In addition to this, we are subjected at the close of the examination to what you are pleased to term a "hypothetical question." The theory of this "hypothetical question" is that it embraces or expresses in a few words, and not always so very few either [laughter], the main features of the case under consideration. In nine cases out of ten if the expert makes a direct and unqualified answer to the question he leaves an absolutely erroneous idea upon the minds of the jury, and this is the explanation of why so many experts have made answers to questions which have elicited adverse criticism.
In my judgment, after a not very long experience I must admit, but a sorry one, in some instances, there is but one way in which this matter of expert evidence should be conducted. The judge should appoint three experts, one of them at the suggestion of the counsel upon either side, and the third one at his own discretion. These three appointees should present their report in writing to the court, and the compensation for the service should be equally divided between the parties interested. In that way can expert evidence escape the disrepute now attaching to it, and the ends of justice be furthered. Now, gentlemen, the hour is getting late, and I have but one wish to express to you. The medical profession of the State of New York has an organization very similar to your own, which has now reached very nearly its ninetieth year, with a membership of almost 1,000, and with an annual attendance something double that of your own. I can only hope that your Association may live on and develop until it reaches as vigorous and flourishing an old age as that of the medical profession. [Applause.]
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
THE RISE OF "THE ATLANTIC"
[Speech of Charles Dudley Warner at the "Whittier Dinner" in celebration of the poet's seventieth birthday and the twentieth birthday of "The Atlantic Monthly," given by the publishers, Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., at Boston, Mass., December 17, 1877.]
Mr. Chairman:—It is impossible to express my gratitude to you for calling on me. There is but one pleasure in life equal to that of being called on to make an after-dinner speech, and that is not being called on. It is such an enjoyment to sit through the courses with this prospect like a ten-pound weight on your digestive organs! If it were ever possible to refuse anything in this world, except by the concurrence of the three branches of government—the executive, the obstructive, and the destructive, I believe they are called—I should hope that we might some time have our speeches first, so that we could eat our dinner without fear or favor.
I suppose, however, that I am called up not to grumble, but to say that the establishment of "The Atlantic Monthly" was an era in literature. I say it cheerfully. I believe, nevertheless, it was not the first era of the sort. The sanguine generations have been indulging in them all along, and as "eras" they are apt to flat out, or, as the editor of the "Atlantic" would say, they "peter out." But the establishment of the "Atlantic" was the expression of a genuine literary movement. That movement is the most interesting because it was the most fruitful in our history. It was nicknamed transcendentalism. It was, in fact, a recurrence to realism. They who were sitting in Boston saw a great light. The beauty of this new realism was that it required imagination, as it always does, to see truth. That was the charm of the Teufelsdröckh philosophy; it was also poetry. Mr. Emerson puts it in a phrase—the poet is the Seer. Most of you recall the intellectual stir of that time. Mr. Carlyle had spread the German world to us. Mr. Emerson lighted his torch. The horizon of English literature was broken, and it was not necessary any longer to imitate English models. Criticism began to assert itself. Mr. Lowell launched that audacious "Fable for Critics"—a lusty colt, rejoicing in his young energy, had broken into the old-fashioned garden, and unceremoniously trampled about among the rows of box, the beds of pinks and sweet-williams, and mullen seed. I remember how all this excited the imagination of the college where I was. It was what that great navigator who made the "swellings from the Atlantic" called "a fresh-water college." Everybody read "Sartor Resartus." The best writer in college wrote exactly like Carlyle—why, it was the universal opinion—without Carlyle's obscurity! The rest of them wrote like Jean Paul Richter and like Emerson, and like Longfellow, and like Ossian. The poems of our genius you couldn't tell from Ossian. I believe it turned out that they were Ossian's. [Laughter.] Something was evidently about to happen. When this tumult had a little settled the "Atlantic" arose serenely out of Boston Bay—a consummation and a star of promise as well.
The promise has been abundantly fulfilled. The magazine has had its fair share in the total revolution of the character of American literature—I mean the revolution out of the sentimental period; for the truth of this I might appeal to the present audience, but for the well-known fact that writers of books never read any except those they make themselves. [Laughter.] I distinctly remember the page in that first "Atlantic" that began with—"If the red slayer thinks he slays—" a famous poem, that immediately became the target of all the small wits of the country, and went in with the "Opinions," paragraphs of that Autocratic talk, which speedily broke the bounds of the "Atlantic," and the Pacific as well, and went round the world. [Applause.]
Yes, the "Atlantic" has had its triumphs of all sorts. The Government even was jealous of its power. It repeatedly tried to banish one of its editors, and finally did send him off to the court of Madrid [James Russell Lowell]. And I am told that the present editor [William Dean Howells] might have been snatched away from it, but for his good fortune in being legally connected with a person who is distantly related to a very high personage who was at that time reforming the civil service.