 Presenting Yankee from Olympus, featuring Carl Swenson on The Cavalcade of America, sponsored by E.I. DuPont de Nemours and company of Wilmington, Delaware, maker of better things for better living through chemistry. Before we begin our play, here's a bit of information about an item in everyone's daily diet, eggs. Figures show that the average egg consumption is less than one a day for each American. Yet nutritionists say all of us should eat at least one or better two every day in the year. And today, with egg production at an all-time high, enough eggs are available for all of us to take that advice. One reason for this high production is DuPont delstero D, activated animal sterile, supplying vitamin D for healthier, more productive hands. Now for our play. In Arlington National Cemetery tonight, the moon is shining on a marble shaft on which these words are written. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Captain and Brevid Colonel, 20th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, Civil War, Justice Supreme Court of the United States, March 1841, March 1935. Judge Holmes belongs to history, but his work lives on alive and breathing. For the story of Oliver Wendell Holmes is the story of his country. It is a story told simply and movingly by Catherine Drinker Bowen in her best-selling book, Yankee from Olympus. This evening in a radio adaptation by Isaiah Lee, Cavalcade brings some of the men and women from the pages of Mrs. Bowen's book to tell you about one of the best friends the American people ever had. And John Holmes, Wendell's uncle. We're Bostonians, and the most famous of our family was Wendell's father, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, poet, physician, and author of The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. Dr. Holmes was an autocrat indeed, so blessed with a sense of humor. Wendell always chafed under him a little. I remember later after noon in December, when Wendell was a sophomore at Harvard, he came home to find Dr. Holmes practicing his violin downstairs. Wendell came up to see me somewhat irritated. Dr. Holmes' music was more ambitious than melodic. Good evening, Uncle John. Oh, good evening, Wendell. Father's at it again. Yes, for hours. Tell me, Uncle John, do people often burst into musicality at 50? It's not music. It's manual dexterity. Don't you remember how passionate he was about the microscope a few years ago? Because the microscope didn't make a noise. You see, Wendy, your grandfather raised us to believe in the devil. But things have changed around New England, and the devil has sort of disappeared. Your father was lost without the devil to fight, so he stands on platforms and denounces slavery or tries to master the fiddle. It's the New England mind. I don't have it. Haven't you? You're more like your father than you care to admit. No, I'm like you, Uncle John. I'm not always striving, sweating out for something I can't have. You've something worse, Wendy. You have to know the answers to things, and you're not going to find them in Plato. Plato, Ryle in playing, Wendy standing in the junior class. These were the things that occupied my family in the winter of 1860, while our country rushed precipitously down the slope that led to civil war. A presidential election was coming. Abraham Lincoln was a mere local politician, and Boston paid him scant heed. Wendy cared more about winning the undergraduate prize for his article on Plato than he did about the coming election. He announced it to us, then ran over to the Dixwells on Garden Street to tell them. We smiled. After all, Fanny Dixwell was a very beautiful girl. I've won, Fanny. I've won. I'm ever so glad Wendell. Really, I am. You deserved it. Well, how did you know? Did you read it? Yes. Well, shall I be frank? Of course. Well, it's serious and good, and I'm glad to see that you've lost traces of that cocksure-ness you used to have, but it's too long, and it senses a little stilted and uncertain. You're laughing at me again, Fanny. Oh, no, Wendell. It's just that I'm so fond of you, I think I have a right to be honest. Don't you want me to be? Of course. I want the same right. Go ahead. Fanny, you attack a man's vanity like a she-wolf. You're a she-bus and a witch, and something in that gray-green eye tells me that you were born on a Friday night with a moon at the quarter. You're cleverer than I, Wendell Holmes, but sometimes I think it's going to take you a long time to grow up. I was wrong. Events occurred that made Wendell grow up faster than I thought he would. War. War that matures men and makes them old before their time. Wendell joined the Harvard Regiment. While he was away, I'd go to his family's house for breakfast often waiting and hoping for news. Dr. Holmes always said me, it is right. Little more sausage, Fanny? No, thank you, doctor. You're pale, Fanny. Must worry so much. The war will get better. I had a letter this morning describing the battle. It's been a most horrible defeat. Wendell will be all right. Here's the morning paper, Dr. Holmes. Thank you. May I see it, doctor, please? It's already open to the casualties. I'll read them to you. Captain Putnam, right arm amputated. Captain Dreyer, carriage, painter, Salem, shot in both sides. O.W. Holmes, company A-24, law student, Boston, wounded in abdomen. Oh, God. Fanny, don't tell his mother. Promise me. And I promise you something. If we get him home alive, we'll never let him go again. I'm Wendell's