"And so a quiet, respectable, humble Negro who had the unmitigated temerity to 'feel sorry' for a white woman has had to put his word  against two white people's. I need not remind you of their appearance and conduct on the stand- you saw them for yourselves.   The witnesses for the state, with the exception of the sheriff of   Maycomb County, have presented themselves to you gentlemen, to this court, in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be  doubted, confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on   the assumption- the evil assumption- that  all  Negroes lie, that 

 all  Negroes are basically immoral beings, that  all  Negro men are not to be trusted around our women, an assumption one associates   with minds of their caliber.

  "Which, gentlemen, we know is in itself a lie as black as Tom Robinson's skin, a lie I do not have to point out to you. You know the  truth, and the truth is this: some Negroes lie, some Negroes are   immoral, some Negro men are not to be trusted around women- black or white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men. There is not a person in this courtroom who has never told a lie, who has never done an immoral thing, and there is no man living who has never looked upon a woman without desire."

  Atticus paused and took out his handkerchief. Then he took off his glasses and wiped them, and we saw another "first": we had never   seen him sweat- he was one of those men whose faces never perspired, but now it was shining tan. 

  "One more thing, gentlemen, before I quit. Thomas Jefferson once  said that all men are created equal, a phrase that the Yankees and the  distaff side of the Executive branch in Washington are fond of hurling  at us. There is a tendency in this year of grace, 1935, for certain people to use this phrase out of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that the people who   run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious- because all men are created equal, educators will gravely  tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe- some people are smarter than others,  some people have more opportunity because they're born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others- some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men.

  "But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal- there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of  a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution,  gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United   States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honorable court  which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human   institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal.  

  "I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system- that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of   you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am   confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the   evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this  defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty."  

  Atticus's voice had dropped, and as he turned away from the jury  he said something I did not catch. He said it more to himself than  to the court. I punched Jem. "What'd he say?" 

  "'In the name of God, believe him,' I think that's what he said."

  Dill suddenly reached over me and tugged at Jem. "Looka yonder!"

  We followed his finger with sinking hearts. Calpurnia was making her  way up the middle aisle, walking straight toward Atticus.

  21 

  

  She stopped shyly at the railing and waited to get Judge Taylor's attention. She was in a fresh apron and she carried an envelope in her  hand.

  Judge Taylor saw her and said, "It's Calpurnia, isn't it?" 

  "Yes sir," she said. "Could I just pass this note to Mr. Finch,   please sir? It hasn't got anything to do with- with the trial."  

  Judge Taylor nodded and Atticus took the envelope from Calpurnia. He  opened it, read its contents and said, "Judge, I- this note is from my  sister. She says my children are missing, haven't turned up since   noon... I... could you-"

  "I know where they are, Atticus." Mr. Underwood spoke up. "They're right up yonder in the colored balcony- been there since precisely  one-eighteen P.M." 

  Our father turned around and looked up. "Jem, come down from there,"  he called. Then he said something to the Judge we didn't hear. We   climbed across Reverend Sykes and made our way to the staircase. 

  Atticus and Calpurnia met us downstairs. Calpurnia looked peeved, but Atticus looked exhausted.

  Jem was jumping in excitement. "We've won, haven't we?"

  "I've no idea," said Atticus shortly. "You've been here all  afternoon? Go home with Calpurnia and get your supper- and stay home."

  "Aw, Atticus, let us come back," pleaded Jem. "Please let us hear the verdict,  please  sir." 

  "The jury might be out and back in a minute, we don't know-" but  we could tell Atticus was relenting. "Well, you've heard it all, so you might as well hear the rest. Tell you what, you all can come   back when you've eaten your supper- eat slowly, now, you won't miss anything important- and if the jury's still out, you can wait with us.  But I expect it'll be over before you get back."

  "You think they'll acquit him that fast?" asked Jem.  

  Atticus opened his mouth to answer, but shut it and left us.

  I prayed that Reverend Sykes would save our seats for us, but stopped praying when I remembered that people got up and left in   droves when the jury was out- tonight, they'd overrun the drugstore, the O.K. Cafe and the hotel, that is, unless they had brought their suppers too.  

  Calpurnia marched us home: "-skin every one of you alive, the very idea, you children listenin' to all that! Mister Jem, don't you know better'n to take your little sister to that trial? Miss Alexandra'll absolutely have a stroke of paralysis when she finds out! Ain't fittin' for children to hear...."

  The streetlights were on, and we glimpsed Calpurnia's indignant   profile as we passed beneath them. "Mister Jem, I thought you was   gettin' some kinda head on your shoulders- the very idea, she's your little sister! The very  idea,  sir! You oughta be perfectly ashamed of yourself- ain't you got any sense at all?" 

  I was exhilarated. So many things had happened so fast I felt it  would take years to sort them out, and now here was Calpurnia giving her precious Jem down the country- what new marvels would the  evening bring?

  Jem was chuckling. "Don't you want to hear about it, Cal?" 

  "Hush your mouth, sir! When you oughta be hangin' your head in shame  you go along laughin'-" Calpurnia revived a series of rusty threats that moved Jem to little remorse, and she sailed up the front steps with her classic, "If Mr. Finch don't wear you out, I will- get in  that house, sir!"  

  Jem went in grinning, and Calpurnia nodded tacit consent to having Dill in to supper. "You all call Miss Rachel right now and tell her where you are," she told him. "She's run distracted lookin' for you- you watch out she don't ship you back to Meridian first thing in the mornin'."

  Aunt Alexandra met us and nearly fainted when Calpurnia told her  where we were. I guess it hurt her when we told her Atticus said we could go back, because she didn't say a word during supper. She just rearranged food on her plate, looking at it sadly while Calpurnia   served Jem, Dill and me with a vengeance. Calpurnia poured milk,   dished out potato salad and ham, muttering, "'shamed of yourselves," in varying degrees of intensity. "Now you all eat slow," was her final  command. 

  Reverend Sykes had saved our places. We were surprised to find   that we had been gone nearly an hour, and were equally surprised to find the courtroom exactly as we had left it, with minor changes:   the jury box was empty, the defendant was gone; Judge Taylor had   been gone, but he reappeared as we were seating ourselves.  

  "Nobody's moved, hardly," said Jem. 

  "They moved around some when the jury went out," said Reverend   Sykes. "The menfolk down there got the womenfolk their suppers, and they fed their babies." 

  "How long have they been out?" asked Jem.

  "'bout thirty minutes. Mr. Finch and Mr. Gilmer did some more talkin', and Judge Taylor charged the jury."  

  "How was he?" asked Jem. 

  "What say? Oh, he did right well. I ain't complainin' one bit- he was mighty fair-minded. He sorta said if you believe this, then you'll  have to return one verdict, but if you believe this, you'll have to return another one. I thought he was leanin' a little to our side-" Reverend Sykes scratched his head.  

  Jem smiled. "He's not supposed to lean, Reverend, but don't fret, we've won it," he said wisely. "Don't see how any jury could convict on what we heard-" 

  "Now don't you be so confident, Mr. Jem, I ain't ever seen any   jury decide in favor of a colored man over a white man...." But Jem took exception to Reverend Sykes, and we were subjected to a lengthy review of the evidence with Jem's ideas on the law regarding rape:  it wasn't rape if she let you, but she had to be eighteen- in Alabama,  that is- and Mayella was nineteen. Apparently you had to kick and   holler, you had to be overpowered and stomped on, preferably knocked stone cold. If you were under eighteen, you didn't have to go  through all this.  

  "Mr. Jem," Reverend Sykes demurred, "this ain't a polite thing for little ladies to hear..."  

  "Aw, she doesn't know what we're talkin' about," said Jem. "Scout, this is too old for you, ain't it?"  

  "It most certainly is not, I know every word you're saying." Perhaps  I was too convincing, because Jem hushed and never discussed the   subject again.

  "What time is it, Reverend?" he asked. 

  "Gettin' on toward eight."

  I looked down and saw Atticus strolling around with his hands in his  pockets: he made a tour of the windows, then walked by the railing  over to the jury box. He looked in it, inspected Judge Taylor on his throne, then went back to where he started. I caught his eye and waved  to him. He acknowledged my salute with a nod, and resumed his tour.

  Mr. Gilmer was standing at the windows talking to Mr. Underwood.  Bert, the court reporter, was chain-smoking: he sat back with his feet  on the table. 

  But the officers of the court, the ones present- Atticus, Mr. Gilmer, Judge Taylor sound asleep, and Bert, were the only ones whose behavior seemed normal. I had never seen a packed courtroom so still. Sometimes a baby would cry out fretfully, and a child would  scurry out, but the grown people sat as if they were in church. In the  balcony, the Negroes sat and stood around us with biblical patience.  

  The old courthouse clock suffered its preliminary strain and struck the hour, eight deafening bongs that shook our bones. 

  When it bonged eleven times I was past feeling: tired from   fighting sleep, I allowed myself a short nap against Reverend  Sykes's comfortable arm and shoulder. I jerked awake and made an   honest effort to remain so, by looking down and concentrating on the heads below: there were sixteen bald ones, fourteen men that could  pass for redheads, forty heads varying between brown and black, and- I  remembered something Jem had once explained to me when he went through  a brief period of psychical research: he said if enough people- a   stadium full, maybe- were to concentrate on one thing, such as setting  a tree afire in the woods, that the tree would ignite of its own   accord. I toyed with the idea of asking everyone below to concentrate on setting Tom Robinson free, but thought if they were  as tired as I, it wouldn't work. 

