[998]
No man in America can remember facts, important and unimportant, like General Butler.
Whatever enters his mind remains there forever.
And his knowledge, as I have said, is available the instant it is needed, without confusion or tumult of thought.
The testimony delivered through days of dreary trials, without minutes or memoranda of any kind, he could recall in fresher and more accurate phrases, remembering always the substance, and generally all the important expressions, with far more precision than the other counsel and the court could gather it from their “writing books,” wherein they had endeavored to record it. Practice for a long series of years had so disciplined his mind in this respect that I think it quite impossible for him to forget.1 And as he has mingled constantly with every business and interest of humanity since he was admitted to the bar, he has become possessed of a marvellous extent and variety of knowledge respecting the affairs of mankind.
Here are also some comments of other of my associates, and narratives of my cases and conduct, which I prefer to have told in their own words:--
One example of what a writer styles General Butler's legerdemain.
A man in Boston, of respectable connections and some wealth, being afflicted with a mania for stealing, was, at length, brought to trial on four indictments; and a host of lawyers were assembled, engaged in the case, expecting a long and sharp contest.
It was hot summer weather; the judge was old and indolent; the officers of the court were weary of the session, and anxious to adjourn.
General Butler was counsel for the prisoner.
It is a law in Massachusetts that the repetition of that crime by the same offender, within a certain period, shall entail a severer punishment than the first offence.
A third repetition involves more severity, and a fourth still more.
According to this law, the prisoner, if convicted on all four indictments, would be liable to imprisonment in the penitentiary for the term of sixty years. As the court was assembling, General Butler remonstrated with the counsel for the prosecution upon the rigor of their proposed proceedings.
Surely one indictment would answer the ends of justice; why condemn the man to imprisonment for life for what was, evidently, more a disease than a crime?
They agreed, at length, to quash three of the indictments, on condition that the prisoner should plead guilty to the one which charged the theft of the greatest amount.
The prisoner was arraigned.
