Thoughts in a Haystack

[O]n Sunday, ... Bryan took to the stump. He began the day by delivering the morning sermon to a packed house at Dayton's southern Methodist church. Bryan now answered Darrow's latest statement. "The attorneys for the defense charge that our objection to expert testimony is an attempt to evade the issue. On the contrary it is an effort to confine the case to the issue," he asserted. "The statute itself distinctly forbids the teaching of the evolutionary hypothesis" -- regardless of whether or not it conflicts with the Bible. "Then, too, their testimony would necessarily be one-sided," he added in a comment that spoke to the nature of America's adversarial judicial system. "They will only call those who still cling to religion and try to harmonize evolution with it. They will thus present a very one-sided view of evolution and its results. A half truth is sometimes worse than a lie, and evolution as they want to present it is less than a half truth." Judge Raulston and his entire family sat in the front pew as the congregation cheered the Commoner.

- Edward J. Larson, Summer for the Gods

Thomas Scopes was having a good time. Down from Paducah, Kentucky, for the trial, he told a reporter in his soft drawl that "a father just naturally has to stick by his own blood and flesh, ma'am, no matter what they've done." Not that John had done anything bad; the father said he was an evolutionist himself. The son spoke from inside his yellow racing car: "Don't blow so much, dad."

- Ray Ginger, Six Days or Forever?