  Dill was sound asleep, his head on Jem's shoulder, and Jem was   quiet.  

  "Ain't it a long time?" I asked him.

  "Sure is, Scout," he said happily. 

  "Well, from the way you put it, it'd just take five minutes."  

  Jem raised his eyebrows. "There are things you don't understand," he  said, and I was too weary to argue.  

  But I must have been reasonably awake, or I would not have   received the impression that was creeping into me. It was not unlike one I had last winter, and I shivered, though the night was hot. The feeling grew until the atmosphere in the courtroom was exactly the  same as a cold February morning, when the mockingbirds were still, and  the carpenters had stopped hammering on Miss Maudie's new house, and every wood door in the neighborhood was shut as tight as the doors  of the Radley Place. A deserted, waiting, empty street, and the courtroom was packed with people. A steaming summer night was no   different from a winter morning. Mr. Heck Tate, who had entered the courtroom and was talking to Atticus, might have been wearing his high  boots and lumber jacket. Atticus had stopped his tranquil journey   and had put his foot onto the bottom rung of a chair; as he listened to what Mr. Tate was saying, he ran his hand slowly up and down his thigh. I expected Mr. Tate to say any minute, "Take him, Mr.   Finch...."  

  But Mr. Tate said, "This court will come to order," in a voice   that rang with authority, and the heads below us jerked up. Mr. Tate left the room and returned with Tom Robinson. He steered Tom to his place beside Atticus, and stood there. Judge Taylor had roused himself  to sudden alertness and was sitting up straight, looking at the empty jury box.  

  What happened after that had a dreamlike quality: in a dream I saw the jury return, moving like underwater swimmers, and Judge Taylor's voice came from far away and was tiny. I saw something only a lawyer's  child could be expected to see, could be expected to watch for, and it  was like watching Atticus walk into the street, raise a rifle to his shoulder and pull the trigger, but watching all the time knowing   that the gun was empty. 

  A jury never looks at a defendant it has convicted, and when this jury came in, not one of them looked at Tom Robinson. The foreman   handed a piece of paper to Mr. Tate who handed it to the clerk who  handed it to the judge.... 

  I shut my eyes. Judge Taylor was polling the jury: "Guilty... guilty... guilty... guilty..." I peeked at Jem: his hands were white from gripping the balcony rail, and his shoulders jerked as if each

"guilty" was a separate stab between them. 

  Judge Taylor was saying something. His gavel was in his fist, but he  wasn't using it. Dimly, I saw Atticus pushing papers from the table into his briefcase. He snapped it shut, went to the court reporter and  said something, nodded to Mr. Gilmer, and then went to Tom Robinson and whispered something to him. Atticus put his hand on Tom's shoulder  as he whispered. Atticus took his coat off the back of his chair and pulled it over his shoulder. Then he left the courtroom, but not by his usual exit. He must have wanted to go home the short way,  because he walked quickly down the middle aisle toward the south exit.  I followed the top of his head as he made his way to the door. He   did not look up. 

  Someone was punching me, but I was reluctant to take my eyes from the people below us, and from the image of Atticus's lonely walk   down the aisle.  

  "Miss Jean Louise?" 

  I looked around. They were standing. All around us and in the balcony on the opposite wall, the Negroes were getting to their feet. Reverend Sykes's voice was as distant as Judge Taylor's:

  "Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passin'."  

  22 

  

  It was Jem's turn to cry. His face was streaked with angry tears  as we made our way through the cheerful crowd. "It ain't right," he muttered, all the way to the corner of the square where we found   Atticus waiting. Atticus was standing under the street light looking as though nothing had happened: his vest was buttoned, his collar   and tie were neatly in place, his watch-chain glistened, he was his impassive self again. 

  "It ain't right, Atticus," said Jem.

  "No son, it's not right." 

  We walked home.  

  Aunt Alexandra was waiting up. She was in her dressing gown, and I could have sworn she had on her corset underneath it. "I'm sorry,   brother," she murmured. Having never heard her call Atticus  

"brother" before, I stole a glance at Jem, but he was not listening. He would look up at Atticus, then down at the floor, and I wondered if  he thought Atticus somehow responsible for Tom Robinson's conviction. 

  "Is he all right?" Aunty asked, indicating Jem.  

  "He'll be so presently," said Atticus. "It was a little too strong for him." Our father sighed. "I'm going to bed," he said. "If I don't wake up in the morning, don't call me." 

  "I didn't think it wise in the first place to let them-"  

  "This is their home, sister," said Atticus. "We've made it this   way for them, they might as well learn to cope with it."

  "But they don't have to go to the courthouse and wallow in it-" 

  "It's just as much Maycomb County as missionary teas."

  "Atticus-" Aunt Alexandra's eyes were anxious. "You are the last  person I thought would turn bitter over this."

  "I'm not bitter, just tired. I'm going to bed."  

  "Atticus-" said Jem bleakly.  

  He turned in the doorway. "What, son?" 

  "How could they do it, how could they?" 

  "I don't know, but they did it. They've done it before and they   did it tonight and they'll do it again and when they do it- seems that  only children weep. Good night." 

  But things are always better in the morning. Atticus rose at his  usual ungodly hour and was in the livingroom behind the  Mobile Register  when we stumbled in. Jem's morning face posed the question his sleepy lips struggled to ask.

  "It's not time to worry yet," Atticus reassured him, as we went to the diningroom. "We're not through yet. There'll be an appeal, you can  count on that. Gracious alive, Cal, what's all this?" He was staring at his breakfast plate. 

  Calpurnia said, "Tom Robinson's daddy sent you along this chicken this morning. I fixed it." 

  "You tell him I'm proud to get it- bet they don't have chicken for breakfast at the White House. What are these?"

  "Rolls," said Calpurnia. "Estelle down at the hotel sent 'em." 

  Atticus looked up at her, puzzled, and she said, "You better step out here and see what's in the kitchen, Mr. Finch."

  We followed him. The kitchen table was loaded with enough food to bury the family: hunks of salt pork, tomatoes, beans, even scuppernongs. Atticus grinned when he found a jar of pickled pigs'  knuckles. "Reckon Aunty'll let me eat these in the diningroom?"  

  Calpurnia said, "This was all 'round the back steps when I got   here this morning. They- they 'preciate what you did, Mr. Finch. They-  they aren't oversteppin' themselves, are they?" 

  Atticus's eyes filled with tears. He did not speak for a moment.

"Tell them I'm very grateful," he said. "Tell them- tell them they  must never do this again. Times are too hard...."   

  He left the kitchen, went in the diningroom and excused himself to Aunt Alexandra, put on his hat and went to town.

  We heard Dill's step in the hall, so Calpurnia left Atticus's uneaten breakfast on the table. Between rabbit-bites Dill told us of Miss Rachel's reaction to last night, which was: if a man like Atticus  Finch wants to butt his head against a stone wall it's his head. 

  "I'da got her told," growled Dill, gnawing a chicken leg, "but she didn't look much like tellin' this morning. Said she was up half the night wonderin' where I was, said she'da had the sheriff after me   but he was at the hearing." 

  "Dill, you've got to stop goin' off without tellin' her," said   Jem. "It just aggravates her."  

  Dill sighed patiently. "I told her till I was blue in the face where  I was goin'- she's just seein' too many snakes in the closet. Bet that  woman drinks a pint for breakfast every morning- know she drinks two glasses full. Seen her."

  "Don't talk like that, Dill," said Aunt Alexandra. "It's not becoming to a child. It's- cynical." 

  "I ain't cynical, Miss Alexandra. Tellin' the truth's not cynical, is it?"  

  "The way you tell it, it is." 

  Jem's eyes flashed at her, but he said to Dill, "Let's go. You can take that runner with you." 

  When we went to the front porch, Miss Stephanie Crawford was busy telling it to Miss Maudie Atkinson and Mr. Avery. They looked around at us and went on talking. Jem made a feral noise in his throat. I  wished for a weapon.  

  "I hate grown folks lookin' at you," said Dill. "Makes you feel like  you've done something." 

  Miss Maudie yelled for Jem Finch to come there.  

  Jem groaned and heaved himself up from the swing. "We'll go with  you," Dill said. 

  Miss Stephanie's nose quivered with curiosity. She wanted to know who all gave us permission to go to court- she didn't see us but it was all over town this morning that we were in the Colored balcony. Did Atticus put us up there as a sort of-? Wasn't it right close up there with all those-? Did Scout understand all the-? Didn't it make us mad to see our daddy beat?

  "Hush, Stephanie." Miss Maudie's diction was deadly. "I've not got all the morning to pass on the porch- Jem Finch, I called to find   out if you and your colleagues can eat some cake. Got up at five to make it, so you better say yes. Excuse us, Stephanie. Good morning, Mr. Avery."  

  There was a big cake and two little ones on Miss Maudie's kitchen table. There should have been three little ones. It was not like   Miss Maudie to forget Dill, and we must have shown it. But we  understood when she cut from the big cake and gave the slice to Jem.  

  As we ate, we sensed that this was Miss Maudie's way of saying   that as far as she was concerned, nothing had changed. She sat quietly  in a kitchen chair, watching us. 

  Suddenly she spoke: "Don't fret, Jem. Things are never as bad as  they seem."  

