(3 of 3)
The older Holmes grew, the younger he acted. He liked to challenge the earnest young Liberals—Francis Hackett, Walter Lippmann, Herbert Croly, Felix Frankfurter—who flocked around him: "What is it? Tell me, I'll take the opposite side." "These young men," he complained, "are so damned solemn." He was painted by Artist Charles Hopkinson in the full glory of his judicial robes. "That isn't me," said Holmes, "but it's a damn good thing for people to think it is." When Justice McReynolds snapped a question at a green young lawyer, Holmes woke with a start, barked: "I wouldn't answer that question if I were you," fell back into a doze. When he lost his temper because his secretary mislaid a book, Mrs. Holmes found the volume, stuck an American flag in it and a big sign: "I AM A VERY OLD MAN. I HAVE HAD MANY TROUBLES, MOST OF WHICH NEVER HAPPENED." When he read the sign, Holmes laughed till he cried.
Last Judgment. Holmes was in his 80s when people began to call him The Great Dissenter. Holmes was annoyed. How could he help dissenting,* he asked, when the Supreme Court rendered such illiberal decisions? "There is nothing," he protested, "that I more deprecate than the use of the Fourteenth Amendment ... to prevent the making of social experiments that an important part of the community desires . . . though the experiments may seem futile or even noxious to me. . . ."
In March 1931, during a radio broadcast on his 90th birthday, Justice Holmes quoted a line from Latin Poet Virgil: "Death plucks my ear and says, Live—I am coming." Two years before Holmes's death newly elected President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, paying a social call, found the Justice reading Plato. Asked President Roosevelt: "Why do you read Plato, Mr. Justice?" Said Justice Holmes: "To improve my mind, Mr. President."
* Some famous Holmes dissents: Coppage v. Kansas (1915), which gave employers the right to require nonunion pledges as a condition of employment; United States v. Schwimmer (1929), which denied citizenship to Rozika Schwimmer because she testified at her citizenship hearing that she would not bear arms in case of war.