The Scopes trial, from the start, has been carried on in a manner exactly fitted to the anti- evolution law and the simian imbecility under it. There hasn't been the slightest pretense to decorum. The rustic judge, a candidate for re-election, has postured the yokels like a clown in a ten-cent side show, and almost every word he has uttered has been an undisguised appeal to their prejudices and superstitions.
H.L. Mencken, July 18, 1925
![](http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/SCO_EVOL.JPG)