Again, witness after witness was asked "if Wagner ever said anything to them about money." Very few of them answer in the affirmative. They want to show him in straitened circumstances; to get up some moving cause to commit this great offense. And what do they do? 55 They show that on the 6th of March he owed only $12 and had always paid his board promptly. Keep this in mind, gentlemen, he owed only twelve dollars — no one pressing for that he was never even asked for it. Is that, pray tell me, gentlemen, the strong circumstance to 60 support the motive for the commission of this crime? It is all there is. It is all they have. Does this show such a straitened condition that he voluntarily cries out upon the street that he must have money, if he has to murder for it?

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The next declarations are alleged to have come from him on the morning after the murder. It is the declaration said to have been made to Mrs. Johnson, Mr. Johnson, and Mary Johnson. And what would they have you believe that they were? They say he came home in the morning in 70 broad daylight marching through the streets of Portsmouth to his boarding place, and, after removing some of his clothes and washing himself, took breakfast, and then told Mrs. Johnson he never felt so bad in his life and that he felt as if somebody was after him; that he told this in the open bar- 75 room, and, to make the thing stronger, that he sought out Mary Johnson and told her that he had got himself into difficulty and he felt as if he were going to be taken. This is the substance of the story as these witnesses give it to you. Now what does he say about it? He tells you where he 80 had been the night before. That he had been drinking so freely as to intoxicate him and produce vomiting. Had been subject to cold and without sleep, and that in this condition he said, "I feel awful bad, as when something is going to happen to me." Suffering from this debauch he says his 85 head felt bad, and he hardly knew how to describe his feel

ings. After committing such an atrocious crime as this, would he have come directly from the scene and told it to Mrs. Johnson, Mary Johnson, and the father in his place of business, publicly before all who were there?

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Still the meagerness of the identification presses upon and haunts the prosecution, and now they go to Boston to see what he said there. From the boarding mistress they say he went to the little Dutchman's shoe shop. In that place there were certain occurrences and conversations, but the 95 little Dutchman says that he remembers only two or three of them. All the others he forgets, some few of them he denies; but he says Wagner cast off his old shoe and put on the new one, and they would have us believe, not content with proclaiming for three months that he was going to com- 100 mit the deed, and not content with confessing first to Mrs. Johnson, then to her husband in the bar-room, and then to Mary, he now goes to Boston and confesses it in the shoe store of this gentleman, the same thing in different form of expression, by saying, “I have seen women as still as that 105 shoe." They would have us believe that he was fleeing from justice and yet talking in this manner. If he was guilty, could there be greater folly in a man; if innocent, why should he say it?

He tells you what he did say, and how he came to say it. 110 He says the shoemaker was advising him to marry and details the conversation, and he says, "I then told him I did not care about girls, that I loved a girl once at home six years ago, and that in two years' time I had heard no news from her, that I thought she was dead; and by that time I 115 was trying my boots on."

Now here was a Dutchman in conversation with a Prussian. Both using imperfect English and liable to misunderstand and misinterpret, to say nothing of the danger and the liability of misrecollection.

After Wagner was arrested they took from him certain articles in his pocket. You will recollect, in the opening by

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the State's counsel we were told that a very important piece of evidence would occur in the article of a button. That it was so connected as to establish the prisoner's guilt. 125 The importance of it was stated and restated and with such wonderful gravity that we really feared we had come upon some unfortunate and mysterious circumstance. In the course of the trial various mysterious packages were spread out on the table and with no inconsiderable display wrappers 130 were removed and strings untied and there appeared among other things buttons; buttons not found on Wagner but similar to something we could hardly tell what. These remained upon the table until the close of the government case, when the attorney offers them; upon a suggestion 135 made by us that they were not admissible and do not appear to be connected with the case, the court at once excluded them; thereupon, you will recollect that the learned solicitor for the county coolly arose in his place and declared to the court his own belief that they were inadmissible. 140 Making all the previous parade and all his previous solemn declamation, and then endeavoring to introduce them when he believed them inadmissible.

