make my own. A
little pepper I may want some day. I would send the dirty clothes, but
they were taken to dry. Tell Mama NOT TO OPEN the little bundle I gave
her the other day, but to keep it just as she received it. With many
kisses to you all. Good night!--From your affectionate

"FATHER."

"P.S.--My tongue troubles me yet very much, and I must have bitten it
in my distress the other night; it is painful and swollen, affecting my
speech. Had Mama better send for Nancy? I think so; or Aunt Amelia."

"Couple of coloured neck handkerchiefs, one Madras."

This letter, which shows an anxiety about his personal comfort singular
in one so tragically situated, passed through the hands of the keeper
of the jail. He was struck by the words underlined, "NOT TO OPEN,"
in regard to the small bundle confided to Mrs. Webster. He called the
attention of the police to this phrase. They sent immediately an officer
armed with a search warrant to the Professor's house. He received from
Mrs. Webster among other papers a package which, on being opened,
was found to contain the two notes given by Webster to Parkman as
acknowledgments of his indebtedness to him in 1842 and 1847, and a paper
showing the amount of his debts to Parkman in 1847. There were daubs and
erasures made across these documents, and across one was written twice
over the word "paid." All these evidences of payments and cancellations
appeared on examination to be in the handwriting of the Professor.

After an inquest lasting nine days the coroner's jury declared the
remains found in the college to be those of Dr. George Parkman, and that
the deceased had met his death at the hands of Professor J. W. Webster.
The prisoner waived his right to a magisterial investigation, and on
January 26, 1850, the Grand Jury returned a true bill. But it was not
until March 17 that the Professor's trial opened before the Supreme
Court of Massachusetts. The proceedings were conducted with that
dignity and propriety which we look for in the courts of that State.
The principal features in the defence were an attempt to impugn the
testimony of the janitor Littlefield, and to question the possibility
of the identification of the remains of Parkman's teeth. There was a
further attempt to prove that the deceased had been seen by a number
of persons in the streets of Boston on the Friday afternoon, after his
visit to the Medical College. The witness Littlefield was unshaken by a
severe cross