 Cadman Presents to Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee Read by Sissy Spasic Copyright 1960 Renewed 1988 by Harper Lee Production Copyright 2006 by Harper Collins Publishers Lawyers, I suppose, were children once Charles Lamb Part One One When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jim got his arm badly broken at the elbow. When it healed, and Jim's fears of never being able to play football were assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury. His left arm was somewhat shorter than his right. When he stood or walked, the back of his hand was at right angles to his body. His thumb paralleled to his thigh. He couldn't have cared less, so long as he could pass and punt. When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintained that the Ewells started it all, but Jim, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out. I said if he wanted to take a broad view of the thing, it really began with Andrew Jackson. If General Jackson hadn't run the creeks up the creek, Simon Finch would never have paddled up to Alabama, and where would we be if he hadn't? We were far too old to settle an argument with the fist fight, so we consulted Atticus. Our father said we were both right. Being Southerners, it was a source of shame to some members of the family that we had no recorded ancestors on either side of the Battle of Hastings. All we had was Simon Finch, a fur-trapping apothecary from Cornwall, whose piety was exceeded only by his stinginess. In England, Simon was irritated by the persecution of those who call themselves Methodists at the hands of their more liberal brethren, Simon called himself a Methodist, he worked his way across the Atlantic to Philadelphia, thence to Jamaica, thence to Mobile, and up the St. Stephen's. Mindful of John Wesley's strictures on the use of many words in buying and selling, Simon made a pile practicing medicine, but in this pursuit he was unhappy lest he be tempted into doing what he knew was not for the glory of God, as the putting on of gold and costly apparel. So Simon, having forgotten his teacher's dictum on the possession of human chattels, bought three slaves and with their aid established a homestead on the banks of the Alabama River some forty miles above St. Stephen's. He returned to St. Stephen's only once to find a wife, and with her established a line that ran high to daughters. Simon lived to an impressive age and died rich. It was customary for the men in the family to remain on Simon's homestead, Finch's landing, and make their living from cotton. The place was self-sufficient, modest in comparison with the empires around it. The landing nevertheless produced everything required to sustain life, except ice, wheat flour, and articles of clothing supplied by riverboats from Mobile. Simon would have regarded with impotent fury the disturbance between the north and the south as it left his descendants stripped of everything but their land, yet the tradition of living on the land remained unbroken until well into the 20th century when my father, Atticus Finch, went to Montgomery to read law, and his younger brother went to Boston to study medicine. Their sister Alexandra was the Finch who remained at the landing. She married a taciturn man who spent most of his time lying in a hammock by the river... Sample complete. Ready to continue?