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Burlingham used to say, “Why, you have to go through emissaries to see him,” some of which was true. But the man was delicate and nervous and aging, and it is quite true that Mr. Brandeis thought of himself as a prophet. I don't think there's any question about it. He thought he knew better than most people. He had almost no humor, none whatever, not a trace of it. He had that curiously romantic Israelite look, seeing far into the future and deep into the background of life, having certain principles, such as that anything big is wrong in itself. Bigness is wrong just of itself, and that no situation, no enterprise, no organization that is larger than one man can carry in his own mind, completely and in detail, can ever be good, or right, or moral, or even, he used to think, successful. It will end by destroying itself. Of course, there's much to be said for that, I think myself, but he made a moral issue out of it and would give pronunciamentos on the subject. All this, I think, annoyed Burlingham.
Other people would question me when I went around the country - “Why do we have so many old men on the Supreme Court?” The phrase the “nine old men” came out of the “Washington Merry-Go-Round” column of Pearson and Allen. That had been published in the
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