Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/298

 274 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS. [1853,

what in their true and naked characters they are ; how we use and tolerate pretension ; how the judge is clothed with dignity which does not belong to him, and the trembling witness with humility that does not belong to him, and the criminal, perchance, with shame or impudence which no more belong to him. It does not mat ter so much, then, what is the fashion of the cloak with which we cloak these cloaks. Change the coat ; put the judge in the criminal-box, and the criminal on the bench, and you might think that you had changed the men.

No doubt the thinnest of all cloaks is con scious deception or lies; it is sleazy and frays out ; it is not close-woven like cloth ; but its meshes are a coarse network. A man can afford to lie only at the intersection of the threads ; but truth puts in the filling, and makes a consis tent stuff.

I mean merely to suggest how much the sta tion affects the demeanor and self-respectability of the parties, and that the difference between the judge s coat of cloth and the criminal s is insignificant compared with, or only partially significant of, the difference between the coats which their respective stations permit them to wear. What airs the judge may put on over his coat which the criminal may not ! The judge s opinion {sententia) of the criminal sen-