bly something very different to what the client has in
mind. The lawyer has an uneasy feeling that, in the client's eyes, he
will not do the case justice.

"How outrageous," thinks the defendant, "that I should be sued when
I've been over-generous for years. And the jury ought to know exactly
what these people are who said they'd call off the suit if I'd pay
them a hundred dollars." The lawyer is aware of these views, because
he has been told them more than once; he also knows that he cannot try
the case in that way.

The counteraction of emotions and feelings between the lawyer and the
client, the judge and the jury, the undercurrents that are constantly
moving from one to another, make up the drama of the court. The
characters are laid, the theme is selected, the actors are chosen, and
it remains for the play to be prepared.

VII

PROGRAMS AND PLEADINGS

Pleadings are the programs of the performance. They are printed
beforehand and everybody gets a copy. Preparation consists in the
rehearsal and the carpentry of setting the scene. Any lawyer knows how
important the pleadings are, but nobody else does. The judge does not
pay any more attention to them than he has to. Juries hardly ever see
them; if they did, they could not understand them. The witnesses never
hear of them, the clients have sworn they have read them and have
sworn that they are true. Yet not one client in a thousand could give
an explanation of them other than, "My lawyer told me to sign it, so I
did."

Whenever anyone gets anxious to understand a pleading, there are so
many volumes about the subject and so many bookcases of decisions they
would furnish a house. All this may appear flippant, but the subject
is so absurd, abstruse, and abnormal to a man of business, that it is
almost impossible to make it understandable. A partial list of
authorities on the subject sounds like a chapter from _Alice in
Wonderland_: Pepper on Pleading; Perry on Pleading; Pollock on
Pleading; Pound on Pleading; Puterbaugh on Pleading; Phillips on
Pleading; Pomeroy on Pleading. The number of court decisions in which
this branch of the proceeding has been reverently and gravely dealt
with reads like a metaphysical discussion in the dark ages. The names
formerly used were superb. Complaint, demurrer, confession and
avoidance, traverse, replication, dilatory pleas, peremptory pleas,
rejoinder, rebutter, and sur-rebutter.

On the other hand the clear, concise t