orcester a great deal to hold the old Common Pleas Court.
He was an excellent lawyer and an excellent Judge--dry, fond
of the common law, and of black letter authorities. He had
a curious habit of giving his charge in one long sentence
without periods, but with a great many parentheses. But he
had great influence with the juries and was very sound and
correct in his law. I once tried a case before him for damages
for the seizure of a stock of liquors under the provisions
of the Statute of 1852, known as the Maine Liquor Law, which
had been held unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. He began:
"The Statute of 1852 chapter so-and-so gentlemen of the jury
commonly known as the Maine Liquor Law which has created great
feeling throughout this Commonwealth some very good men were
in favor of it and some very good men were against it read
literally part of it would be ridiculous and you may take
your seats if you please gentlemen of the jury I shall be
occupied some time in my charge and I do not care to keep
you standing and some of it would be absurd and some of it
reads very well." And so on.

A neighbor of Judge Byington from Berkshire County was Judge
Henry W. Bishop of Stockbridge. He was an old Democratic
politician and at one time the candidate of his party for
Governor. He was not a very learned lawyer, but was quick-
witted and picked up a good deal from the arguments of counsel.
Aided by a natural shrewdness and sense, he got along pretty
well. He had a gift of rather bombastic speech. His exuberant
eloquence was of a style more resembling that prevalent in
some other parts of the country than the more sober and severe
fashion of New England. Just before he came to the Bench
he was counsel in a real estate case in Springfield where
Mr. Chapman, afterward Chief Justice of the Supreme Court,
was on the other side. The evidence of recent occupation
and the monuments tended in favor of Chapman's client. But
it turned out that the one side had got a title under the
original grant of the town of Blandford, and the other under
the original grant of an adjoining town, and that the town
line had been maintained from the beginning where Bishop claimed
the true line to be. When he came to that part of the case,
he rose mightily in his stirrups. Turning upon Chapman, who
was a quiet, mild-mannered old gentleman, he said: "The gentleman's
eyes may twinkle like Castor and Pollux, twin stars; but he
can't wink ou