Inherit the Wind Lines--Hornbeck only

Brown: A vicious, godless man!

A merry Christmas and a jolly Fourth of July!

Act Three begins

Afternoon, Colonel. Having high tea, I see. Is the jury still out? Swatting flies and wrestling with justice--in that order? I'll hate to see the jury filing in; won't you, Colonel? I'll miss Hillsboro--especially this courthouse: A mélange of Moorish and Methodist; it must have ben designed by a congressman!

Krebs: You're a stranger, aren't you, mister? Want a nice clean place to stay?

I had a nice clean place to stay, madame, and I left it to come here.

Krebs: You're gonna need a room.

I have a reservation at the Mansion House.

McClain: Want a fan? Compliments of Maley's Funeral Home--thirty-five cents!

I'd die first.

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!

"Be-Kind-to-Bigots" Week. Since Brady's dead, we must be kind. God, how the world is rotten with kindness!

Rachel: All the answers to those questions are in the Bible.

All?! You feed the youth of Hillsboro from the little truck-garden of your mind?

Brown: Let us show Mr. Brady the spirit in which we welcome him to Hillsboro.

Amen. Shield your eyes, monk! You're about to meet the mightiest of your descendants. A man who wears a cathedral for a cloak, a church spire for a hat, whose tread has the thunder of the legions of the Lion-hearted. You're missing the show.

Rachel: This sounds as if you're a friend of Bert's.

As much as a critic can be a friend to anyone. Have a bite? Don't worry, I'm not the serpent, little Eva. This isn't from the Tree of Knowledge. You won't find one in the orchards of Heavenly Hillsboro. Birches, beeches, butternuts. A few ignorance bushes. No Tree of Knowledge.

Rachel: I never would have expected you to write an article like this. You seem so--

Cynical? That's my fascination. I do hateful things, for which people love me, and lovable things for which they hate me. I am a friend of enemies, the enemy of friends; I am admired for my detestability. I am both Poles and the Equator, with no temperance zones between.

Elijah: They call me... Elijah.

Elijah! Yes! Why, I had no idea you were still around. I've read some of your stuff.

Rachel: If the superintendent says, "Miss Brown, you're to teach from Whitley's Second Reader," I don't feel I have to give him an argument.

Ever give your pupils a snap-quiz on existence?

Meeker: I'm surprised more folks ain't keeled over in this heat.

He's all right. Give him an hour or so to sweat away the pickles and the pumpernickel. To let his tongue forget the acid taste of vinegar victory. Mount Brady will erupt again by nightfall, spouting lukewarm fire and irrelevant ashes.

Melinda: It's the devil!

Hello, Devil. Welcome to Hell.

Mayor: Who are you?

Hornbeck. E. K. Hornbeck, of the Baltimore Herald.

Melinda: Look. He took my penny.

How could you ask for better proof than that? There's the father of the human race.

Drummond: Write anything you damn please.

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?" What did he say to the minister? It fits! He delivered his own obituary! They must have one here some place. Here it is: His book! Proverbs, wasn't it?

Brady: Mr. Hornbeck, my clipping service has sent me some of your dispatches.

How flattering to know I'm being clipped.

Brown: Hornbeck... Hornbeck...

I am a newspaperman, bearing news. When this sovereign state determined to indict the sovereign mind of a less-than-sovereign schoolteacher, my editors decided there was more than a headline here. The Baltimore Herald, therefore, is happy to announce that it is sending two representatives to "Heavenly Hillsboro": The most brilliant reporter in America today, myself. And the most agile legal mind of the Twentieth Century, Henry Drummond.

Drummond: What am I accused of?

I charge you with contempt of conscience! Self-perjury. Kindness aforethought. Sentimentality in the first degree.

mayor: Whoever it is, he won't have much of a chance against your husband, will he, Mrs. Brady?

I disagree.

Rachel: Bert, you've got to tell me what to do. I don't know what to do--

I give advice, at remarkably low hourly rates. And special discounts to the clergy and their daughters.

Rachel: What are you doing here?

