pseudo-classic courthouse on a placid village green to which the
neighboring county squires have ridden, and where the jail is in the
cellar and the town recorder in the attic, is fast disappearing. The
old courthouse in the city, of red sandstone with battlements and
turrets, minarets, and a clock tower, seems out of date.

The white marble palaces of the higher courts wherein broad stairways,
paneled mahogany, stained glass, and soft noiseless carpets giving an
air of repose and refined culture, are not altogether consistent with
the modern spirit. The man on the street does not understand whether
the marble statues on the roof are symbols of justice or late
presidents of the United States. The usual courthouse of twenty years
ago was a mixture of armory and Gothic church.

In the larger courthouses where there are many terms or parts in one
building, there is an air of confusion. 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