Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 7.djvu/885

 UNITED STATES STAMPINO CO. V. JEWETT. 873 �Weber. These cireumstances are alluded to as evincing a tend- ency on the part of Mr. Adams, honest and sincere thongh it may be, to remember things which did not occur, and to place events which did occur at an earlier date than they actually oceurred. Such a habit of mind.in the presence of the affidavit made by him ; and of the fact that he took an active and zeal- 0U8 part in the procuring of the witnesses who testified for the defendant ; and of the faet that many of such witnesses were or had been his employes ; and of the fact that they, and others of the witnesses, were in a position naturally to respond to hip influence upon their memories in a direction consonant with his own memory, in a matter which for them had no inter- est, but for him had an interest to be measured only by the positiveness of his assertions in his affidavit, — such a habit of mind is to be taken into consideration when weighing his pwn evidence, and that of such other witnesses, as to the date of the Weber structure. The testimony of Mr. Adams as to the sale of the Weber cuspidors to anybody is entirely vague and unreliable. It is not supported by any written or record evidence, or by any testimony from the alleged purchasers. His dates of events, in his testimony, are shown to be as unreliable as his dates in his affidavit. �As to one of the Weber cuspidors which Mr. Adams had in his house, given to him by Weber, Mr. Adams states, in his testimony, that he had it in his family as early as 1868, — prob- ably,he says,the first of January, 1868, — and that itwas a New Year's present to aid in furnishing a new library, completed in 1867. Mrs. Adams, his wife, testifies that this Weber cus- pidor was brought to her house in 1867 or 1868, after the library was completed, and two years certainly before she went to Europe, which was July 12, 1870; that she connected it with another gift which was received about the same time — a fire-screen — given by Mr. John Dow, the screen being a eut- glass one, in which the cuspidor was reflected; that the cus- pidor was also reflected in a mirror and in the Windows of a book-case ; and that, the room appearing to be full of cuspi- dors, the article was sent into the attic. Miss King, Mrs. Adams' daughter, who lived in Mr. Adams' family from 1866 ��� �