  Indoors, when Miss Maudie wanted to say something lengthy she spread  her fingers on her knees and settled her bridgework. This she did, and  we waited.  

  "I simply want to tell you that there are some men in this world who  were born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father's one of   them."  

  "Oh," said Jem. "Well."  

  "Don't you oh well me, sir," Miss Maudie replied, recognizing Jem's fatalistic noises, "you are not old enough to appreciate what I said." 

  Jem was staring at his half-eaten cake. "It's like bein' a   caterpillar in a cocoon, that's what it is," he said. "Like somethin' asleep wrapped up in a warm place. I always thought  Maycomb folks were the best folks in the world, least that's what they  seemed like." 

  "We're the safest folks in the world," said Miss Maudie. "We're so rarely called on to be Christians, but when we are, we've got men like  Atticus to go for us." 

  Jem grinned ruefully. "Wish the rest of the county thought that."

  "You'd be surprised how many of us do." 

  "Who?" Jem's voice rose. "Who in this town did one thing to help Tom  Robinson, just who?"  

  "His colored friends for one thing, and people like us. People   like Judge Taylor. People like Mr. Heck Tate. Stop eating and start thinking, Jem. Did it ever strike you that Judge Taylor naming Atticus  to defend that boy was no accident? That Judge Taylor might have had his reasons for naming him?"

  This was a thought. Court-appointed defenses were usually given to Maxwell Green, Maycomb's latest addition to the bar, who needed the experience. Maxwell Green should have had Tom Robinson's case.

  "You think about that," Miss Maudie was saying. "It was no accident.  I was sittin' there on the porch last night, waiting. I waited and  waited to see you all come down the sidewalk, and as I waited I thought, Atticus Finch won't win, he can't win, but he's the only   man in these parts who can keep a jury out so long in a case like   that. And I thought to myself, well, we're making a step- it's just a baby-step, but it's a step."  

  "'t's all right to talk like that- can't any Christian judges an' lawyers make up for heathen juries," Jem muttered. "Soon's I get   grown-"  

  "That's something you'll have to take up with your father," Miss  Maudie said.  

  We went down Miss Maudie's cool new steps into the sunshine and   found Mr. Avery and Miss Stephanie Crawford still at it. They had   moved down the sidewalk and were standing in front of Miss Stephanie's  house. Miss Rachel was walking toward them.

  "I think I'll be a clown when I get grown," said Dill.

  Jem and I stopped in our tracks.  

  "Yes sir, a clown," he said. "There ain't one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I'm gonna join the circus and laugh my head off."

  "You got it backwards, Dill," said Jem. "Clowns are sad, it's folks that laugh at them." 

  "Well I'm gonna be a new kind of clown. I'm gonna stand in the   middle of the ring and laugh at the folks. Just looka yonder," he   pointed. "Every one of 'em oughta be ridin' broomsticks. Aunt Rachel already does."

  Miss Stephanie and Miss Rachel were waving wildly at us, in a way that did not give the lie to Dill's observation.

  "Oh gosh," breathed Jem. "I reckon it'd be ugly not to see 'em."

  Something was wrong. Mr. Avery was red in the face from a sneezing spell and nearly blew us off the sidewalk when we came up. Miss Stephanie was trembling with excitement, and Miss Rachel caught Dill's  shoulder. "You get on in the back yard and stay there," she said. 

"There's danger a'comin'." 

  "'s matter?" I asked. 

  "Ain't you heard yet? It's all over town-"  

  At that moment Aunt Alexandra came to the door and called us, but she was too late. It was Miss Stephanie's pleasure to tell us: this morning Mr. Bob Ewell stopped Atticus on the post office corner,   spat in his face, and told him he'd get him if it took the rest of his  life.

  23 

  

  "I wish Bob Ewell wouldn't chew tobacco," was all Atticus said about  it. 

  According to Miss Stephanie Crawford, however, Atticus was leaving the post office when Mr. Ewell approached him, cursed him, spat on  him, and threatened to kill him. Miss Stephanie (who, by the time   she had told it twice was there and had seen it all- passing by from the Jitney Jungle, she was)- Miss Stephanie said Atticus didn't bat an  eye, just took out his handkerchief and wiped his face and stood there  and let Mr. Ewell call him names wild horses could not bring her to repeat. Mr. Ewell was a veteran of an obscure war; that plus Atticus's  peaceful reaction probably prompted him to inquire, "Too proud to   fight, you nigger-lovin' bastard?" Miss Stephanie said Atticus said,  

"No, too old," put his hands in his pockets and strolled on. Miss   Stephanie said you had to hand it to Atticus Finch, he could be right dry sometimes.  

  Jem and I didn't think it entertaining. 

  "After all, though," I said, "he was the deadest shot in the county one time. He could-" 

  "You know he wouldn't carry a gun, Scout. He ain't even got one-" said Jem. "You know he didn't even have one down at the jail that   night. He told me havin' a gun around's an invitation to somebody to shoot you."  

  "This is different," I said. "We can ask him to borrow one."

  We did, and he said, "Nonsense."  

  Dill was of the opinion that an appeal to Atticus's better nature might work: after all, we would starve if Mr. Ewell killed him, besides be raised exclusively by Aunt Alexandra, and we all knew the first thing she'd do before Atticus was under the ground good would be  to fire Calpurnia. Jem said it might work if I cried and flung a   fit, being young and a girl. That didn't work either.

  But when he noticed us dragging around the neighborhood, not eating,  taking little interest in our normal pursuits, Atticus discovered   how deeply frightened we were. He tempted Jem with a new football   magazine one night; when he saw Jem flip the pages and toss it aside, he said, "What's bothering you, son?"  

  Jem came to the point: "Mr. Ewell." 

  "What has happened?" 

  "Nothing's happened. We're scared for you, and we think you oughta do something about him."

  Atticus smiled wryly. "Do what? Put him under a peace bond?"

  "When a man says he's gonna get you, looks like he means it."  

  "He meant it when he said it," said Atticus. "Jem, see if you can stand in Bob Ewell's shoes a minute. I destroyed his last shred of  credibility at that trial, if he had any to begin with. The man had to  have some kind of comeback, his kind always does. So if spitting in my  face and threatening me saved Mayella Ewell one extra beating, that's something I'll gladly take. He had to take it out on somebody and I'd rather it be me than that houseful of children out there.   You understand?" 

  Jem nodded. 

  Aunt Alexandra entered the room as Atticus was saying, "We don't  have anything to fear from Bob Ewell, he got it all out of his system that morning." 

  "I wouldn't be so sure of that, Atticus," she said. "His kind'd do anything to pay off a grudge. You know how those people are."

  "What on earth could Ewell do to me, sister?" 

  "Something furtive," Aunt Alexandra said. "You may count on that."  

  "Nobody has much chance to be furtive in Maycomb," Atticus answered.

  After that, we were not afraid. Summer was melting away, and we made  the most of it. Atticus assured us that nothing would happen to Tom Robinson until the higher court reviewed his case, and that Tom had a good chance of going free, or at least of having a new trial. He was  at Enfield Prison Farm, seventy miles away in Chester County. I asked Atticus if Tom's wife and children were allowed to visit him, but Atticus said no.  

  "If he loses his appeal," I asked one evening, "what'll happen to him?"

  "He'll go to the chair," said Atticus, "unless the Governor commutes  his sentence. Not time to worry yet, Scout. We've got a good chance." 

  Jem was sprawled on the sofa reading  Popular Mechanics.  He looked up. "It ain't right. He didn't kill anybody even if he was   guilty. He didn't take anybody's life."  

  "You know rape's a capital offense in Alabama," said Atticus.  

  "Yessir, but the jury didn't have to give him death- if they wanted to they could've gave him twenty years." 

  "Given," said Atticus. "Tom Robinson's a colored man, Jem. No jury in this part of the world's going to say, 'We think you're guilty, but  not very,' on a charge like that. It was either a straight acquittal or nothing."  

  Jem was shaking his head. "I know it's not right, but I can't figure  out what's wrong- maybe rape shouldn't be a capital offense...." 

  Atticus dropped his newspaper beside his chair. He said he didn't have any quarrel with the rape statute, none what ever, but he did  have deep misgivings when the state asked for and the jury gave a   death penalty on purely circumstantial evidence. He glanced at me, saw  I was listening, and made it easier. "-I mean, before a man is sentenced to death for murder, say, there should be one or two eye-witnesses. Some one should be able to say, 'Yes, I was there and saw him pull the trigger.'" 

  "But lots of folks have been hung- hanged- on circumstantial evidence," said Jem.  

  "I know, and lots of 'em probably deserved it, too- but in the   absence of eye-witnesses there's always a doubt, some times only the shadow of a doubt. The law says 'reasonable doubt,' but I think a   defendant's entitled to the shadow of a doubt. There's always the   possibility, no matter how improbable, that he's innocent."  

  "Then it all goes back to the jury, then. We oughta do away with  juries." Jem was adamant.  

  Atticus tried hard not to smile but couldn't help it. "You're rather  hard on us, son. I think maybe there might be a better way. Change the  law. Change it so that only judges have the power of fixing the penalty in capital cases." 

  "Then go up to Montgomery and change the law."

  "You'd be surprised how hard that'd be. I won't live to see the   law changed, and if you live to see it you'll be an old man."

  This was not good enough for Jem. "No sir, they oughta do away   with juries. He wasn't guilty in the first place and they said he   was."

