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560 to the wife of the murdered man, who, sitting somewhat apart, was looking daggers at the jury], "and, sir, bringing her gray hairs in sorrow to the grave. For you are to be hanged, sir, — to be —" "S ," broke in Robinson, unable to contain himself any longer, and dropping the judicial tide in his desperation, " you are making a —— fool of yourself. The jury has brought in a verdict of ' Not guilty '! " — Harper's Magazine.

NOTES.

I

"Thus the whirligig of time brings in its re venges." In People v. Wight, 38 Mich. 744, it I was held that where a wife chokes a man while her husband robs him, the jury may find that she did not act under her husband's coercion. Mr. Bumble the beadle's indignant protest against the theory of marital coercion recurs to us, when, after being henpecked all his married life, he was told that in the eye of the law his wife had been coerced by him in committing a felony in his pres ence : " If that is the eye of the law, the law is a! ass . . . and a bachelor." I I ! In the Chief Court of Law of Grenada there I used to be a picture of a disrobed man with a large bundle of papers under his arm and cer ' tain words proceeding out of his mouth, of which these are a translation : " I, who won my suit, am now stripped to the skin; what, then, must be the fate of him who lost it?" ' From John La Farge's " An Artist's Letters from Japan," in the April "Century," we quote, as follows, of the laws of Iye'yasu : — "These laws, based on the old feudal habits, and influenced and directed by the great Chinese doc trines of relationships and duties, are not laws as we think of law, nor were they to be published. They were to be kept secret for the use of the Tokugawa house; to serve as rules for conduct in using their power, so as to secure justice, which is in return to secure power, that exists for its own end in the mind of rulers. These laws, some of which are reflections, or moral maxims, or references to the great man's ex perience, made out a sort of criminal code, — the rela tions of the classes. — matters of rank and etiquette.

and a mechanism of government They asserted the supremacy and at the same time destroyed the power of the mikado, and by strict rules of succession, resi dence, and continued possession bound up the feudal nobles. They reasserted the great individual virtues of filial piety and of feudal loyalty, and insisted on the traditions of military honor. 1 The sword ' was to be 1 the soul of the Samurai; ' and with it these have carried the national honor and intelligence in its peculiar expressions. "Full recognition was given to the teaching, ' Thou shalt not lie beneath the same sky, nor tread on the same earth, with the murderer of thy lord.' The rights of the avenger of blood were admitted, even though he should pay the penalty of his life. "Suicide, which had long been a Japanese develop ment of chivalrous feeling and military honor, was still to be regarded as purifying of all stain, and, for the first time, allowed in mitigation of the death penalty. "Indeed, half a century later, the forty-seven Ronin (' wave-people,' — Samurai who had lost their natural lord and their rights) were to die in glorious suicide, carrying out the feudal ideal of fidelity. "You know the story probably: at any rate, you will find it in Mitford's tales of old Japan. It is a beautiful story, full of noble details, telling how, by the mean contrivance of a certain lord, the Prince of Ako was put in the wrong, and his condemnation to death and confiscation obtained. And how, then, forty-seven gentlemen, faithful vassals of the dead lord, swore to avenge the honor of their master, and for that purpose to put aside all that might stand in the way. For this end they put aside all else they cared for, even wife and children, and through every obstacle pursued their plan up to the favorable mo ment when they surprised, on a winter night, in his palace, among his guards, the object of their ven geance, whose suspicions had been allayed by long delay. And how his decapitated head was placed by them upon his victim's tomb, before the forty-seven surrendered themselves to justice, and were allowed to commit suicide by hara-kiri, and how they have since lived forever in the memory of Japan."

The Court of Appeals of Kentucky recently de cided a novel suit in regard to the enforcement of a promise for the cessation of the tobacco habit. April, 1880, Mrs. Sallie D. Stemmons, of Bourbon County, Ky., made an agreement in writing with her step-grandson, Albert R. Talbott, that she would give him five hundred dollars if he would never take another chew of tobacco or smoke an other cigar from that time until her death. At the same time the grandson stipulated to refund double