fidelity, thoroughness, and skill
with which his part of the duty of an important trial would
be performed, made it a delight to try cases as his associate.
He was especially powerful with juries in cases involving
the domestic relations, or which had in them anything of the
pathos of which the court-house so often furnishes examples.
He did not care in those days for the preparation or argument
of questions of law, although he possessed legal learning
fully adequate to the exigencies of his profession, and never
neglected any duty.

His fine powers continued to grow as he grew older. I think
he was unsurpassed in this country in the generation to which
he belonged in native gifts of oratory. He had a fine voice,
of great compass and power, a graceful and dignified presence.
He was familiar with the best English literature. He had
a pure and admirable style, an imagination which was quickened
and excited under the stimulus of extempore speech, and was
himself moved and stirred by the emotions which are most likely
to move and stir an American audience. Some of his addresses
to juries in Worcester are now remembered, under whose spell
jury and audience were in tears, and where it was somewhat
difficult even for the bench or the opposing counsel to resist
the contagion. He never, however, undertook to prepare and
train himself for public speaking, as was done by Mr. Choate
or Mr. Everett, or had the constant and varied practice under
which the fine powers of Wendell Phillips came to such perfection.
But his fame as an orator constantly increased, so that before
his death no other man in Massachusetts was so much in demand,
especially on those occasions where the veterans of the war
were gathered to commemorate its sacrifices and triumphs.

Among the most successful examples of his oratoric power is
his address at Bunker Hill at the Centennial in 1875, where
the forming the procession and the other exercises occupied
the day until nearly sundown, and General Devens, the orator
of the day, laid aside his carefully prepared oration and
addressed the audience in a brief speech, wholly unpremeditated,
which was the delight of everybody who heard it.*

[Footnote]
* "The oration by Judge Devens was magnificent. He spoke wholly
without notes and his effort was largely extemporaneous. He
began by saying that the lateness of the hour ('twas nearly six
o'clock) would prevent his following the train of any previously