Sutherland's Recollections of Justice Holmes

DAVID O'BRIEN

Before his appointment to the Supreme Court in 1939, Felix Frankfurter planned to write a biography of his beloved Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. In 1931, just a year before the 91-year old Justice retired from the bench, Frankfurter edited a collection of essays dedicated to Justice Holmes. Among those who contributed to Frankfurter's edition of Mr. Justice Holmes were Benjamin Cardozo, John Dewey, Learned Han4 Harold J. Laski and John Wigmore. In 1935, following Justice Holmes' death, Frankfurter wrote the Justice's former law clerks, asking them for their recollections of working with him and of his opinions written during their clerkship years. Arthur E. Sutherland provided Frankfurter with his reflections on Justice Holmes during his clerkship in 192 7-1928. Frankfurter, however, never completed the biography of the Justice he so admired. In 1938 a year before his own appointment to the Supreme Court, Frankfurter did publish an analysis of Justice Holmes' views on the Constitution and the role of the Court in Mr. Justice Holmes And The Supreme Court.

Frankfurter's own work on the Court and other wide-ranging interests virtually foreclosed the possibility of his writing a definitive biography of Justice Holmes. Yet, he remained deeply committed to the project. And he persuaded his friend, historian Mark De Wolfe Howe to undertake the project. Howe, though, failed to complete the project as well. In 1957, his first volume, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: The Shaping Years appeared and a second Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: The Proving Years, followed in 1963.

Nor did Sutherland publish or further expand as he might have on the recollections of Justice Holmes which he sent Frankfurter in 1935. Sutheland's clerkship with Justice Holmes had come at the suggestion of then-Professor Frankfurter, with whom he had studied at Harvard Law School. After his clerkship, Sutherland returned to his hometown of Rochester, New York, where he practiced law until 1941. He then served in the army during World War II. Rather than returning to his legal practice after the war, Sutherland joined the faculty at Cornell Law School and taught there for five years. In 1950, he returned to Harvard Law School, where he taught until his death in 1973. Among his many publications are The Law and One Man (1956), Constitutionalism in America (1965), Apology for Uncomfortable Change (1965), and The Law at Harvard, 1817-1967 (1967), as well as leading casebooks on commercial and constitutional law.

The following excerpts come from his 'Recollections of Justice Holmes," located in the Manuscript Room in the Harvard Law School, 2nd published here with the kind permission of its curator, Judith Mellins.

Boswell has never been the subject of my especial admiration. After all, the easy talk of friends was never intended for public display in print. If Dr. Johnson talked for the book, Holmes surely did not. I take no pleasure in the thought that time must wear dull my memories of the Justice, and of the easy daring that made up so large a part of the charm of hi talk. On the other hand I do not to write down for public repetition every striking statement of his which stays in my mind. He would have been less generous of his conversation if he supposed that he was to be recorded. One can only try to choose what he would have wanted.

I first remember hearing about Justice when I was in college and my father ended that I read The Common Law. I was surprised that the author of the "One Hoss Shay "was still alive! (Later, when I used to answer a good many letters for the Justice, I came to realize that many people were similarly confused between the Doctor and his son.)

Later in my first year at the Law School I was walking on Brattle Street with Fred Davenport when he pointed to a young man across the street. "That's Jim Nicely," he said. "He's editor of the Law Review and next year he's to be secretary of Justice Holmes." I was duly impressed with the heights to which man could climb.

Joie Beale and Manley Hudson commended us to "Privilege, Malice and Intent". In Frankfurter's seminar on Federal Jurisdiction, Holmes was frequently mentioned. Bart Leach was his secretary. Charles Denby, the urbane and immaculate, was to succeed him after our class graduated. I left Cambridge and went' home to Rochester to practice law. Harvard was still a present excitement. Corcoran, I heard, was to succeed Denby--a shocking departure from tradition, to pick two secretaries from one class. During my second year out of law school, I was grubbing away one day, wishing I could get enough free time for a trip to Northampton to see a girl I was to marry the next fall, when I had a telegram from Felix Frankfurter suggesting that I might be Holmes' secretary the next year. Excitement was crossed with doubt--I vaguely remembered a tradition that the secretary mustn't be engaged. A horrid alternative! I went to Cambridge (via Northampton) to see Frankfurter. He expressed doubt but said he'd see the Justice. Finally I had a telegram in Rochester from Felix Frankfurter saying that I could have the job and the lady too. It worked out very well.

