Judge — March 12, 1932 — page 26: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

uat Clarence Darrow is a great lawyer is doubtful. Lawyers don’t exist in respectable utopias and we hold “great lawyer” an impossibility, something like hardworking mayor. That Clarence Darrow is a man with a great passion for justice is another bucket of serod. And that this pas- sion, coupled with an overpowering sympathy for the underdog, makes him ar is likewise true. (We say “messiah” with no intent to slan- der Mr. Darrow. There are messiahs and there are Bryans.) For after an absorbed reading of Mr. Darrow’s plain statement of his melodramatic life, “The Story of My Life,” one realizes it was Mr. Dar- row's bread and meat and wine to wring a little justice out of the courts despite the 1s He himself claims he couldn’t have lived unless he were able to absorb the headaches of the underdogs and fight their causes for principles over and above those of law and mob spirit. Like the great man he is, he claims no credit for his genius, He couldn't have helped doing it any more than you and we can help being itali He was just built that way And what a record he has hung up JUDGING THE BOOKS in the courts, not to mention heaven! He gravitated to the striker, the mal- adjusted, the psychopathetic, like a columnist to a shovel of dirt. He fought a million dramatic battles and carried the day in most. Even when defeated or on the wrong side, he was noble and big and commonsensical, Truly he is in the Lincoln tradition, probably the last of line. Types of the great are somehow being . Darrow’s deeds naturally will admit him to the very centre of the Mystic Rose when he gets to heaven, Except that Mr. Darrow doesn’t be- lieve in heaven. He is a pessimist. And not one of your milk-and-a-dash- of-bitters pessimists who carrics an umbrella on sunshiny days and wears belt and suspenders. But a real deep- down-way-under pessimist—a gloomy philosopher. But we'll grant him that privilege even tho it tekes courage to absorb the gray despair that his every written word oozes. Had you a great heart and were forced to suffer for the downtrodden all your life as has Mr. Darrow, you'd be lucky ne dered a cuckoo, let alone fello And day in a court, time of days? In other words, Mr. Darrow’s pes- simism is exactly equal to the sum total of the amount of American in- justice. We enjoin you heartily to read “The Story of My Life.” J ort Savane is a large tank of wit who used to roll around throw to be ren- n unhappy © you ever spent one not to mention a life- away so much good stuff all of us boys who knew the great Greek god from Ohio would say “Tsk! tsk! If he'd only put it down ina book. It'd be won- derful for the eye and the laughs!” Now this is always a dangerous thing to say about a man. You can do him and yourself a lot of harm comicbooks.com