Murder at Ford's Theatre - Margaret Truman [10]
The young men and women sitting before him were the cream of the law school’s crop, and Smith was flattered they’d chosen this new course as one of their few electives. He chalked it up to the subject matter. But truth was, most of them had opted for the course in order to be in another of Mac Smith’s classes. Modesty precluded his acknowledging, even to himself, that he was a favorite professor among the student body.
“I wonder how many of you would have gone through what Abe Lincoln went through to become a lawyer,” Smith began.
“He was self-taught, wasn’t he?” a student said.
“Correct.”
“Which was probably easier than going through three years of law school,” said another, adding a laugh to couch the statement for Smith’s sake.
“Think so?” Smith asked pleasantly. “I think not. Lincoln was driven to study law in his spare time by a devotion to justice, decency, and equality. He didn’t have any money, and worked menial jobs like clerking in a store to support himself. He read constantly. There were no study guides to help him, no formalized textbooks, no lucrative job in some Wall Street law firm to motivate him.”
“No brilliant law professors to mentor him,” someone said.
“How nice of you to recognize that, Mr. Gormley,” Smith said, mock-seriously. “My point is, Lincoln wanted to become a lawyer for what it would allow him to do for the common man. How many of you does that apply to?”
A dozen hands immediately shot up, followed by most of the rest.
“Your demonstration of altruism is heartwarming,” Smith said. “Lincoln was encouraged to study law by Justice of the Peace Bowling Green, and started by reading—and memorizing—every page of Blackstone’s Commentaries. Know how he memorized it? He wrote every page from the book on pads to help him fix the words in his mind. He did that twice, and then rewrote every page in his own words. That’s dedication, wouldn’t you agree?”
There were no arguments.
Fifty minutes later, as the class was about to leave, Smith announced, “I’d like each of you to spend a few hours at Ford’s Theatre before we meet again next Tuesday. How many of you have been there?”
Three hands were raised.
“Take in one of the park ranger’s lectures while you’re there. Examine the displays in the museum. It’s in the basement. We’ll talk about it next time.”
“What does his assassination have to do with his having been a lawyer? Or theatre?”
Smith stared at the questioner, smiled, shook his head, and didn’t answer. He’ll make a good trial lawyer, he thought. Question everything, accept nothing.
He added to his thought, and an insufferable dinner companion.
Smith packed his briefcase and headed for the faculty lounge, where he was due to meet with the law school’s dean about a problem student. He entered the large room furnished with polished tufted leather couches and husky oak tables, spotted the dean sitting in a far corner, and joined him.
“How did your first class go, Mac?”
“Fine. If I can get them to view the law the way Lincoln did, it’ll be a success.”
“Tragic what happened at Ford’s Theatre this morning, wasn’t it?”
“What happened?”
The dean gave him a capsule version of events as reported on the radio: Young intern from Senator Lerner’s office, and theatre aficionado—brutally murdered in the alley behind the theatre.
“Leads?”
“None that I heard. Typical all-news radio station report. We, the listeners, with our twenty-second attention spans, are told by an announcer speaking into a speech compression machine all we need to know—or can comprehend.”
Smith grinned. The dean’s patience with all things modern was inelastic. No song written after 1945 was worthy of recording, no piece of art failing to accurately depict pastoral scenes or the human form worthy of hanging. His hard-nosed view of the way things should be was tempered by a brilliant legal mind, a fervent commitment to turning out good lawyers, and surprising political and diplomatic skills when it came to navigating the roiling waters of a large educational institution. Smith would miss him; the dean was a year from retirement.