I wrote to the Justice and a day or two later received this letter:

I was still a little uneasy about my ignorance of federal matters, and wrote the Justice expressing my appreciation of the opportunity and my concern about my capacity. He was reassuring:

His quite unnecessary worry lest I be grieved at not having four months pay for doing nothing was characteristic. He was extremely sensitive for other people's feelings.

About the first of October I arranged to come to Washington to meet Tom Corcoran at the Justice's house so he could start me off right. He and I went to 1720 Eye St. together, and he went in and up to the library on the second floor with a boldness that astounded me. He showed me the checkbook, the list of securities and due dates; he told me I'd have to go "fish in the pool" with the Justice at the Riggs Bank. While we were talking there was a stir outside the door, and a white-haired old man, bent far over, with a surprising breadth of shoulder, came in from the hall.

"Well, upon my word! Upon my word!" he said. I was in doubt whether or not he was displeased at our being there.

The routine of work was easy. "Pet's for cert" had to be examined in some quantity; Arthur Thomas, the messenger, used to bring in a dozen or more a day. I'd arrive at the Justice's house at 9:30, and go to work on records and whatnot. By and by the Justice would come in, slippered and wearing a mohair house coat. He'd sit down at the big desk. Thomas would bring his mail immediately and he would begin to open his letters with a miniature saber. How did Thomas know when he sat down, and so bring the mail? The Justice used to speculate on the mystery. He thought Thomas was ready at the door, and opened it when Holmes' chair creaked. Generally there'd be two or three requests for autographs--he'd sign the card if a return stamp was enclosed. 'Crank letters, asking assistance, were turned over to the secretary to read; he was always afraid that some genuine wrong would be left unrighted if he threw them aside. A few close friends used to get answers in the Justice's own hand, written with a horrible old pen caked with ink. Most letters were written in longhand by the secretary and signed by the Justice. He had no typewriter. "How I loathe conveniences" was one of his cherished sayings.

The big desk in the library on the second floor was the center of his life. There he sat most of his waking hours when he wasn't in court. His will (one of the first things he showed me) was in a special place in the flat desk drawer. The cork from the bottle of champagne he and Shattuck opened when "The Common Law" came out was in a drawer on the right. There he wrote opinions, slowly, illegibly, with a sputtering pen. There he sat and smoked "Between the Acts Little Cigars". There he sometimes read frivolous and sometimes heavy books. There he sometimes dozed a little. Occasionally, when he wanted to sleep or read more at ease, he would move to a leather-upholstered chair near his desk--a complicated device, with a foot rest that could be made to shoot out by pressing a lever. He would have me cover his legs with a shawl and turn on the electric heater, and he would take his ease. But mostly he sat at his desk.

Occasionally Mrs. Holmes would come in--sometimes to speak to the secretary, sometimes hailing her husband, "Holmes! Holmes, j!" If he was at work he'd talk a little while, and then with great vigor say, "Now, Dickie, see here, you run along, I've got to work." Dickie, not at all disconcerted, would walk to the Secretary's desk and talk to him while the Justice fidgeted a little.

If the Court was in session, the Justice left at 11:30 for the Capitol. It was .a solemn rite. Thomas generally helped him put on his shoes (high black shoes, much polished) and I helped put on his rubbers. He liked the professional slap I used to give the side of his foot when the rubber was on. Once I was telling Mrs. Willebrandt about this process at a tea at the Brandeis'. "Oh," said she, "to sit at the feet of Justice Holmes!" I told the Justice about it; thereafter he used to ask for his rubbers by saying, "Hey, young fella, Willebrandt me!"

After the rubbers, the coat. The mohair jacket was hung up and the suit-coat held for the judicial arms. Thomas came for the morocco-bound docket, which had to be taken to court. The Justice went to the elevator and lowered himself to the first floor while the secretary went down the stairs. Holmes (who enjoyed little plays) used to pretend to be amazed to see the secretary outside the elevator when he closed the door above and when he opened it below. He said it was like a 'Faust" he saw once, in which the devil at the stamp of Faust's foot disappeared in one spot and simultaneously appeared in another by means of a 'double'. Buckley was at the door, his highly polished and decidedly antiquated automobile, retained by the month, waiting at the curb. A last conference with Dickie would ensue. The Justice would go down the brownstone steps with the secretary, and would climb into the car. Buckley would start it slowly off while the secretary returned to the library and the pile of petitions for certiorari.