  "If you had been on that jury, son, and eleven other boys like   you, Tom would be a free man," said Atticus. "So far nothing in your life has interfered with your reasoning process. Those are twelve   reasonable men in everyday life, Tom's jury, but you saw something  come between them and reason. You saw the same thing that night in  front of the jail. When that crew went away, they didn't go as reasonable men, they went because we were there. There's something  in our world that makes men lose their heads- they couldn't be fair if  they tried. In our courts, when it's a white man's word against a   black man's, the white man always wins. They're ugly, but those are the facts of life."

  "Doesn't make it right," said Jem stolidly. He beat his fist softly on his knee. "You just can't convict a man on evidence like  that- you can't."  

  "You couldn't, but they could and did. The older you grow the more of it you'll see. The one place where a man ought to get a square deal  is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box. As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it- whenever a   white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash." 

  Atticus was speaking so quietly his last word crashed on our ears. I  looked up, and his face was vehement. "There's nothing more sickening to me than a low-grade white man who'll take advantage of a Negro's ignorance. Don't fool yourselves- it's all adding up and one  of these days we're going to pay the bill for it. I hope it's not in you children's time." 

  Jem was scratching his head. Suddenly his eyes widened. "Atticus," he said, "why don't people like us and Miss Maudie ever sit on juries?  You never see anybody from Maycomb on a jury- they all come from out in the woods."

  Atticus leaned back in his rocking-chair. For some reason he looked pleased with Jem. "I was wondering when that'd occur to you," he said. "There are lots of reasons. For one thing, Miss Maudie can't serve on a jury because she's a woman-" 

  "You mean women in Alabama can't-?" I was indignant.  

  "I do. I guess it's to protect our frail ladies from sordid cases like Tom's. Besides," Atticus grinned, "I doubt if we'd ever get a  complete case tried- the ladies'd be interrupting to ask questions."  

  Jem and I laughed. Miss Maudie on a jury would be impressive. I   thought of old Mrs. Dubose in her wheelchair- "Stop that rapping, John  Taylor, I want to ask this man something." Perhaps our forefathers  were wise.  

  Atticus was saying, "With people like us- that's our share of the bill. We generally get the juries we deserve. Our stout Maycomb citizens aren't interested, in the first place. In the second place, they're afraid. Then, they're-" 

  "Afraid, why?" asked Jem. 

  "Well, what if- say, Mr. Link Deas had to decide the amount of   damages to award, say, Miss Maudie, when Miss Rachel ran over her with  a car. Link wouldn't like the thought of losing either lady's business  at his store, would he? So he tells Judge Taylor that he can't serve on the jury because he doesn't have anybody to keep store for him   while he's gone. So Judge Taylor excuses him. Sometimes he excuses him  wrathfully."  

  "What'd make him think either one of 'em'd stop trading with him?" I  asked.  

  Jem said, "Miss Rachel would, Miss Maudie wouldn't. But a jury's  vote's secret, Atticus."

  Our father chuckled. "You've many more miles to go, son. A jury's vote's supposed to be secret. Serving on a jury forces a man to make up his mind and declare himself about something. Men don't like to  do that. Sometimes it's unpleasant." 

  "Tom's jury sho' made up its mind in a hurry," Jem muttered.

  Atticus's fingers went to his watchpocket. "No it didn't," he said, more to himself than to us. "That was the one thing that made me  think, well, this may be the shadow of a beginning. That jury took a few hours. An inevitable verdict, maybe, but usually it takes 'em just  a few minutes. This time-" he broke off and looked at us. "You might like to know that there was one fellow who took considerable wearing down- in the beginning he was rarin' for an outright acquittal." 

  "Who?" Jem was astonished.

  Atticus's eyes twinkled. "It's not for me to say, but I'll tell   you this much. He was one of your Old Sarum friends..." 

  "One of the Cunninghams?" Jem yelped. "One of- I didn't recognize any of 'em... you're jokin'." He looked at Atticus from the corners of  his eyes.

  "One of their connections. On a hunch, I didn't strike him. Just  on a hunch. Could've, but I didn't." 

  "Golly Moses," Jem said reverently. "One minute they're tryin' to kill him and the next they're tryin' to turn him loose... I'll never understand those folks as long as I live." 

  Atticus said you just had to know 'em. He said the Cunninghams   hadn't taken anything from or off of anybody since they migrated to the New World. He said the other thing about them was, once you earned  their respect they were for you tooth and nail. Atticus said he had a feeling, nothing more than a suspicion, that they left the jail that  night with considerable respect for the Finches. Then too, he said, it  took a thunderbolt plus another Cunningham to make one of them change his mind. "If we'd had two of that crowd, we'd've had a hung jury."  

  Jem said slowly, "You mean you actually put on the jury a man who wanted to kill you the night before? How could you take such a risk, Atticus, how could you?"

  "When you analyze it, there was little risk. There's no difference between one man who's going to convict and another man who's going  to convict, is there? There's a faint difference between a man who's going to convict and a man who's a little disturbed in his mind, isn't  there? He was the only uncertainty on the whole list."  

  "What kin was that man to Mr. Walter Cunningham?" I asked. 

  Atticus rose, stretched and yawned. It was not even our bedtime, but  we knew he wanted a chance to read his newspaper. He picked it up,  folded it, and tapped my head. "Let's see now," he droned to   himself. "I've got it. Double first cousin."  

  "How can that be?"  

  "Two sisters married two brothers. That's all I'll tell you- you  figure it out."  

  I tortured myself and decided that if I married Jem and Dill had a sister whom he married our children would be double first cousins.

"Gee minetti, Jem," I said, when Atticus had gone, "they're funny   folks. 'd you hear that, Aunty?" 

  Aunt Alexandra was hooking a rug and not watching us, but she was listening. She sat in her chair with her workbasket beside it, her rug  spread across her lap. Why ladies hooked woolen rugs on boiling nights  never became clear to me.  

  "I heard it," she said.  

  I remembered the distant disastrous occasion when I rushed to young Walter Cunningham's defense. Now I was glad I'd done it. "Soon's  school starts I'm gonna ask Walter home to dinner," I planned, having forgotten my private resolve to beat him up the next time I saw  him. "He can stay over sometimes after school, too. Atticus could   drive him back to Old Sarum. Maybe he could spend the night with us sometime, okay, Jem?" 

  "We'll see about that," Aunt Alexandra said, a declaration that with  her was always a threat, never a promise. Surprised, I turned to   her. "Why not, Aunty? They're good folks." 

  She looked at me over her sewing glasses. "Jean Louise, there is  no doubt in my mind that they're good folks. But they're not our   kind of folks."  

  Jem says, "She means they're yappy, Scout." 

  "What's a yap?"  

  "Aw, tacky. They like fiddlin' and things like that." 

  "Well I do too-" 

  "Don't be silly, Jean Louise," said Aunt Alexandra. "The thing is, you can scrub Walter Cunningham till he shines, you can put him in  shoes and a new suit, but he'll never be like Jem. Besides, there's a drinking streak in that family a mile wide. Finch women aren't   interested in that sort of people."  

  "Aun-ty," said Jem, "she ain't nine yet."

  "She may as well learn it now."

  Aunt Alexandra had spoken. I was reminded vividly of the last time she had put her foot down. I never knew why. It was when I was absorbed with plans to visit Calpurnia's house- I was curious, interested; I wanted to be her "company," to see how she lived, who her friends were. I might as well have wanted to see the other side of  the moon. This time the tactics were different, but Aunt Alexandra's aim was the same. Perhaps this was why she had come to live with us- to help us choose our friends. I would hold her off as long as I   could: "If they're good folks, then why can't I be nice to Walter?"

  "I didn't say not to be nice to him. You should be friendly and   polite to him, you should be gracious to everybody, dear. But you   don't have to invite him home." 

  "What if he was kin to us, Aunty?" 

  "The fact is that he is not kin to us, but if he were, my answer  would be the same."

  "Aunty," Jem spoke up, "Atticus says you can choose your friends but  you sho' can't choose your family, an' they're still kin to you no  matter whether you acknowledge 'em or not, and it makes you look right  silly when you don't." 

  "That's your father all over again," said Aunt Alexandra, "and I  still say that Jean Louise will not invite Walter Cunningham to this house. If he were her double first cousin once removed he would still not be received in this house unless he comes to see Atticus  on business. Now that is that." 

  She had said Indeed Not, but this time she would give her reasons:  

"But I want to play with Walter, Aunty, why can't I?"

  She took off her glasses and stared at me. "I'll tell you why,"   she said. "Because- he- is- trash, that's why you can't play with him.  I'll not have you around him, picking up his habits and learning   Lord-knows-what. You're enough of a problem to your father as it is." 

  I don't know what I would have done, but Jem stopped me. He caught me by the shoulders, put his arm around me, and led me sobbing in fury  to his bedroom. Atticus heard us and poked his head around the door.  

"'s all right, sir," Jem said gruffly, "'s not anything." Atticus went  away.

  "Have a chew, Scout." Jem dug into his pocket and extracted a Tootsie Roll. It took a few minutes to work the candy into a   comfortable wad inside my jaw.  

  Jem was rearranging the objects on his dresser. His hair stuck up behind and down in front, and I wondered if it would ever look like a man's- maybe if he shaved it off and started over, his hair would grow back neatly in place. His eyebrows were becoming heavier, and I noticed a new slimness about his body. He was growing taller.

