You know what I thought of him,

And I know what you thought.

Let us leave the lamentations to the illiterate!

Why should we weep for him? He cried enough for himself!

The national tear-duct from Weeping Water, Nebraska,

Who flooded the whole nation like a one-man Mississippi!

You know what he was:

A Barnum-bunkum Bible-beating bastard!

(DRUMMOND rises, fiercely angry.)

DRUMMOND

You smart-aleck! You have no more right to spit on his religion than you have a right to spit on my religion! Or my lack of it!

HORNBECK

(Askance)

Well, what do you know!

Henry Drummond for the defense

Even of his enemies!

DRUMMOND

(Low, moved)

There was much greatness in this man.

HORNBECK

Shall I put that in the obituary?

(DRUMMOND starts to pack up his brief case.)

DRUMMOND

Write anything you damn please.

HORNBECK

How do you write an obituary

For a man who’s been dead thirty years?

“In Memoriam—M.H.B.” Then what?

Hail the apostle whose letters to the Corinthians

Were lost in the mail?

Two years, ten years—and tourists will ask the guide,

“Who died here? Matthew Harrison Who?”

(A sudden thought)

What did he say to the minister? It fits!

He delivered his own obituary!

(He looks about the witness stand and the JUDGE’S bench, searching for something)

They must have one here some place.

(HORNBECK pounces on a Bible)

Here it is: his book!

(Thumbing hastily)

Proverbs, wasn’t it?

DRUMMOND

(Quietly)

“He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind: and the fool shall be servant to the wise in heart.”

(HORNBECK looks at DRUMMOND, surprised. He snaps the Bible shut, and lays it on the JUDGE’S bench. HORNBECK folds his arms and crosses slowly toward DRUMMOND, his eyes narrowing.)

HORNBECK

We’re growing an odd crop of agnostics this year!

(DRUMMOND’S patience is wearing thin.)

DRUMMOND

(Evenly)

I’m getting damned tired of you, Hornbeck.

HORNBECK

Why?

DRUMMOND

You never pushed a noun against a verb except to blow up something.

HORNBECK

That’s a typical lawyer’s trick: accusing the accuser!

DRUMMOND

What am I accused of?

HORNBECK

I charge you with contempt of conscience!

Self-perjury. Kindness aforethought.

Sentimentality in the first degree.

DRUMMOND

Why? Because I refuse to erase a man’s lifetime? I tell you Brady had the same right as Cates: the right to be wrong!

HORNBECK

“Be-Kind-To-Bigots” Week. Since Brady’s dead,

We must be kind. God, how the world is rotten

With kindness!

DRUMMOND

A giant once lived in that body. (Quietly) But Matt Brady got lost. Because he was looking for God too high up and too far away.

HORNBECK

You hypocrite! You fraud!

(With a growing sense of discovery)

You’re more religious than he was!

(DRUMMOND doesn’t answer. HORNBECK crosses toward the exit hurriedly)

Excuse me, gentlemen. I must get me to a typewriter

And hammer out the story of an atheist

Who believes in God.

(He goes off.)

CATES

Colonel Drummond.

DRUMMOND

Bert, I am resigning my commission in the State Militia. I hand in my sword!

CATES