The secretary sometimes used to lunch with Mrs. Holmes. It was no trifling snack--places for four were always set and the meal served with formality. Mrs. Holmes was a delight to talk with. She used to sit very straight, on the edge of a chair--not slumped back in the corner. She was bright, alert, quick--like some little bird. "Dickie" was a perfect name for her. Her responses were immediate--there was no lapse in her comprehension for a moment or two after one spoke to her, as is often true of the old. She must have had the same irrelevant, diverse charm as a girl in Boston, before the war. It was a time very real and present to her. I remember one day talking to her about Adams' "Education", and the comments he made on Rooney Lee at Harvard. "Oh," she said, "I've often danced with Rooney Lee." It was as if she were mentioning a partner at last Saturday's cotillion!

She had few companions. Sue (my wife) became a great friend; the two used to sit for hours in the parlor on the ground floor in front of the tiled fireplace, while Dickie told little amusing inconsequential stories. "The proletariat" was a phrase she fancied. Once we four went out to see some apple blossoms. The farmer said that if we'd only been there a day or two before they'd have really been worth seeing. When we drove away Dickie sniffed. "The proletariat," she said, "always loves to diminish one's pleasure in a prospect by explaining how much one has missed by not coming some other time." Neither she nor the Justice was filled with a sentimental love for mankind in general, though both were endlessly tender toward individuals. The flavor of both was mildly acid. I think the reason for this was their habit of honesty--most people who express a universal charity are deluding themselves. The Justice used to say men were like melons; there were big ones with watery pulp and weak flavor; and there were a few small ones with rare savor. Statesmen, he said, were apt to be big melons; he mentioned Harding as an example. I asked him once how he felt toward people generally. "Oh," he said with the greatest tolerance and good humor, "I dare say the generality of mankind is made up of swine and fools." He accepted the fact without rancor as one accepts the facts of bad weather or old age or evil.

They were buoyant and amusing in their relations with one another. The Justice used to call on the secretary to witness various high crimes and misdemeanors on Dickie's part, to be used as grounds for a future divorce suit. Dickie called him Wendell, or Holmes, or Holmes,j. Sometimes he called her "Woman". Once I remember them standing by Buckley's car in front of 1720 Eye st., waiting to get in and go somewhere. Mrs. Holmes stood talking with Buckley for several minutes. Finally the Justice said, "Woman, less jaw and more git." She turned to him cheerful good humor. "Holmes," she said, "You be damned!

I remember seeing her in a softened mood only once. She came into the library carrying a little white silk dress, all made of a countless number of ruffles, and told me that the Justice's mother had made it for him before he was born. It was brittle with age and she had decided to burn it up in the fireplace. I urged her not to do it, and she waited a minute, looking at the fine sewing. "Think of her," she said, "putting in all those little stitches." Then she crumpled the little dress in the grate and touched it with a match flame; it flared like tissue paper.

She loved to shop; her house was full of little odds and ends she'd bought here and there. There was an Oriental shop called the Pagoda, kept by a Mr. Osgood, where she used to buy all manner of things. There were artificial butterflies hung on the lamp-shade in the living room, for example. Their houses conformed to no set style. I think 1720 Eye St. or the house in Beverly Farms would have given an interior decorator severe pain. They liked them as they were; were completely poised in their own tastes, and the suggestion that they should have complied with somebody else's idea of how to live would only have amused them. They were not herdbound; an aloofness from common prejudice was their most conspicuous spiritual feature; it was the essence of the Justice's greatness; and he might well have lacked much of it were it not for the same quality in his wife. Together they occupied a "jour d'ivoire".

When the Court was not sitting, the Justice used to go riding with Buckley every morning, and sometimes in the afternoon as well. Rock Creek Park was a favorite trip; another was up the Potomac to the Chain Bridge. Another was around Hams' Point and back along the Tidal Basin. One of the first trips we took was to a point up the Potomac nearly opposite of Ball's Bluff. It was the anniversary of the Battle--October 12th. The Justice told me of the slow climb up the bank of the river, of his being hit in the pit of the stomach by a spent ball, of the Colonel's saying, "Go to the rear, Mr. Holmes," of his being shot through the breast and helped away by his 1st Sgt., of his mentioning his vial of laudanum to a colleague, or surgeon, and of its disappearance from his pocket!