  When he looked around, he must have thought I would start crying  again, for he said, "Show you something if you won't tell anybody." I said what. He unbuttoned his shirt, grinning shyly.

  "Well what?"

  "Well can't you see it?" 

  "Well no."  

  "Well it's hair."

  "Where?"  

  "There. Right there." 

  He had been a comfort to me, so I said it looked lovely, but I   didn't see anything. "It's real nice, Jem."

  "Under my arms, too," he said. "Goin' out for football next year. Scout, don't let Aunty aggravate you."

  It seemed only yesterday that he was telling me not to aggravate  Aunty.  

  "You know she's not used to girls," said Jem, "leastways, not girls like you. She's trying to make you a lady. Can't you take up  sewin' or somethin'?" 

  "Hell no. She doesn't like me, that's all there is to it, and I   don't care. It was her callin' Walter Cunningham trash that got me  goin', Jem, not what she said about being a problem to Atticus. We got  that all straight one time, I asked him if I was a problem and he said  not much of one, at most one that he could always figure out, and   not to worry my head a second about botherin' him. Naw, it was Walter-  that boy's not trash, Jem. He ain't like the Ewells."

  Jem kicked off his shoes and swung his feet to the bed. He propped himself against a pillow and switched on the reading light. "You   know something, Scout? I've got it all figured out, now. I've  thought about it a lot lately and I've got it figured out. There's  four kinds of folks in the world. There's the ordinary kind like us and the neighbors, there's the kind like the Cunninghams out in the woods, the kind like the Ewells down at the dump, and the Negroes."

  "What about the Chinese, and the Cajuns down yonder in Baldwin   County?" 

  "I mean in Maycomb County. The thing about it is, our kind of folks don't like the Cunninghams, the Cunninghams don't like the   Ewells, and the Ewells hate and despise the colored folks."  

  I told Jem if that was so, then why didn't Tom's jury, made up of folks like the Cunninghams, acquit Tom to spite the Ewells?" 

  Jem waved my question away as being infantile.

  "You know," he said, "I've seen Atticus pat his foot when there's fiddlin' on the radio, and he loves pot liquor better'n any man I ever  saw-"

  "Then that makes us like the Cunninghams," I said. "I can't see   why Aunty-"  

  "No, lemme finish- it does, but we're still different somehow.   Atticus said one time the reason Aunty's so hipped on the family is because all we've got's background and not a dime to our names." 

  "Well Jem, I don't know- Atticus told me one time that most of   this Old Family stuff's foolishness because everybody's family's   just as old as everybody else's. I said did that include the colored folks and Englishmen and he said yes."

  "Background doesn't mean Old Family," said Jem. "I think it's how long your family's been readin' and writin'. Scout, I've studied   this real hard and that's the only reason I can think of. Somewhere along when the Finches were in Egypt one of 'em must have learned a hieroglyphic or two and he taught his boy." Jem laughed. "Imagine   Aunty being proud her great-grandaddy could read an' write- ladies  pick funny things to be proud of."  

  "Well I'm glad he could, or who'da taught Atticus and them, and if Atticus couldn't read, you and me'd be in a fix. I don't think that's what background is, Jem." 

  "Well then, how do you explain why the Cunninghams are different? Mr. Walter can hardly sign his name, I've seen him. We've just been readin' and writin' longer'n they have." 

  "No, everybody's gotta learn, nobody's born knowin'. That Walter's as smart as he can be, he just gets held back sometimes because he has  to stay out and help his daddy. Nothin's wrong with him. Naw, Jem, I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks." 

  Jem turned around and punched his pillow. When he settled back his face was cloudy. He was going into one of his declines, and I grew  wary. His brows came together; his mouth became a thin line. He was silent for a while.

  "That's what I thought, too," he said at last, "when I was your age.  If there's just one kind of folks, why can't they get along with   each other? If they're all alike, why do they go out of their way to despise each other? Scout, I think I'm beginning to understand something. I think I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley's stayed  shut up in the house all this time... it's because he  wants  to   stay inside." 

  24 

  

  Calpurnia wore her stiffest starched apron. She carried a tray of charlotte. She backed up to the swinging door and pressed gently. I admired the ease and grace with which she handled heavy loads of   dainty things. So did Aunt Alexandra, I guess, because she had let  Calpurnia serve today. 

  August was on the brink of September. Dill would be leaving for   Meridian tomorrow; today he was off with Jem at Barker's Eddy. Jem had  discovered with angry amazement that nobody had ever bothered to teach  Dill how to swim, a skill Jem considered necessary as walking. They had spent two afternoons at the creek, they said they were going in naked and I couldn't come, so I divided the lonely hours between   Calpurnia and Miss Maudie. 

  Today Aunt Alexandra and her missionary circle were fighting the  good fight all over the house. From the kitchen, I heard Mrs. Grace Merriweather giving a report in the livingroom on the squalid lives of  the Mrunas, it sounded like to me. They put the women out in huts when  their time came, whatever that was; they had no sense of family- I  knew that'd distress Aunty- they subjected children to terrible ordeals when they were thirteen; they were crawling with yaws and   earworms, they chewed up and spat out the bark of a tree into a communal pot and then got drunk on it.

  Immediately thereafter, the ladies adjourned for refreshments. 

  I didn't know whether to go into the diningroom or stay out. Aunt Alexandra told me to join them for refreshments; it was not necessary that I attend the business part of the meeting, she said  it'd bore me. I was wearing my pink Sunday dress, shoes, and a petticoat, and reflected that if I spilled anything Calpurnia would have to wash my dress again for tomorrow. This had been a busy day for  her. I decided to stay out. 

  "Can I help you, Cal?" I asked, wishing to be of some service. 

  Calpurnia paused in the doorway. "You be still as a mouse in that corner," she said, "an' you can help me load up the trays when I   come back."  

  The gentle hum of ladies' voices grew louder as she opened the door:

"Why, Alexandra, I never saw such charlotte... just lovely... I never can get my crust like this, never can... who'd've thought of  little dewberry tarts... Calpurnia?... who'da thought it... anybody tell you that the preacher's wife's... nooo, well she is, and that  other one not walkin' yet..."

  They became quiet, and I knew they had all been served. Calpurnia returned and put my mother's heavy silver pitcher on a tray. "This  coffee pitcher's a curiosity," she murmured, "they don't make 'em   these days."  

  "Can I carry it in?" 

  "If you be careful and don't drop it. Set it down at the end of   the table by Miss Alexandra. Down there by the cups'n things. She's gonna pour."  

  I tried pressing my behind against the door as Calpurnia had done, but the door didn't budge. Grinning, she held it open for me. "Careful  now, it's heavy. Don't look at it and you won't spill it."  

  My journey was successful: Aunt Alexandra smiled brilliantly.  

"Stay with us, Jean Louise," she said. This was a part of her campaign  to teach me to be a lady.  

  It was customary for every circle hostess to invite her neighbors in  for refreshments, be they Baptists or Presbyterians, which accounted for the presence of Miss Rachel (sober as a judge), Miss Maudie and Miss Stephanie Crawford. Rather nervous, I took a seat beside Miss  Maudie and wondered why ladies put on their hats to go across the   street. Ladies in bunches always filled me with vague apprehension and  a firm desire to be elsewhere, but this feeling was what Aunt  Alexandra called being "spoiled."

  The ladies were cool in fragile pastel prints: most of them were  heavily powdered but unrouged; the only lipstick in the room was   Tangee Natural. Cutex Natural sparkled on their fingernails, but   some of the younger ladies wore Rose. They smelled heavenly. I sat  quietly, having conquered my hands by tightly gripping the arms of the  chair, and waited for someone to speak to me. 

  Miss Maudie's gold bridgework twinkled. "You're mighty dressed up, Miss Jean Louise," she said, "Where are your britches today?"

  "Under my dress."

  I hadn't meant to be funny, but the ladies laughed. My cheeks grew hot as I realized my mistake, but Miss Maudie looked gravely down at me. She never laughed at me unless I meant to be funny. 

  In the sudden silence that followed, Miss Stephanie Crawford called from across the room, "Whatcha going to be when you grow up, Jean Louise? A lawyer?" 

  "Nome, I hadn't thought about it..." I answered, grateful that   Miss Stephanie was kind enough to change the subject. Hurriedly I   began choosing my vocation. Nurse? Aviator? "Well..."

  "Why shoot, I thought you wanted to be a lawyer, you've already   commenced going to court." 

  The ladies laughed again. "That Stephanie's a card," somebody said. Miss Stephanie was encouraged to pursue the subject: "Don't   you want to grow up to be a lawyer?" 

  Miss Maudie's hand touched mine and I answered mildly enough, "Nome,  just a lady." 

  Miss Stephanie eyed me suspiciously, decided that I meant no impertinence, and contented herself with, "Well, you won't get very far until you start wearing dresses more often."

  Miss Maudie's hand closed tightly on mine, and I said nothing. Its warmth was enough. 

  Mrs. Grace Merriweather sat on my left, and I felt it would be   polite to talk to her. Mr. Merriweather, a faithful Methodist under duress, apparently saw nothing personal in singing, "Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me..." It was the general opinion of Maycomb, however, that Mrs. Merriweather had sobered him up and made a reasonably useful citizen of him. For certainly Mrs. Merriweather was the most devout lady in Maycomb. I  searched for a topic of interest to her. "What did you all study   this afternoon?" I asked.  

