Think of the various further
stages of a law-suit, culminating in the judge's summing up; and you
will agree with me that the whole thing is a perfect art-form. Drama,
at its best, is clumsy, arbitrary, unsatisfying, by comparison. But
what makes a law-suit the most fascinating, to me, of all art-forms,
is that not merely its material, but the chief means of its
expression, is life itself. Here, cited before us, are the actual
figures in the actual story that has been told to us. Here they are,
not as images to be evoked through the medium of printed page, or of
painted canvas, or of disinterested ladies and gentlemen behind
footlights. Actual, authentic, they stand before us, one by one, in
the harsh light of day, to be made to reveal all that we need to know
of them.
The most interesting witnesses, I admit, are they who are determined
not to accommodate us--not to reveal themselves as they are, but to
make us suppose them something quite different. All witnesses are more
or less interesting. As I have suggested, there is no such thing as a
dull law-suit. Nothing that has happened is negligible. And, even so,
every human being repays attention--especially so when he stands forth
on his oath. The strangeness of his position, and his consciousness of
it, suffice in themselves to make him interesting.
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