Daniel Webster was once asked whom he considered the greatest lawyer of the United States. He answered: “I should, of course, say John Marshall [Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States]; but if you should take me by the throat, and run me back into a corner and demand, ‘ Now, Webster, upon honor, who is the greatest lawyer?’ I should have to say Jeremiah Mason.”
I was quite young when I first saw Jeremiah Mason. In later life, I saw him not unfrequently in court trying cases, some of them of the very greatest importance, and I had such cause to reverence and admire him that in my library, where I now write, stand three busts of the three greatest lawyers, each in his peculiar sphere, of whom I ever had any knowledge: Jeremiah Mason, Daniel Webster, and Rufus Choate.
The consummate ability and skill shown by him in perhaps one of his most important trials,--the case of Ware vs. Ware, which I have mentioned,--has nearly tempted me into a description of the trial. But I am warned that I cannot do Mr. Mason fair justice, nor delineate him so that others can be brought to see and appreciate with me this consummate skill in cross-examination of witnesses, without taking more space than I dare devote even to so great a topic. To show him as he was in that trial, and as he appeared to me, would require a verbatim report of the whole case.
The contemplation of his efforts and of the possibilities which were open to me in the profession of the law, convinced me that there were higher vocations in life than being either a doctor or a clergyman, and I resolved that I would take, as my sphere of study and labor, the profession of the law.
I did not, however, give up my studies in physics and chemistry, for I believed that in the profession of the law a knowledge of the wonderfully advancing science of chemistry would be of assistance, especially in the trial of cases of murder by poison. In after life I have found, on more than one occasion, that the capacity to analyze the contents of the stomach of a person claimed to have died from poison, has been of great service; and in civil cases more than once, when the ascertainment of the purity of substances was necessary to the knowledge of facts, has the knowledge of chemistry given me the most valuable aid in the trial of causes.
