Page:The Art of Cross-Examination.djvu/171

 "Mr. Butler. 'Well, doctor, let us see; is not the disease called hysteria and its effects hysterics; and isn't it true that hysteria, hysterics, hysterical, all come from the Greek word ?'

"Witness. 'It may be.'

"Mr. Butler. 'Don't say it may, doctor; isn't it? Isn't an exact translation of the Greek word the English word "womb"?'

"Witness. 'You are right, sir.'

"Mr. Butler. 'Well, doctor, this morning when you examined this young man here,' pointing to my client, 'did you find that he had a womb? I was not aware of it before, but I will have him examined over again and see if I can find it. That is all, doctor; you may step down.

Robert Ingersoll took part in numerous noted lawsuits in all parts of the country. But he was almost helpless in court without a competent junior. He was a born orator if ever there was one. Henry Ward Beecher regarded him as "the most brilliant speaker of the English tongue in any land on the globe." He was not a profound lawyer, however, and hardly the equal of the most mediocre trial lawyer in the examination of witnesses. Of the art of cross-examining witnesses he knew practically nothing. His definition of a lawyer, to use his own words, was "a sort of intellectual strumpet." "My ideal of a great lawyer," he once wrote, "is that great English attorney who accumulated a fortune of a million pounds, and left it all in his will to make a home for