Once I asked him about courage, and said that I wondered if I'd have the strength to face fire. He said with complete understanding that when he went into the army he'd had the same doubt, and wondered whether he'd be "biting a bullet" (a figure of speech: actual biting of a lead slug to relieve nerve tension was of an older time). He said he had consoled himself with the reflection that armies were made up of average people, and that no more would be demanded of him than the general run of people could accomplish.

Once we went out to Fort Stevens, the site of an attack by southern troops where the President was under fire. The Justice showed me where the federal skirmish-line was, and spoke of seeing the President in the works; but until I read of it in a magazine, years after his death, I never heard of the Justice saying "Get down, you damn fool" to Abraham Lincoln.

Much of his thought had a military cast. Courage and hardihood he valued. He had a definition of a gentleman not now often encountered--one who for a point of honor would gladly risk his life. He said there were few gentlemen.

Once he spoke to me with scorn of some person's remark that war was illogical. "War," he said, "is supremely logical." He said that if two nations disagreed over something important, the simple logic of the situation called for the stronger one to impose its will on the weaker. He said that he' had decided in the Sixties that war was an organized bore; but that it was a great spiritual experience as well.

He had little patience for books picturing Robert E. Lee as a kindhearted and noble soul, far superior to Grant in strategical skill. Grant was his man. He and Mrs. Holmes and I shared a great admiration for the statue of Grant down in front of the Capitol; the general is mounted watching something, his collar up around his neck, his hat over his eyes. He looks like a tired officer on a horse; not a pasteboard hero. Mrs. Holmes liked the story of the discouragement of the sculptor, his illness, and the surprise of his wife when his design was accepted.

From time to time the Justice used to say that he disliked to talk of the war: but I think that like other soldiers of other wars, he enjoyed telling about it. He told me of carrying a message, mounted, when he was on the 6th Corps Staff; when as he put it, he "got in among 'em." Three Confederate troopers appeared in front of him. Holmes was armed with a saber and a pistol. He had been reading a novel about adventure in Mexico, and there crossed his mind the account of some one thrusting an adversary through the body until he felt his saber-hilt strike the other's breastbone. Holmes started to draw his own saber, and then recollected that the confederates were cavalrymen and probably better swordsmen than he. So he drew pistol instead, thrust it at the body of the nearest trooper and pulled the trigger, only to have the weapon misfire. He "did a Comanche" as well as he could (his own words) and rode past at a gallop. Two or three carbines went off behind him, but he was unhurt and reached his friends, who greeted him by "Here comes the chain-pump" (a name he'd gained by being somewhat continuously talkative, as the chain on a pump was continuously rattling). He said to me of the trooper he'd tried to shoot, "I wonder if that fella's still alive. I'd like to have a drink with him."

His modesty about his own dexterity and horsemanship was characteristic. He told me that after the war, in England, he was invited to be a member of somebody's staff, mounted, at a review. He had never learned to be entirely at ease on a horse, and was concerned about appearing awkward. So he left a note in his shoes outside his hotel door, to be called early in time to get dressed and mount up--well knowing that the "boots" would not get the note until too late. This shocking piece of disingenuous maneuvering gave him an excuse for not turning up in time!

Mrs. Holmes told me that on the same visit the little son of a man whom the Colonel was visiting asked to see the visitor, and on seeing him, wept. The child had expected to see somebody in a busby and scarlet coat; and was badly let down on seeing a young man in ordinary clothes.

The Justice said that he had reached the height of military comfort when he was on the 6th Corps Staff, and had his orderly trained to wake him up in the morning and give him a whiskey cocktail and a chew of tobacco!

One of his most difficult times was after he was shot in the heel at Fredericksburg, and was convalescing in Boston. He came to cringe in advance in expectation of the remark, "Ah! Achilles!" from every visitor.

He had been very vigorous all his life, and gave up physical activity with reluctance. Mrs. Holmes told me that at sixty-five, a short walk was his only exercise. (But I saw him at Beverly Farms in the summer of 1928,jumping around the lawn after a moth!) He used to say, "Shall we creep an inch?" and away we'd go for a few blocks. He expressed ironic admiration for my ability to twirl a walking stick--but agreed on another gesture with that article. We were talking about the statement ascribed to Coke that a man could lawfully beat his wife if he used a stick no bigger than his thumb. So we devised a minatory salute for wives, and on approaching Mrs. Holmes and Sue somewhere or other, we solemnly held up our sticks with our thumbs beside them to show that the weapons were within the legal limit.

