Indeed, it is highly important that the temper of an advocate should be always equal. He should most carefully aim to repress everything like excitability or irritability. When passion is allowed to prevail, the judgment is dethroned. Words are spoken, or things done, which the parties afterwards wish could be unsaid or undone. Equanimity and self-possession are qualities of unspeakable value. An anecdote may serve to illustrate this remark. There was a gentleman of the Bar of Philadelphia, many years ago, who possessed these qualities in a very remarkable degree. He allowed nothing that occurred in a cause to disturb or surprise him. On an occasion in one of the neighboring counties, the circuit of which it was his custom to ride, he was trying a cause on a bond, when a witness for defendant was introduced, who testified that the defendant had taken the amount of the bond, which was quite a large sum, from his residence to that of the obligee, a distance of several miles, and paid him in silver in his presence. The evidence was totally unexpected; his clients were orphan children; all their fortune was staked on this case. The witness had not yet committed himself as to how the money was carried. Without any discomposure--without lifting his eyes or pen from paper--he made on the margin of his notes of trial a calculation of what that amount in silver would weigh; and when it came his turn to cross-examine, calmly proceeded to make the witness repeat his testimony step by step,--when, where, how, and how far the money was carried--and then asked him if he knew how much that sum of money weighed, and upon naming the amount, so confounded the witness, party, and counsel engaged for the defendant, that the defence was at once abandoned, and a verdict for the plaintiff rendered on the spot.[5]