the story of their own lives and conduct, held off in artistic relief and in dramatic relation, with tears running down cheeks which had not been moistened by the actual events themselves, re-presented by his arguments in such coloring and perspective.