Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 16.pdf/644

 Justifiable Rescission.

589

JUSTIFIABLE RESCISSION. BY JOSKPH M. SULLIVAN, Of the Boston Bar. THE little court-room at Barry's Corner was crowded to the doors with village folk, and one and all eagerly awaited the calling of the court calendar. The clerk called the case of Hannah Donovan against Timothy McCauley, and both sides answered ready. Lawyer Tim O'Rouke read the plead ings, and in a simple way told the court of the heartlessness of the defendant. Attorney Barney Gilligan for the defendant admitted the promise to marry, but said that he would offer evidence of a justifiable rescission of the contract. "Hannah Donovan, the plaintiff, testified that she was ready and willing to marry the defendant and that he made an unconditional promise to marry her, which promise the de fendant grossly violated. Cross-examined by Lawyer Gilligan for the defence, the plaintiff admitted that she desired her three maiden sisters to reside with her after her marriage, to which proposition the defendant objected, and in consequence thereof the marriage fell through. "The plaintiff in the action, began Judge Houlihan, in summing up, "admits to an age iv thirty-eight years, an' is clearly at the har vest period iv love. She is just hangin' on to the gutter iv the house iv love, and the feller she scorned whin she was twenty-two, she will hould in a vise at thirty-eight should he happen to put in an appearance. Some fel lers' hearts are like doughnuts; whin Cupid slings his darts they go through the hole, an* don't find any resting place. There are two fellers you can't bate making love an' win ning hearts; it is the lad who carried her slate to school, an' the star boarder or lodger who pays his way in advance. They are pro fessionals at wimmins' hearts; all the rest iv

us are novices. Ivery one gits a dowry iv some soort; if the bride is rich, you git the money; if she is poor, your father-in-law will settle the rist iv the family on you to support. Wimmin can git around a man like a cooper round a barrel; they pritind to give a man his own way just to pacify him, but in reality he is only in the same condition as a tethered animal, he occasionally gets to the ind iv his tether, but the wimmin retain complete control iv all his actions unbeknownest to himself. "Laundries and delicattessen stores are to blame for the increase in old bachelors; the wimmin dodge the washing, and that manes a hundred dollars a year more for washing, or the equivalent iv four months' rint, an' they are beginning to dodge cooking, an' a twentieth-cintury groom wakes up an finds himself without a laundry or a larder at home, an' for all intints an' purposes he might as well be wedded to a Chinese laun dry or a frankfurt establishment. "Now ivery man knows that whare three ould maids are to live under the one roof there's bound to be throuble; they would be chattering like magpies all the day long, and poor Tim would eventually have to ind his days in an asylum. Hannah encountered a legal Norman's Woe whin she put conditions on a contract which was otherwise absolute; she should have performed her part iv the contract an' thin had her sisters come to live wid her afterwards, but not doing so, I must find that she did not offer her heart in fee simple to Tim, but gave him a contingint re mainder, an' my finding must be that there was no mating iv minds an' there must be judgment for the defindant.''