His labor in the preparation of his cases is said to be unremitting; and
he throws himself with such energy into a trial of importance as wholly
to exhaust his strength.
Few lawyers, probably, have been interested in a wider variety of
business than he; its scope comprehends the great causes where immense
pecuniary interests are concerned--from which, however, he is always
ready to turn aside, to defend the humble rights of the poor man, or give
his protection to one unjustly accused. As one of my correspondents
observes, "When an applicant has interested him by a recital of fraud or
wrong, General Pierce never investigates the man's estate before engaging
in his business; neither does he calculate whose path he may cross. I
have been privy to several instances of the noblest independence on his
part, in pursuing, to the disrepute of those who stood well in the
community, the weal of an obscure client with a good cause."
In the practice of the law, as Pierce pursued it, in one or another of
the court houses of New Hampshire, the rumor of each successive struggle
and success resounded over the rugged hills, and perished without a
record. Those mighty efforts, into which he put all his strength, before
a county court, and addressing a jury of yeomen, have necessarily been,
as regards the evanescent memory of any particular trial, like the
eloquence that is sometimes poured out in a dream.
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