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| | | 3. In which the path of the law is found to lead past law studentry | |
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< | First, when I visited my old friend, he confessed to a legal problem—one he'd lived with for some time. I thought about my casebooks, trying to recall a similar problem with a known solution, intuiting one, recalling evidence of it, but the solution itself evaded me. I told him: "I'd like to help make it go away." And he replied: "Thanks." | >
> | First, just after Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, dedicating a cemetery for some who died in Dread Scott’s “consequences for the Nation,” he remarked to a friend: “That speech won’t scour,” as a plow baked in Illinois mud won’t scour. | | | | |
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< | Second, Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address,” dedicating a cemetery for some of those who died in Dred Scott’s “consequences for the Nation,” was 27% of the length of this writing. When he finished orating, Lincoln said: “That speech won’t scour,” as a plow baked in Illinois mud won’t scour. | >
> | Today, Lincoln is in a vault buried 10 feet into the Illinois mud, but I memorized his words when I was in fourth grade, as, I think, do many fourth graders. | | | | |
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< | Today, Lincoln is in a vault buried 10 feet into the Illinois mud, but I memorized and recited his words when I was in fourth grade, as, I think, do many fourth graders. | >
> | Second, when I visited my old friend, after his joke about justice, he confessed to a legal problem—one he'd lived with for some time. I thought to my casebooks, trying to recall a similar problem and its solution, intuiting a solution, recalling evidence of it, but the solution itself evaded me. I told him: "I'd like to help make it go away." And he replied: "Thanks." | | | | |
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< | Third, I imagine the pile of words, words about the law and not about the law, words that help some, words that harm others, words that scour and those that don't—words I'll write before I meet my mud. I hope at least 27%—or 27% of 27%—of them are worthwhile. | >
> | Third, I imagine the pile of words, words about the law and words not, words that help, words that harm, words that scour and those that don't—words I'll write before I meet my mud. I hope some of them are worthwhile. | | |
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