He told me a good many stories of his boyhood and youth. He stood much in awe of his father--"my guv'nor"--whose judgments on points of social convenance were severe. The Doctor was pretty emotional, and it took his son some time to learn that his expressions needn't always be taken literally.

The Holmeses were not very prosperous in the Justice's youth. When the young man married they lived in a couple of rooms. Mrs. Holmes (she told me) once cut her head open when she raised it up suddenly and hit a coffee-grinder fastened to the wall. They were happy with a small house at Beverly Farms (or Prides') where they did a good deal of gardening. The Justice told me that he and his wife used to drag manure around from one flower-bed to another on an old shutter, and that the purchase of a wheel-barrow after much careful discussion and planning, was a great luxury!

He had once taken up etching, and had framed in his library one very good print he had made himself. He had a lot of prints--Durers particularly; and Benson's animal and bird etchings. When I confessed ignorance and interest, he was very kind, and took endless pains to explain them. As in other things, he was completely simple in his discussion of pictures. He used no ready-made technical phrases to tell what he saw in them.

Books were of course very important to him. He showed me a Hobbes'Leviathan, and explained what a hard time he'd had getting to read it; he'd been about to read it when the war broke out and he set the book aside; then he'd come home from the army and studied law and had been about to tackle Hobbes again when he became engaged to be married which set him back again!

He was entirely without conventional prejudice in his judgment of books. He said to me once,

"With certain universally recognized exceptions, and excepting personal tastes, the literature of the past is a bore. Now for the first time you stand on the mountain peak--a free man!"

One of the exceptions his personal taste required was Casanova's Memoirs. He told me that when he was forty, he had thought because of a serious ailment his life was about over, and that the Memoirs had done him a lot of good.

He said that he thought that somewhere in heaven a great book of records was being kept, where he got credit for dull but worthy books read. Those he was able to identify very easily by noticing whether, when reading, he glanced at the thickness of unread pages to come. If he found himself doing that he knew the book was one he'd get credit for....

Holmes' first dissent of the year was in Compania General De Tabacos de Filipinas v. Collector (1927) 275 U.S. 87. Taft wrote the prevailing opinion, holding that the Philippine Organic Act, which contains due-process and equal-protection clauses, forbade the Government of the Islands to impose a tax upon a premium paid by a corporation authorized to do business in the Philippines, to insure goods shipped from the Islands, where the contract of insurance was entered into in France where the premium was paid and where the loss was to be settled. The majority relied upon Allgeyer v. Louisiana (1897) 156 U.S. 578. Holmes said,

When he was working on this opinion, the Justice (presumably to amuse himself) asked me what the difference was between a tax and a penalty. I said it was a question of moral feeling; if the discouraged act carried general moral condemnation, the exaction was a penalty. He condemned this suggestion with some scorn. The law, he said, must not be confused with morals. I suspect that the vigor of his rejection of the suggestion hid a doubt. His own definition of a penalty depends on the state of mind of the legislators, which probably has an origin in some general public feeling of social condemnation. I suspect that the impost in question disclosed an intention in the minds of the island legislators to stop purchases of foreign insurance.

[Most of Holmes'] opinions are short. Quaere--did he write tersely because of the mechanical difficulty of operating his rusty sputtering steel pen, or could he tolerate the crusted weapon only because he used it little? At any rate, the wholly unnecessary prolixity of certain "great" opinions is demonstrated by Homes' pithy paragraphs. Most long opinions are efforts to apologize for the court's failure to say what it means.

The Nebbia opinion could have been written by Holmes in a page. After all, the court there can only have concluded that its previous observations on the constitutionality of price-fixing statutes were outmoded, and should be repudiated! Lawyers understand the convention that brings a judge to explain elaborately that he is not doing something which he obviously is doing. The lay public either turns away in irritation, or, more frequently, studies the involved logical progressions with solemn credulity, like Roman augurs examining portentous entrails. The greatness of Holmes probably lay in his ability to see what was essential in a controversy, and to state it in plain terms. He was a well-born gentleman, with common sense, who knew a great deal of law. Besides these blessings he had certain personal graces such as a discriminating literary style, a distinguished manner of speech, and a charming appearance.

