Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 7.djvu/69

 BROWN V. MBMPHI8 A 0. B. 00. 57 �who make disturbances on board, or -wliose characters are doubtful or dissolute or suspicious, a.na, a fortiori, yfhoae char- acters are unequivocally bad," he moans character, habits, and conduot that are injurious to the other passengers in the sense that it subjects them to loss at the hands of the thief or gambler, to discorafort by reason of personal trespass and insalt, or to annoyance by the exhibition of gross and vulgar habits. He does not mean that the common carrier, in the interest of the public, or its own aupposed interest, shall beoome a oensor of individual morals by assuming to classify his passengers according to his own idea, more or less fastidi- ous, of their character or conduct, as established by their private lives. The carrier has nothing whatever to do ■with private character or conduct, except so far as it furnishes him with evidence of a probable injury about to be inflicted on his other passengers or his business. He must carry all who come properly dressed, and who behave genteelly, and cannot classify them according to their general moral repu- tations, though he may exolude those who are at the time inflictinginjury and annoyance, or who have so unequivocally bad reputations for some vice that tends to injure and annoy the passengers, that he has reasonable grounds to assume that they will, if permitted to remain, put the vice in prac- tice ; nor need he wait for an overt act. It is easy enough to imagine the case of a dissolute man or woman so abandoned to habits of unchastity that either would, in a rallroad car, give just offence by lascivious solicitations, the exhibition of indelicate manners, or the use of improper language ; and a reputation for such conduct would justify exclusion. This is the issue made by the special plea here, and the one sub- mitted to the jury, and found against the defendant corpora- tion under a charge almost identical with the language of this opinion on that point. �The difficulty in this case arises from the fact that the defendant was not willing to confine the issue to that of- the special plea, which. alleged that the plaintifl was a notorious courtesan, addicted to the use of profane and in- decent language in public places, and of gross and vulgai ��� �