Page:The Art of Cross-Examination.djvu/157

 been, probably, but few equals of Judge William Fullerton as a cross-examiner. He was famous for his calmness and mildness of manner, his rapidly repeated questions; his sallies of wit interwoven with his questions, and an ingenuity of method quite his own.

Fullerton's cross-examinations in the celebrated Tilton vs. Henry Ward Beecher case gave him an international reputation, and were considered the best ever heard in this country. And yet these very examinations, laborious and brilliant, were singularly unproductive of results, owing probably to the unusual intelligence and shrewdness of the witnesses themselves. The trial as a whole was by far the most celebrated of its kind the New York courts have ever witnessed. One of the most eminent of Christian preachers was charged with using the persuasive powers of his eloquence, strengthened by his religious influence, to alienate the affections and destroy the probity of a member of his church—a devout and theretofore pure-souled woman, the wife of a long-loved friend. He was charged with continuing the guilty relation during the period of a year and a half, and of cloaking the offence to his own conscience and to hers under specious words of piety; of invoking first divine blessing on it, and then divine guidance out of it; and finally of adding perjury to seduction in order to escape the consequences. His accusers, moreover, Mr. Tilton and Mr. Moulton, were persons of public reputation and honorable station in life.