we know just what in them is
essential to our understanding of them. Very similar is the art-form
practised in the law-courts. The theme of a law-suit is the actions of
certain actual opposed persons within a certain period of time; and
these actions, these characters, must be set forth succinctly, in
such-wise that we shall know just as much as is essential to our
understanding of them. In drama, the presentment is, in a sense, more
vivid. It is not--not usually, at least--retrospective. We see the
actions being committed, hear the words as they are uttered. But how
often do we have an illusion of their reality? Seldom. It is seldom
that a masterpiece in drama is performed perfectly by an ideal cast. In
a law-court, on the other hand, it is always in perfect form that the
matter is presented to us. First the outline of the story, in the
speech for the plaintiff; then this outline filled in by the
examination of the plaintiff himself; then the other side of the story
adumbrated by his cross-examination. 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. But it is
disingenuousness that makes him delightful. And the greatest of all
delights that a law-court can give us is a d