The anxious court attendant
asks if he shall open a window. The judge sniffs audibly and orders
the steam heat to be turned off. The court attendant does so and
brings his Honor a glass of water. When the judge sits down in the
revolving chair he is on the bench and the court is in session.
The fact of the matter is the judge is a pretty decent sort of person.
The trouble is that the surroundings are all against him. In the
first place his whole job is one that makes him live up to a part. For
five or six hours a day he has to sit still in a stuffy court-room on
a leather chair under a silly canopy of wood or plush and pretend that
he is the whole thing, that he knows it all, and that whatever he
decides is absolutely right. Let him waiver or be uncertain in his
decisions and woe is it to him. No one thinks much of a judge who does
not know his business or at least does not pretend to know it.
How anyone who has been long on the bench can retain any sense of
proportion is remarkable. Whatever he says and does in court is final
and apparently approved. If his decisions are reversed they do not
affect him seriously; he has tried so many cases that were not
appealed, and the greater proportion of those that have been are
affirmed.
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