So that’s the bill and now what do you say on it?
Lemme alone! I don’t know nothing about no bill!
Mr. Friend, listen. It don’t make no difference which way you vote, yes or no. ’Cause even if you’re in favor of this here monkey stuff it’ll be two to one the other way and all we want you to do is say yes or no for the record. Now will you please say one way or the other, yes or no?
Lemme alone!
Well, Hayes, there you are!
Loman, I’m going to report this guy to the Speaker. I don’t know if anything can be done about it, but I’m going to find out. I’m going to report him at the night session. You’re right. This here is a right down swindle on the taxpayers. Just think of it! A great moral measure like this here Evolution Bill being held up by a bum like that!
They ought to send him back to Flint Neck. That’s where he wants to go and they ought to let him.
I’m agin it.
What was that?
I’m agin this here bill. Paying out a whole lot of money for new books and—
Whoops!
By gosh we’re done! He’s voted, and he’s agin it, and we’re done!
All the time paying out money for books... Reading... Big words... Monkeys...
The Administration of Justice
(in Three Parts)
1. Counsel
A courtroom. It is filled with the usual judge, jury, defendant, prosecutor, counsel, widow of the deceased, bailiff, and crowd of spectators. THE PROSECUTOR has just risen to deliver his summation and now walks slowly to a spot within a few feet of the jury.
Gentlemen of the jury, I now begin one of the most disagreeable, I may say thoroughly painful, duties that a officer of the court is ever called upon to perform. I come before you today, my friends, to ask for the life of a fellow citizen. I come before you to ask you to find a man guilty of murder, the greatest crime known to civilized society. My friends, it is indeed a painful duty. And as I have no desire to prolong it any longer than I have to, as I know you are all busy men, anxious to get back to your business, your families, your dear loved ones, I shall be as brief as I can. I shall confine myself to a plain recital of the facts, as revealed by the evidence, and then leave the case with you, confident that twelve men of such outstanding intelligence will not allow justice to miscarry.
Now, my friends, what does the evidence show? It shows first that the defendant Summers was not in the habit of going to church. That was his own affair, my friends. Whether Summers wanted to go to church or not, whether he chose to bow his head on Sunday or not, as you do and I do, I may say as any God-fearing man does, I don’t care whether he’s black or white or rich or poor, or whether he chose to abandon himself to a life of sneering, jeering, and contumacious atheism! — is a matter between him and his God. It is not for you and me to judge, my friends, whether Summers chose to go week after week, month after month, year after year, without once setting his foot inside the house of worship. That, I repeat to you my friends, is for God to judge. That is between him and his God! We’re here today to decide whether he did, as the indictment alleges, kill Pete Brody, the husband of this lady here, the father of this little boy, this little curly-headed boy you see sitting here, willfully and with malice aforethought!
Now, my friends, what else does the evidence show? It shows that a great patriotic organization grew concerned about his welfare. It shows that the sober, God-fearing men that founded it, that nursed it in its infancy, that reared it with loving care until it is one of the greatest, yes, my friends, I will say the very greatest, force for good in the United States of America today! — that these very men gave their attention to Summers same as they would to any other man, be he rich or poor or Gentile or Jew or black or white! — that they gave their valuable time to his case and determined to see if there wasn’t something they could do to bring him to the light, to bring him back into the house of God, to improve, for his own sake, for the sake of his family, his friends, his state, yes, his country, the state of his spiritual welfare! Oh, my friends, what a deed of kindness that was! What a act of pure, Christian charity! What more could you ask of any man, my friends, than that he do what them men done, that he give some of his valuable time for your spiritual welfare and try to bring you to the house of God, so maybe you would get some kind of salvation when you die?
Now, my friends, what did they do? The evidence shows that they got first into the official robes of their order, the hood and gown, my friends, of the Ku Klux Klan, marked with the cross that Christ died on, the cross that’s leading the American nation out of the wilderness of false teaching and on to better things today! They got into this sacred regalia, my friends, and they got into automobiles and proceeded to this defendant’s house. And then what did they do, my friends? They done a simple thing. My friends, they done a thing which, if it had been done to me, it would of broke me up I don’t care if I was the most hardened atheist this side of hell! They sung him a hymn, my friends. They sung him perhaps the most beautiful hymn, my friends, that has ever been written by God-fearing men. Do you know how that hymn goes, my friends? I got no voice, my friends, and I never had no lessons in music. But I’ll sing it for you. It goes like this:
[singing]
That’s what they sung to him, my friends. That beautiful hymn, “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” Think of that! They gathered on his own front stoop, right under his window, and sung him perhaps the most beautiful hymn that has ever been written by God-fearing men. Did you ever know, my friends, that that was the favorite hymn of President William McKinley? It was, my friends, and in the year 1902, in Buffalo, New York, when that great man lay dying, when he lay dying by the assassin’s bullet, what did he do, my friends? In the dead of the night, singing it softly to himself, he was heard to put his faith in that hymn. There in the dark, so low you could hardly hear him, he was singing it to hisself:
[singing]
And what then, my friends? Did the defendant Summers see the light? Was his heart touched by this simple act of kindness, this singing by these God-fearing men down there on his front stoop? Did he hear the message in that perhaps most beautiful hymn that has ever been written by God-fearing men, the favorite hymn of President M’Kinley? He did not! What does the evidence show, my friends? There was a shot! Another! Another! Still another! And another still! And when the smoke cleared away, Pete Brody was upon the ground. Pete Brody, the genial and affable Pete Brody that used to drive his milk-wagon through the streets in the early dawn, Pete Brody, the Pete Brody that brought sustenance to little children, Pete Brody, the husband of this little lady you see here, the father of this little curly-headed boy, Pete Brody, the friend of every man that ever knew him, be he black or white or rich or poor, Pete Brody, that never done a thing to any man in his life! — was lying on the ground, a load of shot in his stomach, doomed to die before he could even be brought to a hospital!