Rotundas, corridors,
stairways, and elevators are constantly filled with a moving crowd of
lawyers waiting for their cases to be tried, clients who have had
appointments, witnesses who have been subpoenaed to come to court
and when they get there find it is not one court, but thirty. The
latter are found wandering dazedly about asking anyone who will stop
to listen if they know in which part the case of Martin _vs._ Martin
is being tried. Lunch counters, telephone booths, and a feeling of awe
are in the building.
What that terror of a court of law comes from is difficult to analyze.
There is the impressive majesty of the law; always about a court is
the inspiring sense of something more than human. Even an empty
court-room is not as other rooms. Like an empty theater there remains
an atmosphere of glamour, of mystery, and yet equally true there
remains a substantial, strong odor of crowds.
It is said that every theater retains its own peculiar smell. The
scientific investigation of the psychology of odors is too subtle to
be understandable. The question of analyzing the exudations of a
nervous crowd seems interesting, but the remembrance of an anxious
humanity is always present.
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