It was after six before Katzman, facing a weary jury and a long-since emptying courtroom, made his last points. He asked who knew better about the Harrington & Richardson revolver, the man who had put in a new hammer or an expert who had never seen it before. He questioned the disorder and general lack of dates in Affe’s grocery account books. He wondered why the defense had produced no witnesses from Rice & Hutchins, where Sacco had worked, to say he was not the man. He concluded with a flourish: “You are the consultants here, gentlemen, the twelve of you, and the parties come to you and ask you to find out what the truth is on the two issues of guilt or innocence. Men of the jury, do your duty. Do it like men. Stand together, men of Norfolk!” Nothing was left but the judge’s charge and the jury’s verdict. * * * * * Judge Thayer spent that evening at the University Club in Boston working on his charge. Like most intermediate judges, he tended to make his charges set pieces formed out of the accumulated mosaics of the law, varying in detail according to the particular case, but in general outline the same. The basic function of a charge is to enable the jury to sift the relevant from the irrelevant. In his Sacco-Vanzetti charge of twenty-four pages, only ten were given to the specific aspects of the case. The formula was based on a standard set of legal truisms: that a man is innocent until proved guilty, that reasonable doubt is the doubt of a reasonable man, that no inference of guilt shall be drawn from an indictment, that circumstantial evidence can at times be as weighty as direct evidence, that English common law as adopted by American practice is one of the glories of the world, and so on. Thayer’s first childhood memories were of the boys in blue of the Civil War; he had been appointed to the bench the year that the United States entered the World War, and his attitude toward soldiers was that of a sentimental civilian. Ever since his appointment he had peppered his charges and his less formal addresses with references to “our soldier boys.” It was a habit that still continued three years after the Armistice, and that could have somewhat sinister connotations in the trial of two draft-dodging anarchists. With the fervor of a poet Thayer worked at his manuscript late into the night. He was proud of his literary efforts. Like most Americans whose school course included the elocution lessons of the post-Civil War period, his taste ran to the flamboyant. Vague metaphorical phrases blossomed under his hand. “Let the star of a sound judgment and profound wisdom guide your footsteps into that beautiful realm where conscience, obedience to law and to God, reigneth supreme.” Such phrases he found reassuring. And his indwelling sense of insecurity made him need assurance, turned him at times garrulous, biased him against foreigners, and drove him to indiscretions that were later to become notorious.