“You saw when she came to the final occurrence of that night—you saw her countenance—how the shadow of horror overspread it. Although the story was to save the life of the one person whom she loved, you saw how she shrank from telling it. You saw the drawn face, you saw the brave little girl struggling that she might save her husband, that she might overcome the objectionable features of the story.
“For days and days you have seen her undergoing torture of an examination unparalleled in the jurisprudence of this or any other country.
“Did the District Attorney of your city, to whom I gave the greatest acknowledgment of talent, confuse her? You saw him using all the arts, resorting to all the strategies of a practiced master to entrap a girl who had never testified before. Was she caught in a single falsehood, or contradiction?
“You have seen learned men on the stand—tell me, if you have ever seen a witness who has stood the excruciating tests of cross-examination as well as this child?
“Gentlemen, in that cross-examination the merciless District Attorney—I say merciless without offense, because his office is not one of mercy—you saw him extort from her truthful but unwilling lips the confession that the misdeeds of Stanford White did not stop with the first wrecking of her life, but continued until God asserted himself in her and she would no longer be the plaything and toy of this man.
“I ask you, on your oaths, if this girl had fabricated this story, would not she or the others who prompted the story have for the sake of sympathy, said that the first drugging was the only occurrence and that she had shrunk from further dealings with such a man.
“Upon any other theory than that the story is true I ask you the question, why did Stanford White just at that moment see fit to remove the mother—the only protector left this child—from her post as sentinel? Why was the mother sent to Pittsburg with money furnished by Stanford White? Why was the brother sent to school?
“Gentlemen, I desire to call your attention to this point. During this time Stanford White made a contract to pay Evelyn the sum of $25 a week during the time she should be unable to obtain her own living on the stage. And during that one year we have discovered—by a strange fatality which ever seems to assist the cause of justice and to disconcert the cause of injustice—there appears certain checks on which the name of the mother was indorsed.
“And, according to a computation made by some gentleman in court, the mother, for the year following the ruin of the child, received $2,500, in round numbers, $200 a month. And yet the District Attorney tells you that at the same time Stanford White was in embarrassed circumstances.
“One circumstance I desire to call to your attention. It relates to the assistance which the prosecution draws in its attempt to deprive Evelyn of her husband. You will recall that when the name of the mother was spoken I disclaimed having said anything that would cast upon the mother any shame that would cast reproach upon her.