Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 December 1883 — Examining a Witness. [ARTICLE]

Examining a Witness.

Tact is an admirable quality, and its valde is never more clearly shown than in the examination of witnesses in courts of law. Here is an instance. A Scotch lawyer, Henry Cockburn, and Jeffrey were acting together in a case which turned upon the sanity or insanity of one of the parties. “Is the defendant,” asked Jeffrey of a witness, “perfectly sane, in your opinion?’’ The witness, bewildered by the Word “sane,” of whose meaning be was ignorant, gazed vacantly at the lawyer and gave no answer. “Do you think the defendant' capable of managing his own affairs?” asked Jeffrey, changing the form of his question. • The witness gazed more vacantly. “I ask you,” continued Jeffrey, “do you consider the man rational?" The witness scratched his head. “Let me tackle him, ” said Cockburif, seeing that his associate was making a failure of the examination. “Hae ye your mull (snuff-box) wi’ ye?” he asked, in the broadest of Scotch. “Ou, ay,” answered the awkward fellow, being put at his ease by the simple request, and, handing his snuff-horn to the lawyer, who, taking a pinch, said: “Noo, hoo lang hae ye kent John Sampson ?” , “Ever since he was that height,” answered the witness,' indicating by a gesture the height. “An’ dae ye think noo, atween you • and me,” asked Cockburn, in his most insinuating brogue, “that there’s onything in till the creature?” “I would not lippen (trust) him with a bull calf, ” was the instant reply, amid the laughter of the court, delight-. ed with Cockburn’s tact in extracting the fact from the thick-headed fellow. —Youth’s Companion.