Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays

“ [342] sense. Moral sense is that which enables us to tell heat from cold, to tell white from yellow: that is moral sense. Moral sense tells us right from wrong.” Then followed an address with more of fact and reasoning than one could possibly associate with such an introduction, but ending with the general conclusion, “It [the biennial method] would give more power to the legislature, for they would centralize more money into their pockets. I hope every member of the legislature, when this matter comes up, will be voted down.” All these flowers of speech are taken from my own notebook as kept in the committee.

I always rather enjoyed being contradicted in the legislature or being cross-examined on the witness-stand; first, because the position gives one opportunity to bring in, by way of rejoinder, points which would not have fitted legitimately into one's main statement, thus approaching the matter by a flank movement, as it were; and again because the sympathy of the audience is always with the party attacked, and nothing pleases the spectators better, especially in the court-room, then to have a witness turn the tables on the lawyer. It is much the same in legislative bodies, and nothing aided the late General Butler more than the ready wit with which he would baffle the whole weight of argument