Holmes wrote in Casey v. United States (1928) 276 U.S. 413 speaking for the majority tn affirming a conviction of Casey for buying 3.4 grains of morphine not in or from an original stamped package. The evidence tended to show that he delivered, for pay, a shirt soaked in morphine solution, to a government

agent pretending to be an addict who had requested it. The proof that he had purchased it, etc., within the district was purely presumptive; i.e.--the statute presumed illegal purchase from possession.

Holmes was for conviction. McReynolds, Butler, Brandeis and Sanford dissented! The ground of dissent might be summarized as this--that the morals of opium-eating are no federal concern--and that such a remote presumption is a poor sort of basis for putting a man in prison anyhow. Brandeis thought the federal government was in a pretty cheap business when it hired Casey to sell it a morphine soaked shirt, and then imprisoned him in a burst of righteousness.

Holmes' "liberalism" by no means made him a soft, money-granting sympathetician.

He dissented in Untermyer v. Anderson (1928)276 U.S. 440, with Brandeis and Stone. The majority held unconstitutional a statute imposing a gift tax on gifts previously made. Holmes' opinion, as always, wasted noting. He said,

"We all know that we shall get a tax bill every year. I suppose that the taxing act may be passed in the middle as lawfully as at the beginning of the year."

Donnelly v. US. of A. (1928) 276 U.S. 505 Holding that Fed. Prob'n Director was guilty of an offense in failing to report his knowledge of illegal transportation. Butler wrote for prosecution. Originally the court voted for reversal and acquittal. But Butler at conference argued 'em round. Holmes spoke admiringly to me of Butler's force. He said you could see what a prosecuting officer he had made.

Black & White Taxicab & Transfer Co. v. Brown & Yellow Taxicab & Transfer Co. (1928) 276 U.S. 518

I sat in the courtroom and heard the old man read his dissent. His words and voice and manner were disdainful. It seemed as though he were obliged to hold something unpleasant in his hands. I can still hear his careful voice speaking of "this dirty business". As usual, he came briefly to the essential point--"We have to choose, and for my part I think it is less evil that some criminals should escape than that the government should play an ignoble part".

Brandeis, Stone and Butler also dissented. Taft's prevailing opinion stressed the great size of the conspiracy to run liquor into Washington--a little confession of weakness--for even Holmes, with his insistence on the importance of differences of degree, would scarcely say that the rules of evidence should bear harder on a man selling a lot of liquor than on one selling a little!

On June 4, 1928, last opinion-day of the Term, he joined with Stone in a dissent of Brandeis in National Life Insurance Co. V. US. (1928) 277 U.S. 508. The majority had held invalid a provision of the Revenue Act of Nov. 23, 1921, which had the indirect effect of taxing state and federal bond-interest.

Aloofness, calm, unsentimental clarity, words like those come to my mind when I try to describe the Justice's mental processes. His thought was a little cruel; it was so exact and so lacking in human prejudices. His style reflected the hard clearness that we think of as typically French (although, to be sure, he was no great addict of French letters; he read only one book in that language while I was with him, a ponderous opus by Demogue called "Notions Fondamentales du Droit Prive"). He had a startling ability to see the obvious, and to point it out more exactly than most men. That we may reasonably expect to pay taxes for the service government furnishes; that a change in the name of a governmental power will not make its exercise illegal; that there is no "law" without physical power to enforce it, and so that the "general common law" was a myth--all these "apercus" (a word he was fond of) are obvious when stated, but Holmes was great because he saw them when other men did not.

He was as realistic and unbound by convention in his thought about other things as he was about the law. I have heard him swear disgustedly at somebody's oratund suggestion of the creative force of labor, and add that thought, which directs force, is the only creator. I remember his sitting at his desk talking (I think) to Dean Acheson, and saying that there is a little white worm eating at the heart of every investment, and that there was a little white worm day by day eating away at his life. He chuckled a little.

"Damned little fellow," he said, "eating it away, eating it away!"

He never spoke of any religion. He told me once that he was a little swirl of electrons in the cosmos and some day the swirl would dissolve. I was a bit terrified at this calm, bleak old man, looking composedly at the extinction which he necessarily had to expect any day.