Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 2.djvu/152

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UNITED STATES v. COMAROTA.
145

property, not by virtue of the codicil, but under the will, through which title passes to them.

The testator is presumed to have used words in their natural sense, and when in the codicil he authorizes the executer to divide all of his estate, etc., it cannot be said that the words imported devise all his estate and authorized the executor to divide it, when by such construction a radical change would take place in the will, and bequests be revoked which were made by express terms. The intention of the testator is to be gathered from the will and codicil; both must be construed together. The words "divide" and "devise" are both Used in the will—the former confined to an act to be done by the executor—and it would be a strained construction to say that in the codicil the testator intended by the use of the word "divide" to do more than authorize a change in the division of that portion of the estate already devised by the will to the widow and children.

I see no ambiguity in the language of the codicil, and its terms are not inconsistent with the special devise of the Minnesota land to the plaintiffs. Having arrived at this conclusion, it is unnecessary to consider the case any further.

Judgment for plaintiffs.




The United States v. Comarota.

(District Court, S. D. New York. March 13, 1880.)

Imports— Withdrawal From Warehouse—Duties on—Reqliquidation of.

S. L. Woodford, District Attorney, for plaintiff.

Hartley & Coleman, for defendant.

Choate, D. J. This case has been tried by the court upon a waiver of the jury. The facts are agreed.

The suit is to recover a balance of duties on goods imported by the defendant. The goods were imported and entered for warehouse September 29, 1874. On the twenty-eighth of