  "Oh child, those poor Mrunas," she said, and was off. Few other   questions would be necessary.

  Mrs. Merriweather's large brown eyes always filled with tears when she considered the oppressed. "Living in that jungle with nobody but J. Grimes Everett," she said. "Not a white person'll go near 'em but that saintly J. Grimes Everett." 

  Mrs. Merriweather played her voice like an organ; every word she  said received its full measure: "The poverty... the darkness... the immorality- nobody but J. Grimes Everett knows. You know, when the  church gave me that trip to the camp grounds J. Grimes Everett said to  me-"

  "Was he there, ma'am? I thought-"  

  "Home on leave. J. Grimes Everett said to me, he said, 'Mrs. Merriweather, you have no conception, no con cep tion of what we are fighting over there.' That's what he said to me."  

  "Yes ma'am."

  "I said to him, 'Mr. Everett,' I said, 'the ladies of the Maycomb Alabama Methodist Episcopal Church South are behind you one hundred percent.' That's what I said to him. And you know, right then and   there I made a pledge in my heart. I said to myself, when I go home I'm going to give a course on the Mrunas and bring J. Grimes Everett's  message to Maycomb and that's just what I'm doing."

  "Yes ma'am."

  When Mrs. Merriweather shook her head, her black curls jiggled. 

"Jean Louise," she said, "you are a fortunate girl. You live in a   Christian home with Christian folks in a Christian town. Out there  in J. Grimes Everett's land there's nothing but sin and squalor." 

  "Yes ma'am."

  "Sin and squalor- what was that, Gertrude?" Mrs. Merriweather turned  on her chimes for the lady sitting beside her. "Oh that. Well, I   always say forgive and forget, forgive and forget. Thing that church ought to do is help her lead a Christian life for those children   from here on out. Some of the men ought to go out there and tell   that preacher to encourage her." 

  "Excuse me, Mrs. Merriweather," I interrupted, "are you all  talking about Mayella Ewell?"

  "May-? No, child. That darky's wife. Tom's wife, Tom-"

  "Robinson, ma'am."  

  Mrs. Merriweather turned back to her neighbor. "There's one thing I truly believe, Gertrude," she continued, "but some people just don't  see it my way. If we just let them know we forgive 'em, that we've  forgotten it, then this whole thing'll blow over." 

  "Ah- Mrs. Merriweather," I interrupted once more, "what'll blow   over?"  

  Again, she turned to me. Mrs. Merriweather was one of those  childless adults who find it necessary to assume a different tone of voice when speaking to children. "Nothing, Jean Louise," she said,  in stately largo, "the cooks and field hands are just dissatisfied, but they're settling down now- they grumbled all next day after that trial."  

  Mrs. Merriweather faced Mrs. Farrow: "Gertrude, I tell you there's nothing more distracting than a sulky darky. Their mouths go down to here. Just ruins your day to have one of 'em in the kitchen. You   know what I said to my Sophy, Gertrude? I said, 'Sophy,' I said, 

'you simply are not being a Christian today. Jesus Christ never went around grumbling and complaining,' and you know, it did her good.   She took her eyes off that floor and said, 'Nome, Miz Merriweather, Jesus never went around grumblin'.' I tell you, Gertrude, you never ought to let an opportunity go by to witness for the Lord."  

  I was reminded of the ancient little organ in the chapel at  Finch's Landing. When I was very small, and if I had been very good during the day, Atticus would let me pump its bellows while he picked out a tune with one finger. The last note would linger as   long as there was air to sustain it. Mrs. Merriweather had run out  of air, I judged, and was replenishing her supply while Mrs. Farrow composed herself to speak. 

  Mrs. Farrow was a splendidly built woman with pale eyes and narrow feet. She had a fresh permanent wave, and her hair was a mass of tight  gray ringlets. She was the second most devout lady in Maycomb. She had  a curious habit of prefacing everything she said with a soft   sibilant sound.  

  "S-s-s Grace," she said, "it's just like I was telling Brother   Hutson the other day. 'S-s-s Brother Hutson,' I said, 'looks like   we're fighting a losing battle, a losing battle.' I said, 'S-s-s it doesn't matter to 'em one bit. We can educate 'em till we're blue in the face, we can try till we drop to make Christians out of 'em, but there's no lady safe in her bed these nights.' He said to me, 'Mrs. Farrow, I don't know what we're coming to down here.' S-s-s I told him  that was certainly a fact." 

  Mrs. Merriweather nodded wisely. Her voice soared over the clink  of coffee cups and the soft bovine sounds of the ladies munching their  dainties. "Gertrude," she said, "I tell you there are some good but misguided people in this town. Good, but misguided. Folks in this town  who think they're doing right, I mean. Now far be it from me to say who, but some of 'em in this town thought they were doing the right thing a while back, but all they did was stir 'em up. That's all   they did. Might've looked like the right thing to do at the time,   I'm sure I don't know, I'm not read in that field, but sulky... dissatisfied... I tell you if my Sophy'd kept it up another day I'd have let her go. It's never entered that wool of hers that the only reason I keep her is because this depression's on and she needs her dollar and a quarter every week she can get it."

  "His food doesn't stick going down, does it?" 

  Miss Maudie said it. Two tight lines had appeared at the corners  of her mouth. She had been sitting silently beside me, her coffee   cup balanced on one knee. I had lost the thread of conversation long ago, when they quit talking about Tom Robinson's wife, and had contented myself with thinking of Finch's Landing and the river.   Aunt Alexandra had got it backwards: the business part of the  meeting was blood-curdling, the social hour was dreary. 

  "Maudie, I'm sure I don't know what you mean," said Mrs. Merriweather. 

  "I'm sure you do," Miss Maudie said shortly.

  She said no more. When Miss Maudie was angry her brevity was icy. Something had made her deeply angry, and her gray eyes were as cold as  her voice. Mrs. Merriweather reddened, glanced at me, and looked away.  I could not see Mrs. Farrow.

  Aunt Alexandra got up from the table and swiftly passed more refreshments, neatly engaging Mrs. Merriweather and Mrs. Gates in   brisk conversation. When she had them well on the road with Mrs.   Perkins, Aunt Alexandra stepped back. She gave Miss Maudie a look of pure gratitude, and I wondered at the world of women. Miss Maudie   and Aunt Alexandra had never been especially close, and here was Aunty  silently thanking her for something. For what, I knew not. I was   content to learn that Aunt Alexandra could be pierced sufficiently  to feel gratitude for help given. There was no doubt about it, I   must soon enter this world, where on its surface fragrant ladies   rocked slowly, fanned gently, and drank cool water.

  But I was more at home in my father's world. People like Mr. Heck Tate did not trap you with innocent questions to make fun of you; even  Jem was not highly critical unless you said something stupid. Ladies seemed to live in faint horror of men, seemed unwilling to approve  wholeheartedly of them. But I liked them. There was something about them, no matter how much they cussed and drank and gambled and chewed;  no matter how undelectable they were, there was something about them that I instinctively liked... they weren't-

  "Hypocrites, Mrs. Perkins, born hypocrites," Mrs. Merriweather was saying. "At least we don't have that sin on our shoulders down here. People up there set 'em free, but you don't see 'em settin' at the  table with 'em. At least we don't have the deceit to say to 'em yes you're as good as we are but stay away from us. Down here we just   say you live your way and we'll live ours. I think that woman, that Mrs. Roosevelt's lost her mind- just plain lost her mind coming down to Birmingham and tryin' to sit with 'em. If I was the Mayor of Birmingham I'd-" 

  Well, neither of us was the Mayor of Birmingham, but I wished I   was the Governor of Alabama for one day: I'd let Tom Robinson go so quick the Missionary Society wouldn't have time to catch its breath. Calpurnia was telling Miss Rachel's cook the other day how bad Tom was  taking things and she didn't stop talking when I came into the kitchen. She said there wasn't a thing Atticus could do to make being shut up easier for him, that the last thing he said to Atticus before they took him down to the prison camp was, "Good-bye, Mr.   Finch, there ain't nothin' you can do now, so there ain't no use   tryin'." Calpurnia said Atticus told her that the day they took Tom to  prison he just gave up hope. She said Atticus tried to explain things to him, and that he must do his best not to lose hope because Atticus was doing his best to get him free. Miss Rachel's cook asked Calpurnia why didn't Atticus just say yes, you'll go free, and leave it at that- seemed like that'd be a big comfort to Tom. Calpurnia   said, "Because you ain't familiar with the law. First thing you learn when you're in a lawin' family is that there ain't any   definite answers to anything. Mr. Finch couldn't say somethin's so  when he doesn't know for sure it's so."  

  The front door slammed and I heard Atticus's footsteps in the hall. Automatically I wondered what time it was. Not nearly time for him to be home, and on Missionary Society days he usually stayed   downtown until black dark. 

  He stopped in the doorway. His hat was in his hand, and his face was  white.  

  "Excuse me, ladies," he said. "Go right ahead with your meeting,  don't let me disturb you. Alexandra, could you come to the kitchen a minute? I want to borrow Calpurnia for a while."

  He didn't go through the diningroom, but went down the back  hallway and entered the kitchen from the rear door. Aunt Alexandra and  I met him. The diningroom door opened again and Miss Maudie joined us.  Calpurnia had half risen from her chair. 

  "Cal," Atticus said, "I want you to go with me out to Helen  Robinson's house-" 

  "What's the matter?" Aunt Alexandra asked, alarmed by the look on my  father's face.

