Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 03.pdf/59

 40 plaintiff deposed that the wife of the defend ant, when a single woman, contracted with him to get her a husband, saying she was twenty-six, not married yet, and feared she never would be; and if he would get Der rick to marry her, she would pay him five per cent upon fifty pounds a year. He brought the pair together, and considered that the husband was bound to fulfil the wife's agreement. As regards matrimonial contracts, the sexes are assuredly not on an equality. When Miss Roxalana Hoonan sued Mr. Earle, in a Brooklyn court, for breach of promise, she admitted the gentleman had never promised marriage by his hand or tongue, but he had kissed her in company; and Judge Neilson told the jury that no exchange of words was necessary, — " the gleam of the eye and the conjunction of the lips being overtures when frequent and protracted; " and thus instructed, they made the defendant pay fif teen thousand dollars for heedlessly indulg ing in eye-gleams and lip-conjunctions. In 1870 a lady purchased about a thousand dollars' worth of jewelry in Paris, the jewel ler giving her a written promise to exchange the articles if not approved. She wore them for half-a-dozen years, and then intimated to the astonished man her desire to change them for others of a newer style. He natu rally demurred, arguing, as his advocate urged before the civil tribunal, that it was unrea sonable that he should be called upon to accept, at the price originally paid for them, trinkets that had been constantly used for six years. The court, nevertheless, decided that the agreement did not define the period during which the exchange might be made, and he must do his customer's bidding. A similar case was decided in London against a well-known jeweller, who, having promised to take back a diamond ring if not approve l 1

of, was obliged to do so, though his customer had retained it for three years. Sharp practice is not always so successful. A gentleman took railway tickets for himself and his servants. After the passengers were seated, it was found expedient to divide the train, — the gentleman being in the first part. When the servants, who were in the second part, were asked for tickets, they had none, and were thereupon turned out of their places and left behind. The gentleman sued the company. The latter brought forward their by-law, setting forth that no passenger would be allowed to enter a carriage without having first obtained a ticket, to be produced upon demand. The court very properly overruled the plea; de ciding that by delivering the tickets to the master and not to the servants severally, the company had contracted with him person ally, and could not justify their failure to carry out the contract they had made. A young man, losing his wits through parental thwarting of his matrimonial aspira tions, was placed in an asylum. Having occasion to leave his charge for a few min utes, the attendant forgot to lock the door upon him. The lunatic, taking advantage of the oversight, slipped out of the room, made his way to an upper gallery, smashed the window and leaped out, falling some thirty feet. The shock restored his reason, but he was crippled for life; and his father brought an action against the superintendent of the asylum for compensation. The judge ruled that the superintendent could not be held guilty of neglect because his subor dinate failed in his duty, and so saved the jury the trouble of assessing damages, which, supposing they set the benefit done to the patient's mind against the injury done to his limbs, would have been a difficult matter for calculation.