mother. Fanny and my husband thought they could keep news of Wendell's wound from me, but they couldn't. I knew then as I knew the next time, for he came home and was healed and went again. And this time he was lost on the battlefield. My husband set out to find him, a bewildered search that led him through all the cities of the war until, on the sixth day, our son was found. Home again, healed again, and back to duty, and wounded again. The third time, three wounds had my son, three wounds to save the Union. And then, thank God, peace came. And Wendell could go back to Harvard Law School, and this may sound like motherly pride, but I knew from the beginning he had a future in the law. His father was critical. We were sitting at breakfast with my brother-in-law, John, discussing it. I hope Wendell's made the right decision, returning to the law. Of course he has. He's got a talent for speaking for public expression and debate that'll be useful when he starts to practice. He's quick. There's no denying that. But once he seizes upon a subject, he can't let it go. He worries over it until a bare bone show. Wendell puts a butt at the end of every sentence so he can keep on without a pause. He's so deep in the law, and it's relation to the way that men live together, that he's blind to everything around him. What do you mean, John? I mean Fanny. That girl's in love with him, and he's in love with her, but he does nothing about it. I must talk to him about that. Don't you dare, Oliver. I made that fatal error. I told him he wasn't very smart about girls. And what did he say? He said, not smart about girls, eh? Young fellow, when you learn to manage the ladies as well as I do, you can start giving advice to your old uncle Wendell. I kept my mouth shut after that. But I watched as Wendell graduated from law school and went to work in the office of our old friend, George Shatter. He tried his first case and lost it. I knew he'd never make a trial, though, eh? He was interested in the law, not in clients. So he read and studied and worked, and was finally rewarded with an instructorship at Harvard Law School. And through all this, Fanny waited. I could stand it no longer. On a Sunday, I took him up to the third story of our house to talk to him. I was pretty winded. Yes, sir, stop it, Michael, John. I'd have come up here to get you tobacco for you. I didn't climb these penitential stairs for tobacco. I came about you and Fanny Dixwell. What about Fanny Dixwell? The best girl in Cambridge. There is no higher praise. She is in love with you. I think that's my business, Uncle John, and Fanny's. What is the matter with you, young man? Haven't you looked at Fanny lately? Her eyes, as if someone had whipped her. She is 30. 31, maybe. So are you. Wendell, you have loved that girl for years. We've waited patiently all of us for you to find it out. But there is a man to patience. Yes. You're right, there isn't any patience. Where are you going to ask Fanny to be my wife? And I bet she turns me down. I didn't. We were married, and we went to live with Father and Mother Holmes in the house on Beacon Street. It was money partly, and I didn't like it much. My father-in-law was a great celebrity by now, and we lived in his shadow. Wendell was writing a book of commentary on the law, some of it so technical I couldn't understand it. I knew he'd never get to be a full professor until it was finished, and I knew we'd never have a place of our own until then. It was hard to wait. Then one night, George Shaffer, the attorney for whom Wendell had worked, came to see us. Holmes, you've heard that I'm reorganizing the firm. You're done with your book. How about coming into my office next fall as a partner? You and I and Bill Monroe. I can bring you no clients. We all know that. But you have your uses. It's even possible you know things about the law we business lawyers have missed. I know some things about the law that ought to be changed. And change them. How about you, Vinnie? You think we can keep his nose out of ancient law books long enough to do a little business? To me, you young people might have uses for a little money of your own. I'm all ready debating with myself whether the drapery shall be blue or green. Mr. Shaffer, we're going to have a home of our own. But Holmes never warmed to the law. In the years we practiced together, he was more interested in the lectures he was going to give at Harvard on a common law. Lectures that for the first time made it clear to us were Oliver Wendell Holmes' sturt. And we sat in our office and he told me about them. I knew I was going to lose him. I knew that in his hands, only the beginning of a new idea, a new theory. But still I argued with him. But everything must change with events, George, even the law. But Wendell Law is precedent. A judge must decide as others have decided before him. That's the whole basis of a legal system. No, George. A good judge interprets a law according to the result it'll have upon the community at large. That's a revolutionary idea. No, not at all. The law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries. Law isn't just logic. It's experience. It must enrich men's lives and make for them a better world in which to live. Otherwise, it's a dead and useless science. You say that now. I wonder what will happen if you're ever on the bench. The bench? Oh, there's not a chance. You don't have to worry, George. I'll spend the rest of my life playing nursemaid