  "Tom's dead."  

  Aunt Alexandra put her hands to her mouth.  

  "They shot him," said Atticus. "He was running. It was during their exercise period. They said he just broke into a blind raving  charge at the fence and started climbing over. Right in front of   them-"  

  "Didn't they try to stop him? Didn't they give him any warning?"  Aunt Alexandra's voice shook.

  "Oh yes, the guards called to him to stop. They fired a few shots in  the air, then to kill. They got him just as he went over the fence. They said if he'd had two good arms he'd have made it, he was moving that fast. Seventeen bullet holes in him. They didn't have to shoot him that much. Cal, I want you to come out with me and help me tell Helen."  

  "Yes sir," she murmured, fumbling at her apron. Miss Maudie went  to Calpurnia and untied it. 

  "This is the last straw, Atticus," Aunt Alexandra said.

  "Depends on how you look at it," he said. "What was one Negro,   more or less, among two hundred of 'em? He wasn't Tom to them, he   was an escaping prisoner." 

  Atticus leaned against the refrigerator, pushed up his glasses,   and rubbed his eyes. "We had such a good chance," he said. "I told him  what I thought, but I couldn't in truth say that we had more than a good chance. I guess Tom was tired of white men's chances and  preferred to take his own. Ready, Cal?"  

  "Yessir, Mr. Finch." 

  "Then let's go." 

  Aunt Alexandra sat down in Calpurnia's chair and put her hands to her face. She sat quite still; she was so quiet I wondered if she   would faint. I heard Miss Maudie breathing as if she had just  climbed the steps, and in the diningroom the ladies chattered happily.

  I thought Aunt Alexandra was crying, but when she took her hands  away from her face, she was not. She looked weary. She spoke, and   her voice was flat.

  "I can't say I approve of everything he does, Maudie, but he's my brother, and I just want to know when this will ever end." Her voice rose: "It tears him to pieces. He doesn't show it much, but it tears him to pieces. I've seen him when- what else do they want from him, Maudie, what else?"

  "What does who want, Alexandra?" Miss Maudie asked.

  "I mean this town. They're perfectly willing to let him do what   they're too afraid to do themselves- it might lose 'em a nickel.   They're perfectly willing to let him wreck his health doing what   they're afraid to do, they're-" 

  "Be quiet, they'll hear you," said Miss Maudie. "Have you ever   thought of it this way, Alexandra? Whether Maycomb knows it or not, we're paying the highest tribute we can pay a man. We trust him to  do right. It's that simple."

  "Who?" Aunt Alexandra never knew she was echoing her twelve-year-old  nephew.  

  "The handful of people in this town who say that fair play is not marked White Only; the handful of people who say a fair trial is for everybody, not just us; the handful of people with enough humility  to think, when they look at a Negro, there but for the Lord's kindness  am l." Miss Maudie's old crispness was returning: "The handful of   people in this town with background, that's who they are."  

  Had I been attentive, I would have had another scrap to add to Jem's  definition of background, but I found myself shaking and couldn't   stop. I had seen Enfield Prison Farm, and Atticus had pointed out   the exercise yard to me. It was the size of a football field.

  "Stop that shaking," commanded Miss Maudie, and I stopped. "Get   up, Alexandra, we've left 'em long enough."

  Aunt Alexandra rose and smoothed the various whalebone ridges along her hips. She took her handkerchief from her belt and wiped   her nose. She patted her hair and said, "Do I show it?" 

  "Not a sign," said Miss Maudie. "Are you together again, Jean Louise?" 

  "Yes ma'am."

  "Then let's join the ladies," she said grimly.

  Their voices swelled when Miss Maudie opened the door to the diningroom. Aunt Alexandra was ahead of me, and I saw her head go up as she went through the door.

  "Oh, Mrs. Perkins," she said, "you need some more coffee. Let me get  it."

  "Calpurnia's on an errand for a few minutes, Grace," said Miss   Maudie. "Let me pass you some more of those dewberry tarts. 'dyou hear  what that cousin of mine did the other day, the one who likes to go fishing?..."  

  And so they went, down the row of laughing women, around the diningroom, refilling coffee cups, dishing out goodies as though their  only regret was the temporary domestic disaster of losing Calpurnia.  

  The gentle hum began again. "Yes sir, Mrs. Perkins, that J. Grimes Everett is a martyred saint, he... needed to get married so they   ran... to the beauty parlor every Saturday afternoon... soon as the sun goes down. He goes to bed with the... chickens, a crate full of sick chickens, Fred says that's what started it all. Fred says...."

  Aunt Alexandra looked across the room at me and smiled. She looked at a tray of cookies on the table and nodded at them. I carefully   picked up the tray and watched myself walk to Mrs. Merriweather.   With my best company manners, I asked her if she would have some. 

  After all, if Aunty could be a lady at a time like this, so could I.

  25 

  

  "Don't do that, Scout. Set him out on the back steps."

  "Jem, are you crazy?...." 

  "I said set him out on the back steps." 

  Sighing, I scooped up the small creature, placed him on the bottom step and went back to my cot. September had come, but not a trace of cool weather with it, and we were still sleeping on the back screen porch. Lightning bugs were still about, the night crawlers and flying insects that beat against the screen the summer long had not gone wherever they go when autumn comes. 

  A roly-poly had found his way inside the house; I reasoned that   the tiny varmint had crawled up the steps and under the door. I was putting my book on the floor beside my cot when I saw him. The creatures are no more than an inch long, and when you touch them   they roll themselves into a tight gray ball.  

  I lay on my stomach, reached down and poked him. He rolled up. Then,  feeling safe, I suppose, he slowly unrolled. He traveled a few inches on his hundred legs and I touched him again. He rolled up.   Feeling sleepy, I decided to end things. My hand was going down on him  when Jem spoke.  

  Jem was scowling. It was probably a part of the stage he was going through, and I wished he would hurry up and get through it. He was  certainly never cruel to animals, but I had never known his charity to  embrace the insect world.  

  "Why couldn't I mash him?" I asked. 

  "Because they don't bother you," Jem answered in the darkness. He had turned out his reading light.

  "Reckon you're at the stage now where you don't kill flies and   mosquitoes now, I reckon," I said. "Lemme know when you change your mind. Tell you one thing, though, I ain't gonna sit around and not  scratch a redbug." 

  "Aw dry up," he answered drowsily. 

  Jem was the one who was getting more like a girl every day, not I. Comfortable, I lay on my back and waited for sleep, and while  waiting I thought of Dill. He had left us the first of the month   with firm assurances that he would return the minute school was out- he guessed his folks had got the general idea that he liked to spend his summers in Maycomb. Miss Rachel took us with them in the taxi to Maycomb Junction, and Dill waved to us from the train window until  he was out of sight. He was not out of mind: I missed him. The last two days of his time with us, Jem had taught him to swim-

  Taught him to swim. I was wide awake, remembering what Dill had told  me. 

  Barker's Eddy is at the end of a dirt road off the Meridian  highway about a mile from town. It is easy to catch a ride down the highway on a cotton wagon or from a passing motorist, and the short walk to the creek is easy, but the prospect of walking all the way  back home at dusk, when the traffic is light, is tiresome, and swimmers are careful not to stay too late. 

  According to Dill, he and Jem had just come to the highway when they  saw Atticus driving toward them. He looked like he had not seen them, so they both waved. Atticus finally slowed down; when they   caught up with him he said, "You'd better catch a ride back. I won't be going home for a while." Calpurnia was in the back seat.  

  Jem protested, then pleaded, and Atticus said, "All right, you can come with us if you stay in the car." 

  On the way to Tom Robinson's, Atticus told them what had happened.  

  They turned off the highway, rode slowly by the dump and past the Ewell residence, down the narrow lane to the Negro cabins. Dill said a  crowd of black children were playing marbles in Tom's front yard.   Atticus parked the car and got out. Calpurnia followed him through the  front gate.  

  Dill heard him ask one of the children, "Where's your mother, Sam?" and heard Sam say, "She down at Sis Stevens's, Mr. Finch. Want me run fetch her?" 

  Dill said Atticus looked uncertain, then he said yes, and Sam scampered off. "Go on with your game, boys," Atticus said to the   children.

  A little girl came to the cabin door and stood looking at Atticus. Dill said her hair was a wad of tiny stiff pigtails, each ending in a bright bow. She grinned from ear to ear and walked toward our father, but she was too small to navigate the steps. Dill said Atticus  went to her, took off his hat, and offered her his finger. She grabbed  it and he eased her down the steps. Then he gave her to Calpurnia.

  Sam was trotting behind his mother when they came up. Dill said   Helen said, "'evenin', Mr. Finch, won't you have a seat?" But she   didn't say any more. Neither did Atticus. 

  "Scout," said Dill, "she just fell down in the dirt. Just fell   down in the dirt, like a giant with a big foot just came along and  stepped on her. Just ump-" Dill's fat foot hit the ground. "Like you'd  step on an ant." 

  Dill said Calpurnia and Atticus lifted Helen to her feet and half carried, half walked her to the cabin. They stayed inside a long time,  and Atticus came out alone. When they drove back by the dump, some  of the Ewells hollered at them, but Dill didn't catch what they said. 

