Springfield 1636-1886, History of Town and City, by Mason A. Green ...

400 SPRINGFIELD, 1636-1S86.
ing his client, as he thought, too closely. "A defender of jackals,"
he added in low-voiced severity, glancing at Mr. Wells. The Green-
field attorney rose, white with indignant emotion. He pictured the
birth of the child Reuben Chapman on the shores of Russell pond,
his farm-work, his weighing sugar in a country store, and, finally, the
kindly aid extended him by the speaker. " And this is the return for
my kind offices I " Young Mr. Chapman looked very sober, but the
figure of the jackal would not dow^n, and the prosecuting attorney
made no headway against the burglar whom Chapman was defending.
Mr. Cliapman might be called a wheel-horse to the legal car
rather than a brightly caparisoned leader. His days were spent in
laborious application. He was learned, courtly, kind, set ; his pleas
were models of brevity, but disclose no imaginative and but slight
forensic quality. He contributed little to the amusement of the bar,
but much to its form of legal practice. Mr. Chapman seemed bred
and trained for the express purpose of contributing to the great task
of sweeping away the mass of technicalities involved in civil practice.
Before he could become a maker of statutes of this Commonwealth,
however, he was compelled to climlj into notice, both giving and
taking hard blows.
The Hampden bar needed neither color nor incident fifty 3^ears and
more ago ;
but it did need new blood, and this it got in good measure
with the law firm of Chapman & Ashmun. These men were in a w^a}'
complements of each other. Chapman was a man of books ; Ashmun
was a man of action. Political honors knocked at Mr. Ashmun's
door, and it was within his grasp to play a national part. He did to
a certain extent, but the creditable lack of a desire for personal pre-
ferment prevented that cohesion of political action and ambition
which is an element in conspicuous careers.
Springfield never made to the great public the gift of a character
about which is associated more good-humor, genial humanity, brighter
morality, or more dignified eloquence than that of George Ashmun.
The lover of old times delights to this day to tell how he would drop