d the lawyers
and experts suffer from brain diseases in excess of the average of
sufferers in other branches of the profession.

XX
THE YEAR 1854

At the session of the Legislature, January, 1854, the town of
Fitchburg, aided by towns and citizens of the vicinity, petitioned for
a new county to be composed of towns to be taken from the counties of
Middlesex and Worcester and to be called the county of Webster. Mr.
Choate was retained for the new county, and I appeared for the county
of Middlesex. The hearing by the committee occupied two weeks or more,
for an hour or an hour and a half a day. The fees received seem now to
have been very small. It was said that Mr. Choate received the sum of
five hundred dollars, and my fee was two hundred and fifty dollars.
Mr. Choate obtained a favorable report from the committee, but the
project failed in the Legislature. It was renewed the succeeding year,
when Emory Washburn appeared for the county of Worcester. In those two
contests, covering a month of time in all, I had an opportunity to
study Mr. Choate in his characteristics as an advocate and as an
examiner of witnesses, a branch of the profession in which he had great
skill.

Various witnesses were called for the purpose of gathering facts as to
the inconveniences of which complaints were made and also for the
purpose of showing the advantage to be derived from the proposed
change. A witness of importance and altogether friendly, was Stuart
J. Park, of Groton. He was a Scotchman by birth, his father having
been employed upon the Argyle estates. The father came to America
while the son was a minor. They were by trade stone masons. Stuart
J. Park was then nearly seventy years of age. He had represented the
county in the State Senate and for many years he had been a person of
note, although his education was limited. He had, however, an
abundance of sound sense and an excess of will power, even for a
Scotchman. In his business he had had a large and successful
experience. He was the master builder of the Boston Mill Dam, of the
Charlestown Dry Dock, of the State prison buildings in Massachusetts
and New Hampshire, of the track of the Lowell railway, which was laid
originally on granite sleepers, and of many jails in New England.
Experience proved that granite sleepers were too firm and sleepers of
wood were substituted.

One of the county commissioners was John K. Going of Shirley. I had
known him from m