Page:The plea of Clarence Darrow, August 22nd, 23rd & 25th, MCMXXIII, in defense of Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, Jr., on trial for murder.djvu/68

 emotion. He was polite; begged our pardon; got up from his chair"; even Dr. Krohn knows better than that. I fancy if your Honor goes into an elevator where there is a lady he takes off his hat. Is that out of emotion for the lady or is it habit"? You say, "Please," and "thank you," because of habit. Emotions haven't the slightest thing to do with it. Mr. Leopold has good manners. Mr. Loeb has good manners. They have been taught them. They have lived them. That does not mean that they are emotional. It means training. That is all it means. And Dr. Krohn knew it.

Krohn told the story of this interview and he told almost twice as much as the other two men who sat there and heard it. And how he told it—how he told it!

When he testified my mind carried me back to the time when I was a kid, which was some years ago, and we used to eat watermelons. I have seen little boys take a rind of watermelon and cover their whole faces with water, eat it, devour it, and have the time of their lives, up to their ears in watermelon. And when I heard Dr. Krohn testify in this case, to take the blood of these two boys, I could see his mouth water with the joy it gave him, and he showed all the delight and pleasure of myself and my young companions when we ate watermelon.

I can imagine a psychiatrist, a real one who knows the mechanism of man, who knows life and its machinery, who knows the misfortunes of youth, who knows the stress and the strain of adolescence which comes to every boy and overpowers so many, who knows the weird fantastic world that hedges around the life of a child—I can imagine a psychiatrist who might honestly think that under the crude definitions of the law the defendants were sane and know the difference between right and wrong. But if he were a real physician, whose mission