A term of the Court of Common Pleas was always held in the town in the
month of September, and "court week" was a regular time of holiday for
the pupils of the higher schools. Some of us attended upon these solemn
proceedings with extraordinary interest, especially when criminal cases
were before the court. I know not how it is, but suppose it to be the
expected revelation of incidents, as in the plot of a novel, which draws
crowds together, in most uncomfortable contiguity in a courtroom,
whenever a culprit, especially one of more than usually notorious
antecedents, is put upon his trial. While most of the old-fashioned
lawyers of the Essex Bar were more than respectable for professional
acquisitions and legal skill, there were persons among them of
distinguished ability and character; and real eloquence seldom fails to
prove peculiarly fascinating to youthful hearers. Who could forget, for
example, with what rapt attention he listened, at a somewhat later date,
to the glowing language and was stirred by the honest warmth of
Saltonstall, incapable by nature of attempting to make the worse appear
the better reason; or watched that marvel, the matchless ingenuity of
Choate, whose faculties shone brightest, the more apparently hopeless was
the cause at stake; or thrilled with profound admiration, under the
resistless influence of Webster's force and closeness of argument,
rising, with due occasion, to the highest point of eloquent illustration,
when some more than usually important matter for adjudication by the
court called him from the ordinary sphere of his great practice to the
forum of a comparatively inferior tribunal.

Years afterwards, when I had the honor of a place at that Bar, I was much
struck with the testimony of a respectable witness, a farmer named
Sheldon, who lived near Beverly Corner, upon an indictment of a fellow
for burglary, in entering Mr. Sheldon's house by night and taking the
money from his pockets in his sleeping chamber without disturbing the
occupants. One of the earliest questions proposed to him was,--"How did
the robber gain entrance to the house?" and, by the way, the man had been
previously employed as a laborer by the farmer. "I suppose he came in by
the usual way," was the answer. "He came in by the door, do you mean?"
"Yes." "How did he get it open?" "I suppose he lifted the latch." "Do you
mean to say, that the door was not fastened?" "Yes I do; we never fasten
it." The culprit wa