to our clients. He didn't. He left our firm and accepted a professorship at Harvard. Well, he could continue his research and study. There for the first time, he met a thin black-haired young man with blazing blue eyes. His name was Louis Denbeth Brandeis. He and Wendell became close friends. Tell me, little Lori, what gives you this passion for social reform? What makes you so interested in a common man? Go and see the flums of law. Go and see the way men live in Lawrence, Massachusetts. You'll have your answer. I've got my answer. It's the same as yours. Look at us, Lori. We couldn't be more different. And yet we couldn't be more alike. It's simple. We're both of people with a passion for liberty, but you and I have reached our feeling by different paths. Well, what do you mean, Lori? I was born and raised with the essential need for liberty. You sense that need. Wasn't sensing good enough? Every word you say is proof that it is. Thank you, Lori. It's a privilege to hate the same things that you do. Injustice, tyranny, and the passion of the few to rule the many. Perhaps together we can fight them. Who knows? I doubt that. I'm 40 years old and I'll be Professor Oliver Wendell Holmes of Harvard Law School forever. You are listening to Yankee from Olympus, a radio dramatization of Catherine Drinker-Bowen's number one bestseller featuring Carl Swenson as Oliver Wendell Holmes on the Cavalcade of America sponsored by E.I. Dupont de Nemours and company of Wilmington, Delaware, maker of better things for better living through chemistry. This evening's Cavalcade is the chronicle of Oliver Wendell Holmes whose passion for justice and profound knowledge of the law made him one of America's greatest jurists and revolutionized our legal concepts of democratic rights. In our Cavalcade play, Holmes in 1881 at the age of 40, a professor in the Harvard Law School, believes that he will remain there the rest of his life. In December 1882, Holmes is called out of his classroom by his former legal partner, George Shattuck. Shattuck is the bearer of exciting news. Justice Otis Lloyd is sent in his resignation. Governor Long wants you for that vacancy in the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. He has to submit your name to the council by 12 o'clock. He has to have your consent first. It's 11 now. That gives me exactly one hour to wipe out the past and change the whole future. Surely you're going to accept. George, I have a philosophy about the judicial function of the common law and until now I've talked about it. Now I must live it through and I will. Believe me, I will. My husband began indeed to live it through. It was slow, almost 10 years before he gave voice to the first of the opinions and dissents that were to make him famous. In those years, his mother died and his father, and his uncle John was getting old and feeble. I myself had a long, severe illness, rheumatic fever, but when though we'd begun to call him the judge, quite casually by now, the judge grew in his heart and in his mind. His opinions were always on the side of fairness to the common man and most always they were dissenting opinions. But respect for the judge's courage and far-sightedness was beginning to grow. The world was moving on too. The Spanish-American war was upon us and Uncle John died. The judge was 58, a time when men have a right to think their life's reached the narrowing point. He'd been on the bench 18 years and now he was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. Theodore Roosevelt became president and Theodore Roosevelt wanted my husband as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Wendell hesitated. We talked it over as we talked over all things and I persuaded him to accept. A month later he stood in the great chamber of the court and swore an oath. I, all of the Wendell Holmes, do solemnly swear that I will administer justice without respect to persons. And do equal right to the poor and to the rich. And that I will faithfully and impartially discharge all the duties incumbent upon me as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States according to the best of my abilities and understanding. Agreeably to the Constitution and the laws of the United States. So help me God. Wendell was to utter the dissents and the decisions that were to make him the champion of the people and of the rights of men. The bailiff spoke through the years and my husband and said. Hammer versus taken heart. Child labor can be regulated by Congress. Lochnery versus New York. The liberty of the citizen to do as he pleases does not mean he can force other citizens to work 12 hours a day. Abrams versus the United States. Get low versus the people of New York. Free speech like truth itself cannot be achieved by statute. United States versus Rosika Schwimmer. Free thought not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate. Who as the world moved on and the first world war came and went. My husband became known as the great dissenter but we were both getting old. I was 88 years old when I broke my hip. The judge sat at my bedside. Rest Venice rest. Wendell remember when you won the undergraduate prize for your article on Plato. You said that I was cock sure and that my sentences were stelted and non-certain. That's because I was young and in love. What I really meant to say was that you would be a great man. Not without you Fanny. Thank you Wendell promise me something. Anything Fanny. Be sure to bed down