  Maycomb was interested by the news of Tom's death for perhaps two days; two days was enough for the information to spread through the county. "Did you hear about?.... No? Well, they say he was runnin' fit  to beat lightnin'..." To Maycomb, Tom's death was typical. Typical  of a nigger to cut and run. Typical of a nigger's mentality to have no  plan, no thought for the future, just run blind first chance he saw. Funny thing, Atticus Finch might've got him off scot free, but wait-? Hell no. You know how they are. Easy come, easy go. Just shows you, that Robinson boy was legally married, they say he kept  himself clean, went to church and all that, but when it comes down  to the line the veneer's mighty thin. Nigger always comes out in 'em. 

  A few more details, enabling the listener to repeat his version in turn, then nothing to talk about until  The Maycomb Tribune appeared the following Thursday. There was a brief obituary in the  Colored News, but there was also an editorial.

  Mr. B. B. Underwood was at his most bitter, and he couldn't have  cared less who canceled advertising and subscriptions. (But Maycomb didn't play that way: Mr. Underwood could holler till he sweated and write whatever he wanted to, he'd still get his advertising and subscriptions. If he wanted to make a fool of himself in his paper  that was his business.) Mr. Underwood didn't talk about miscarriages of justice, he was writing so children could understand. Mr. Underwood  simply figured it was a sin to kill cripples, be they standing, sitting, or escaping. He likened Tom's death to the senseless  slaughter of songbirds by hunters and children, and Maycomb thought he  was trying to write an editorial poetical enough to be reprinted in

 The Montgomery Advertiser. 

  How could this be so, I wondered, as I read Mr. Underwood's  editorial. Senseless killing- Tom had been given due process of law to  the day of his death; he had been tried openly and convicted by twelve  good men and true; my father had fought for him all the way. Then   Mr. Underwood's meaning became clear: Atticus had used every tool   available to free men to save Tom Robinson, but in the secret courts of men's hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the minute  Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed.  

  The name Ewell gave me a queasy feeling. Maycomb had lost no time in  getting Mr. Ewell's views on Tom's demise and passing them along   through that English Channel of gossip, Miss Stephanie Crawford.   Miss Stephanie told Aunt Alexandra in Jem's presence ("Oh foot, he's old enough to listen.") that Mr. Ewell said it made one down and about  two more to go. Jem told me not to be afraid, Mr. Ewell was more hot gas than anything. Jem also told me that if I breathed a word to   Atticus, if in any way I let Atticus know I knew, Jem would personally  never speak to me again.

26 

  

  School started, and so did our daily trips past the Radley Place. Jem was in the seventh grade and went to high school, beyond the   grammar-school building; I was now in the third grade, and our routines were so different I only walked to school with Jem in the  mornings and saw him at mealtimes. He went out for football, but was too slender and too young yet to do anything but carry the team water buckets. This he did with enthusiasm; most afternoons he was  seldom home before dark.

  The Radley Place had ceased to terrify me, but it was no less gloomy, no less chilly under its great oaks, and no less uninviting. Mr. Nathan Radley could still be seen on a clear day, walking to and from town; we knew Boo was there, for the same old reason- nobody'd seen him carried out yet. I sometimes felt a twinge of remorse, when passing by the old place, at ever having taken part in what must   have been sheer torment to Arthur Radley- what reasonable recluse   wants children peeping through his shutters, delivering greetings on the end of a fishing-pole, wandering in his collards at night?

  And yet I remembered. Two Indian-head pennies, chewing gum, soap  dolls, a rusty medal, a broken watch and chain. Jem must have put them  away somewhere. I stopped and looked at the tree one afternoon: the trunk was swelling around its cement patch. The patch itself was   turning yellow.  

  We had almost seen him a couple of times, a good enough score for anybody. 

  But I still looked for him each time I went by. Maybe someday we  would see him. I imagined how it would be: when it happened, he'd just  be sitting in the swing when I came along. "Hidy do, Mr. Arthur," I would say, as if I had said it every afternoon of my life. "Evening, Jean Louise," he would say, as if he had said it every afternoon of my  life, "right pretty spell we're having, isn't it?" "Yes sir, right  pretty," I would say, and go on. 

  It was only a fantasy. We would never see him. He probably did go out when the moon was down and gaze upon Miss Stephanie Crawford.   I'd have picked somebody else to look at, but that was his business. He would never gaze at us. 

  "You aren't starting that again, are you?" said Atticus one night, when I expressed a stray desire just to have one good look at Boo   Radley before I died. "If you are, I'll tell you right now: stop it. I'm too old to go chasing you off the Radley property. Besides, it's dangerous. You might get shot. You know Mr. Nathan shoots at every  shadow he sees, even shadows that leave size-four bare footprints. You  were lucky not to be killed."

  I hushed then and there. At the same time I marveled at Atticus.  This was the first he had let us know he knew a lot more about something than we thought he knew. And it had happened years ago.   No, only last summer- no, summer before last, when... time was playing  tricks on me. I must remember to ask Jem. 

  So many things had happened to us, Boo Radley was the least of our fears. Atticus said he didn't see how anything else could happen, that  things had a way of settling down, and after enough time passed people  would forget that Tom Robinson's existence was ever brought to their attention.  

  Perhaps Atticus was right, but the events of the summer hung over us  like smoke in a closed room. The adults in Maycomb never discussed the  case with Jem and me; it seemed that they discussed it with their   children, and their attitude must have been that neither of us could help having Atticus for a parent, so their children must be nice to us  in spite of him. The children would never have thought that up for  themselves: had our classmates been left to their own devices, Jem and  I would have had several swift, satisfying fist-fights apiece and   ended the matter for good. As it was, we were compelled to hold our heads high and be, respectively, a gentleman and a lady. In a way,  it was like the era of Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose, without all her yelling. There was one odd thing, though, that I never understood:  in spite of Atticus's shortcomings as a parent, people were content to  re-elect him to the state legislature that year, as usual, without  opposition. I came to the conclusion that people were just peculiar, I  withdrew from them, and never thought about them until I was forced to. 

  I was forced to one day in school. Once a week, we had a Current  Events period. Each child was supposed to clip an item from a  newspaper, absorb its contents, and reveal them to the class. This  practice allegedly overcame a variety of evils: standing in front of his fellows encouraged good posture and gave a child poise; delivering  a short talk made him word-conscious; learning his current event   strengthened his memory; being singled out made him more than ever  anxious to return to the Group. 

  The idea was profound, but as usual, in Maycomb it didn't work   very well. In the first place, few rural children had access to newspapers, so the burden of Current Events was borne by the town   children, convincing the bus children more deeply that the town children got all the attention anyway. The rural children who could, usually brought clippings from what they called The Grit Paper, a   publication spurious in the eyes of Miss Gates, our teacher. Why she frowned when a child recited from The Grit Paper I never knew, but  in some way it was associated with liking fiddling, eating syrupy   biscuits for lunch, being a holy-roller, singing  Sweetly Sings the Donkey  and pronouncing it dunkey, all of which the state paid teachers to discourage. 

  Even so, not many of the children knew what a Current Event was.  Little Chuck Little, a hundred years old in his knowledge of cows   and their habits, was halfway through an Uncle Natchell story when  Miss Gates stopped him: "Charles, that is not a current event. That is  an advertisement." 

  Cecil Jacobs knew what one was, though. When his turn came, he   went to the front of the room and began, "Old Hitler-"  

  "Adolf Hitler, Cecil," said Miss Gates. "One never begins with Old anybody."

  "Yes ma'am," he said. "Old Adolf Hitler has been prosecutin' the-"  

  "Persecuting Cecil...."  

  "Nome, Miss Gates, it says here- well anyway, old Adolf Hitler has been after the Jews and he's puttin' 'em in prisons and he's taking away all their property and he won't let any of 'em out of the country  and he's washin' all the feeble-minded and-"  

  "Washing the feeble-minded?"  

  "Yes ma'am, Miss Gates, I reckon they don't have sense enough to  wash themselves, I don't reckon an idiot could keep hisself clean.  Well anyway, Hitler's started a program to round up all the half-Jews too and he wants to register 'em in case they might wanta cause him any trouble and I think this is a bad thing and that's my current event."  

  "Very good, Cecil," said Miss Gates. Puffing, Cecil returned to   his seat.

  A hand went up in the back of the room. "How can he do that?"  

  "Who do what?" asked Miss Gates patiently.  

  "I mean how can Hitler just put a lot of folks in a pen like that, looks like the govamint'd stop him," said the owner of the hand. 

  "Hitler is the government," said Miss Gates, and seizing an  opportunity to make education dynamic, she went to the blackboard. She  printed DEMOCRACY in large letters. "Democracy," she said. "Does   anybody have a definition?" 

  "Us," somebody said. 

  I raised my hand, remembering an old campaign slogan Atticus had  once told me about.

  "What do you think it means, Jean Louise?"  

  "'Equal rights for all, special privileges for none,'" I quoted.

  "Very good, Jean Louise, very good," Miss Gates smiled. In front  of DEMOCRACY, she printed WE ARE A. "Now class, say it all together,  

'We are a democracy.'" 

  We said it. Then Miss Gates said, "That's the difference between  America and Germany. We are a democracy and Germany is a dictatorship.  Dictator-ship," she said. "Over here we don't believe in persecuting anybody. Persecution comes from people who are prejudiced. Prejudice,"  she enunciated carefully. "There are no better people in the world  than the Jews, and why Hitler doesn't think so is a mystery to me."

  An inquiring soul in the middle of the room said, "Why don't they like the Jews, you reckon, Miss Gates?"