Three fourths of them were called by the defendant Morgan, but no matter, their testimony invariably went in favor of the plaintiff Hyde.

Each new witness only added new testimony to the absurdity of a man's claiming to own another man's property because his farm had slid down on top of it.

Then the Morgan lawyers made their speeches, and seemed to make singularly weak ones -- they did really nothing to help the Morgan cause.

And now the General, with exultation in his face, got up and made an impassioned effort; he pounded the table, he banged the law-books, he shouted, and roared, and howled, he quoted from everything and everybody, poetry, sarcasm, statistics, history, pathos, bathos, blasphemy, and wound up with a grand war-whoop for free speech, freedom of the press, free schools, the Glorious Bird of America and the principles of eternal justice! [Applause.] When the General sat down, he did it with the conviction that if there was anything in good strong testimony, a great speech and believing and admiring countenances all around, Mr.Morgan's case was killed.
Ex-Governor Roop leant his head upon his hand for some minutes, thinking, and the still audience waited for his decision.

Then he got up and stood erect, with bended head, and thought again.