my roses after the frost comes. I'm one of Justice Holmes secretaries. One of many who owe our careers and any understanding we might have to his great heart and incomparable brain. It is hard to watch him growing older after Mrs. Holmes died but his brain never tired. And then three days before his 94th birthday he adjourned her in death. From the floor of Congress from the White House from the Inns of Court in London scholars and statesmen gave tribute and the people mourned. Men called Oliver Wendell Holmes the great dissenter. The title was misleading. To want something fiercely and wanted all the time. This is not dissent but affirmation. The things Holmes wanted were great things yet to be realized. Men are fighting and dying for them now. And to them Oliver Wendell Holmes the Yankee from Olympus would say as he said so often. Whether a man accepts from fortune or spades and will look downward and down the road and will look downward and dig or from aspiration her axe and cord and will scale the ice the one and only success which is his to command is to bring to his work a mighty heart. Thank you Carl Swenson and members of the Cavalcade cast. Now here is Ted Pearson speaking for the DuPont Company to tell us of the use of a new chemical development which helps protect the lives of our merchant seaman. More than 500 Axis submarines have been sent to the bottom in this war. Germany still has you boats but they're now the hunted rather than the hunters. Our effort to end the submarine menace was divided into two parts destroying enemy submarines wherever we could find them and saving men and material from our own ships in case they were torpedoed. The story of the secret devices that help us locate subs and blow them out of the water can't be told until after the war but there's a story of a life-saving suit that can be told. A special sea-going suit of clothes to which many an American seaman knows his life. A splash of flame in the night a ship going down and then bobbing on the dark water a stern little red signal lights marking men who jumped overboard when the torpedo struck. In the old days the icy water of the North Atlantic would have numbed them into unconsciousness and death in half an hour but these men were wearing a new life-saving suit made of DuPont neoprene chemical rubber. Regulations now provide that every merchant seaman on a ship of American registry sailing ocean or coast wise must be provided with one of these life-saving suits. Designed to coast guard specifications they're made in one piece of fabric impregnated and covered with DuPont neoprene with gloves feet and helmet attached. There's a zipper up the front and a drawstring around the neck. Men hop into the suits in a few seconds pull them on right over warm clothes and life belts and then jump into the water and a man floats with his shoulders above water. Weights in the feet of the suit keep him upright. The waterproof suit keeps the heat of the body in and keeps the icy water out. There's a tab on the shoulder to which a signal light can be attached and a harness to make it easy for a rescue craft to hoist a man out of the sea. If a man is pulled out of the water into a lifeboat or onto a raft his suit continues to protect him against the cold and exposure that used to end the lives of so many men adrift at sea. And if a sailor must swim through burning oil on the surface the neoprene suit gives him added protection because neoprene unlike natural rubber resists flame. Leading rubber manufacturers are making these protective suits of DuPont neoprene for merchant seamen. The suits are saving many lives that is their wartime job. And there's every reason to hope that all American merchant ships will carry these new life-saving suits after the war just as many articles you will use after the war will be improved by the qualities found in neoprene. One of the DuPont company's better things for better living through chemistry. Next Monday evening Cavalcade presents What Makes a Hero. The factual story of Jim Slayton, an infantry corporal in the army of the United States. A little man who was called upon to play a big part in the war and who made the most of it. Jim Slayton was undersized in stature but oversized in courage and his fabulous exploits earned in the highest awards of three grateful allied nations. The orchestra and musical score were under the direction of Donald Worries. This is Roland Winters sending best wishes from Cavalcade sponsor E.I. DuPont de Nemours and company of Wilmington, Delaware. Post-war and reconversion planning are going ahead daily in order to provide civilian jobs as war needs decline. But in spite of the optimism of many Americans about an early end to the war in Europe, the hard truth is that today there are shortages of certain critical war materials, notably bombs, trucks and tires. Our military progress has greatly increased requirements for many highly essential items to be delivered on short notice. So long as the war is being fought, our men must have the best materials we can provide. Victory in the shortest possible time cannot be realized unless all available manpower is completely utilized. At this very moment war workers are desperately needed in many areas. So if you are in or near one of these areas, the commanders of our armed forces urge that you get a war job and stick to it to hasten the day of victory. War production must come first. This is the National Broadcasting Company.