"Wasn't very well, was it?"
"No, but I was under a handicap, you know. I had to hide out."
"And now?"
"Well, if I had legal ruling, I wouldn't have to hide."
"Think you know everything you need to know to enter this adult world?"
"No man stops learning," parried James. "I think I know enough to start."
"James, no matter what you say, there is a very important but intangible
thing called 'judgment'. You have part of it, but not by far enough.
You've been studying the laws about ages and rights, James, but you've
missed a couple of them because you've been looking for evidence
favorable to your own argument. First, to become a duly elected member of
the House of Representatives, a man must be at least twenty-five years of
age. To be a Senator, he must be at least thirty. To be President, one
must be at least thirty-five. Have you any idea why the framers of the
Constitution of the United States placed such restrictions?"
"Well, I suppose it had to do with judgment?" replied James reluctantly.
"That--and _experience_. Experience in knowing people, in understanding
that there might be another side to any question, in realizing that you
must not approach every problem from your own purely personal point of
view nor expect it to be solved to your own private satisfaction or to
your benefit. Now, let's step off a distance and take a good look at
James Quincy Holden and see where he lacks the necessary ingredients."
"Yes, tell me," said James, sourly.
"Oh, I intend to. Let's take the statistics first. You're four-feet
eleven-inches tall, you weigh one-hundred and three pounds, and you're a
few weeks over fourteen. I suppose you know that you've still got one
more spurt of growth, sometimes known as the post-puberty-growth. You'll
probably put on another foot in the next couple of years, spread out a
bit across the shoulders, and that fuzz on your face will become a
collection of bristles. I suppose you think that any man in this room can
handle you simply because we're all larger than you are? Possibly true,
and one of the reasons why we can't give you a ticket and let you
proclaim yourself an adult. You can't carry the weight. But this isn't
all. Your muscles and your bones aren't yet in equilibrium. I could find
a man of age thirty who weighed one-oh-three and stood four-eleven. He
could pick you up and spin you like a top on his forefinger just because
his bones match his muscles nicely, and his nervous system and brain have
had experience in driving the body he's living in."
"Could be, but what has all this to do with me? It does not affect the
fact that I've been getting along in life."
"You get along. It isn't enough to 'get along.' You've got to have
judgment. You claim judgment, but still you realize that you can't handle
your own machine. You can't even come to an equitable choice in selecting
some agency to handle your machine. You can't decide upon a good outlet.
You believe that proclaiming your legal competence will provide you with
some mysterious protection against the wolves and thieves and ruthless
men with political ambition--that this ruling will permit you to keep it
to yourself until you decide that it is time to release it. You still
want to hide. You want to use it until you are so far above and beyond
the rest of the world that they can't catch up, once you give it to
everybody. You now object to my plans and programs, still not knowing
whether I intend to use it for good or for evil--and juvenile that you
are, it must be good or evil and cannot be an in-between shade of gray.
Men are heroes or villains to _you_; but _I_ must say with some
reluctance that the biggest crooks that ever held public office still
passed laws that were beneficial to their people. There is the area in
which you lack judgment, James. There and in your blindness."
"Blindness?"
"Blindness," repeated Judge Carter. "As Mark Twain once said, 'When I was
seventeen, I was ashamed at the ignorance of my father, but by the time I
was twenty-one I was amazed to discover how much the old man had learned
in four short years!' Confound it, James, you don't yet realize that
there are a lot of things in life that you can't even know about until
you've lived through them. You're blind here, even though your life has
been a solid case of encounter with unexpected experiences, one after the
other as you grew. Oh, you're smart enough to know that you've got to top
the next hill as soon as you've climbed this one, but you're not smart
enough to realize that the next hill merely hides the one beyond, and
that there are still higher hills beyond that stretching to the end of
the road for you--and that when you've finally reached the end of your
own road there will be more distant hills to climb for the folks that
follow you.
"You've a fine education, and it's helped you tremendously. But you've
loused up your own life and the life of Martha Bagley. You two are a pair
of outcasts, and you'll be outcasts until about ten years from now when
your body will have caught up with your mind so that you can join your
contemporaries without being regarded as a pair of intellectual freaks."
"And what should I have done?" demanded James Holden angrily.
"That's just it, again. You do not now realize that there isn't anything
you could have done, nor is there anything you can do now. That's why I'm
taking over and I'm going to do it for you."
"Yes?"
"Yes!" snapped Judge Carter. "We'll let them have their courses in baton
twirling and social grace and civic improvement and etiquette--and at the
same time we'll give them history and mathematics and spelling and
graduate them from 'high' school at the age of twelve or fourteen,
introduce an intermediary school for languages and customs of other
countries and in universal law and international affairs and economics,
where our bookkeepers will learn science and scientists will understand
commercial law; our lawyers will know business and our businessmen will
be taught politics. After that we'll start them in college and run them
as high as they can go, and our doctors will no longer go sour from the
moment they leave school at thirty-five to hang out their shingle.
"As for you, James Holden, you and Martha Bagley will attend this
preparatory school as soon as we can set it up. There will be no more of
this argument about being as competent as an adult, because we oldsters
will still be the chiefs and you kids will be the Indians. Have I made
myself clear?"
"Yes sir. But how about Brennan?"
Judge Carter looked at the unhappy man. "You still want revenge? Won't he
be punished enough just hearing the word 'pedagogue'?"
"For the love of--"
"Don't blaspheme," snapped the judge. "You'd hang if James could bring
a shred of evidence, and I'd help him if I could." He turned to James
Holden. "Now," he asked, "will you repair your machine?"
"And if I say No?"
"Can you stand the pressure of a whole world angered because you've
denied them their right to an education?"
"I suppose not." He looked at Brennan, at Professor White and at Jack
Cowling. "If I've got to trust somebody," he said reluctantly, "I suppose
it might as well be you."