obbing a certain Major Goodridge on the
highway, and whose trial would take place at Ipswich the next day. They
could find, they said, no member of the Essex bar who would undertake
the defence of the Kennistons, and they had come to Boston to engage the
services of Mr. Webster. Would he go down to Ipswich and defend the
accused? Mr. Webster stated that he could not and would not go. He had
made arrangements for an excursion to the sea-side; the state of his
health absolutely demanded a short withdrawal from all business cares;
and that no fee could tempt him to abandon his purpose. "Well," was the
reply of one of the delegation, "it isn't the fee that we think of at
all, though we are willing to pay what you may charge; but it's justice.
Here are two New Hampshire men who are believed in Exeter, and Newbury,
and Newburyport, and Salem to be rascals; but we in Newmarket believe,
in spite of all evidence against them, that they are the victims of some
conspiracy. We think you are the man to unravel it, though it seems a
good deal tangled even to us. Still we suppose that men whom we know to
have been honest all their lives can't have become such desperate rogues
all of a sudden." "But I cannot take the case," persisted Mr. Webster;
"I am worn to death with over-work. I have not had any real sleep for
forty-eight hours. Besides, I know nothing of the case." "It's hard, I
can see," continued the leader of the delegation; "but you're a New
Hampshire man, and the _neighbors_ thought that you would not allow two
innocent New Hampshire men, however humble they may be in their
circumstances, to suffer for lack of your skill in exposing the wiles of
this scoundrel Goodridge. The _neighbors_ all desire you to take the
case." That phrase "the neighbors" settled the question. No resident of
a city knows what the phrase means. But Webster knew it in all the
intense significance of its meaning. His imagination flew back to the
scattered homesteads of a New England village, where mutual sympathy and
assistance are the necessities, as they are the commonplaces, of village
life. The phrase remotely meant to him the combination of neighbors to
resist an assault of Indian savages, or to send volunteers to the war
which wrought the independence of the nation. It specially meant to him
the help of neighbor to neighbor, in times of sickness, distress,
sorrow, and calamity. In his childhood and boyhood the Christian
question, "Who is my neighbo