I'm inspecting the battlefield. The night before the battle. Before it's cluttered with the debris of journalistic camp-followers. I'm scouting myself an observation post to watch the fray. Wait. Why do you want to see Bert Cates? What's he to you, or you to him? Can it be that both beauty and biology are on our side? There's a newspaper here I'd like to have you see. It just arrived from that wicked modern Sodom and Gomorrah, Baltimore! Not the entire edition, of course. No Happy Hooligan, Barney Google, Abe Kabibble. Merely the part worth reading: E. K. Hornbeck's brilliant little symphony of words. You should read it. My typewriter's been singing a sweet, sad song about the Hillsboro heretic, B. Cates: boy-Socrates, latter-day Dreyfus, Romeo with a biology book. I may be rancid butter, but I'm on your side of the bread.

Brady: It grieves me to read reporting that is so--biased.

I'm no reporter, Colonel. I'm a critic.

Rachel: Will this be published here, in the local paper?

In the "Weekly Bugle"? Or whatever it is they call the leaden stuff they blow through the local linotypes? I doubt it.

Brady: I hope you will stay for Reverend Brown's prayer meeting. It may bring you some enlightenment.

It may. I'm here on a press pass, and I don't intend to miss any part of the show.

Rachel: I think there must be something wrong in what Bert believes, if a great man like Mr. Brady comes here to speak out against him.

Matthew Harrison Brady came here to find himself a stump to shout from. That's all.

Cates: What caused it? Did they say?

Matthew Harrison Brady died of a busted belly. You know what I thoguht 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!

Storekeeper: Somebody's got to mind the store.

May I ask your opinion, sir, on evolution?

Elijah: Bible?

Now that poses a pretty problem! Which is hungrier--my stomach or my soul?

Elijah: I neither read nor write.

Oh. Excuse me. I must be thinking of another Elijah. *sees a monkey* Grandpa! Welcome to Hillsboro, sir! Have you come to testify for the defense or for the prosecution? No comment? That's fairly safe. But I warn you, sir, you can't compete with all these monkeyshines.

Drummond: There was much greatness in this man.

Shall I put that in the obituary?

Drummond: I wonder how it feels to be Almost-President three times--with a skull full of undelivered inauguration speeches.

Something happens to an Also-Ran. Something happens to the feet of a man who always comes second in a foot-race. He becomes a national unloved child, a decrepit orphan, an aging adolescent who never got the biggest piece of candy. Unloved children, of all ages, insinuate themselves into spotlights and rotogravures. They stand on their hands and wiggle their feet. Split pulpits with their pounding! And their tonsils turn to organ pipes. Show me shouter, and I'll show you an also-ran. A might-have-been, an almost-was.

Storekeeper: Don't have any opinions. They're bad for business.

Sound the trumpet, beat the drum. Everybody's come to town to see your competition, monk. Alive and breathing in the county cooler: A high-school teacher--wild, untamed!

Judge: The Jury's decision is unanimous. Bertram Cates is found guilty as charged.

Step right up, and get your tickets for the middle ages! You only thought you missed the coronation of Charlemagne!

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

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

Krebs: That's all right, I suppose, for them as likes havin' a privy practically in the bedroom!

The unplumbed and plumbing-less depths! Ahhhh, Hillsboro--Heavenly Hillsboro. The buckle on the Bible Belt.

Elijah: Are you an Evolutionist? An infidel? A sinner?

The worst kind. I write for a newspaper. I'm E.K. Hornbeck, Baltimore Herald. I don't believe I caught your name?

Rachel: You couldn't understand. Mr. Brady is the champion of ordinary people, like us.

Wake up, Sleeping Beauty. The ordinary people played a dirty trick on Colonel Brady. They ceased to exist. Time was when Brady was the hero of the hinterland, water-boy for the great unwashed. But they've got inside plumbing in their heads these days! There's a highway through the backwoods now, and the trees of the forest have reluctantly made room for their leafless cousins, the telephone poles. Henry's Lizzie rattles into town and leaves behind the Yesterday-Messiah, standing in the road alone in a cloud of flivver dust. The boob has been de-boobed. Colonel Brady's virginal small -towner has been had--by Marconi and Montgomery Ward.

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

We're growing an odd crop of agnostics this year.

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!

Well, what do you know! Henry Drummond for the defense even of his enemies!

Rachel: What?

Where we came from, where we are, where we're going?

Drummond: I'm getting damned tired of you, Hornbeck.

Why?

Meeker: This fella here put up the money.

With a year's subscription to the Baltimore Herald, we give away--at no cost or obligation--a year of freedom.

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

You hypocrite! You fraud! You're more religious than he was! Excuse me, gentlemen. I must get me to a typewriter and hammer out the story of an atheist who believes in God.