Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 05.pdf/34

 Practical Tests in Evidence. Many men are like Job Trotter, who had "a main in his head as was always turned on." In one of Jean Paul Richter's tales, " Walt and Vult," a testator left his estate to that one of his relatives who should first shed a tear in his memory on the reading of the will. The struggles of the assemblage to pump up the essential condition precedent are very amus ingly described. Great and sincere grief is more apt to stun than to melt, and is far more painful and dangerous to the sufferer than the noisy and demonstrative. The great seer of the human mind said most exquisitely and truthfully, — "Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak Whispers the o'erfraught heart and bids it break."

And again, — "Sorrow concealed, like an oven stopped, L)oth burn the heart to cinders."

Many a juryman is melted to tears by the paid rhetoric and oratory of counsel, and would not shed a tear on finding his wife or child dead on his return home.

PHOTOGRAPHS.

ment of right? Every object seen with the natural eye is only seen because photographed on the retina. In life the impression is transitory; it is only when death is at hand that it remains per manently fixed on the retina. Thus we are secure in asserting that no witness ever swore to a thing seen by him without swearing from a photograph. What we call sight is but the impression made on the mind through the retina of the eye, which is nature's camera. Science has discovered that a perfect photograph of an object, reflected in the eye of one dying, remains fixed on the retina after death. (See recent experiments stated by Dr. Vogel in the May number, 1877, of the Philadelphia Photographic Journal.) Take the case of a mur der committed on the highway; on the eye of the victim is fixed the perfect likeness of a human face. Would this court exclude the knowledge of that fact from the jury, on the trial of the man against whom the glazed eye of the murdered man thus bore testimony? In other words, would a living eye-witness, whose memory only preserved the fleeting photograph of the deed, be heard, and the permanent photograph on the dead man's eye be excluded? We submit that the eye of the dead man would furnish the best evidence that the ac cused was there when the deed was committed, for it would bear a fact, needing no effort of memory to preserve it. It would not be parol evidence based on uncertain memory, but the handwriting of nature, preserved by nature's camera."

Photographs have been much resorted to in our courts in late years for many pur poses, as in questions of personal identity, to show localities, to test handwriting, and the like. In Eborn v. Zimpleman, 47 Tex. The photographic copies were held im 503, s. c. 26 Am. Rep. 315, counsel made proper in that case, and leaning to the same the following ingenious plea for the intro view is Matter of Foster's Will, 34 Mich. 21; duction of photographic copies instead of while the contrary view is supported by Re original writings : — Stephens, 9 C. P. 187; s. c. 8 Eng. (Moak) "Until photography was discovered, nothing in 481; Leathers v. Salvor Wrecking Co., 2 nature was exactly like any other thing, except Wood, 682. that thing's image reflected in a polished surface, Photographs of the defendants were re which disappeared when the object was removed. ceived in People v. Smith, 121 N. Y. 578, to Until this discovery there was, therefore, reason in prove their identity with persons formerly the rule which required the production of the convicted in Philadelphia. original paper writing as the best evidence of its In comparison of handwriting magnified appearance. Science now steps forward and re lieves the difficulty, by making permanent, and photographs are much received, under de materializing with minute exactness the reflected cisions like that in Marcy v. Barnes, 16 Gray, image. What reason thus remains why a dis 161, which holds them admissible "under covery which destroys the foundation for a rule proper precautions in relation to the pre should not be used as proposed in the ascertain liminary proof as to the exactness and ac