The government have committed such portions of Wagner's clothing as they saw fit to the examination of a gentle- 145 man from Boston with a view to show that upon his clothing there appear stains of human blood. I have a word to say first concerning this theory or proposition that human blood can be distinguished from that of all other beings. It is an idea that has been entertained by some persons for 150 some considerable period of time, and some worked themselves into considerable confidence in the practicability of their system of examination; but others and many others equally learned regard it as unsafe and uncertain, and in many cases they say that it is utterly impossible to dis- 155 tinguish between human blood and that of some animals. They say that when blood is taken fresh from the veins of a person and fresh from that of some animals, it may be

determined by a very careful, minute examination and by a system of measurements. But after it has been taken 160 from its natural element - taken and separated from the serum in which it flowed - taken out of its natural surroundings and put into unnatural combinations, and also subjected in the transition to the action of elements it was not open or subject to in the veins, the experiment is entirely 165 unsatisfactory.

The government have shown you how much of human blood they say was found upon the clothes. We may safely assume there was no more; at any rate there was no proof there was any more. In the first place do you find there 170 was any more or even as much as you would expect to find on the fishing clothes of a man employed as he was? Isn't it quite clear there was indeed less than would ordinarily be found upon the fisherman's clothes? Such persons are constantly liable to injure their hands with the hooks they 175 use, and in rowing and in drawing in lines. The fact is so apparent that there is no unusual amount of human blood upon these clothes that I pass it without detailing the evidence concerning it.

Now I come in this connection to another piece of evi- 180 dence that the government have introduced, and this relates to a white shirt. This article of clothing has been made to play a conspicuous part in this case and it was regarded as one of the strong evidences of the prisoner's guilt, not so much because blood was found upon it as the 185 fact of secreting it. It was said it was his and he secreted it, and they drew the inference that he committed the murder. They say that they found it in the ash-heap and that it was hid there because of the blood stains. First as to the identity of the shirt. This evidence comes from Mary, 190 who testifies from a recollection of it as she saw it when washing and ironing it upon some previous occasion, and she testified to some matters about the collar. When crossexamined by my colleague these matters began to fade out,

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and then she comes up with a new statement government officers as well as to everybody else, and that is that she saw him pass out with a bunch under his coat on the side under his arm the morning after the murder, as he was going through the kitchen. Now this fact she did not testify to in the direct examination, and you may well con-200 clude they were ignorant of it. She puts it in to work against the prisoner and to fill up the gap of her other vanished reasons for knowing the shirt. It shows very clearly the temper of the witness toward the prisoner.

We are sure so far as we have any information on the 205 subject, that the person who discovered the shirt in the ashheap is not here nor his name mentioned. Mary was told that it had been discovered; and Entwissle was told that it had been discovered. Who made the discovery, when, and under what circumstances, I think you and I have yet 210 to learn. I care nothing about this, however, not a single straw. When the prisoner was on the stand and the shirt was put into his hands, you saw his examination and heard his testimony about it. You heard his denial of it and the reasons he gave for it and saw the trial of it upon his arms 215 and wrists, and you tried it yourself, and if what you saw and heard and did, does not satisfy you it is not his shirt, no amount of evidence would. Why, look at another fact standing out according to their testimony; this shirt had a single stain of blood at the lower end of the bosom, and only 220 this stain; nothing upon the sleeves or shoulders or any other part: the prisoner goes up into his chamber, according to the testimony of the government witnesses, and lays off his blue frock, his outside garment, the one they have here and leaves it there, with all the blood they now find upon it, 225 but, as they would have us believe, stealthily goes down to the ash-heap in the back-yard and buries a shirt with a single stain upon it. Leaves the outside garment, which, if he committed the deed, he might well expect was covered with blood, and hides a shirt with a single stain. Such a 230