matters judicial are concerned, the people seem this year to be in the accusative mood. Moral : the ser vant is not greater than his master.
LEGAL VULGAR ERRORS. — Under this title the "London Law Journal " gives a very readable article, with most of which one finds no difficulty in agree ing. A sample of its scope may be extracted as follows : — "The idea that an Englishman has a common-law right to take his wife to market for sale with a halter round her reck now only lingers in the mind of the intelligent for eigner and some North-country miners, but the related superstition that a husband may beat or imprison his wife died hard only quite recently in the Jackson case. These, and a good many other vulgar legal errors, seem to be the shadows cast by traditional usage or obsolete statutes, such, for instance, as that bull-beef may not be sold unless the bull has first been baited; that no one may shoot a crow within five miles of London, or carry a dark lantern; or, more singular still, that the owner of an ass must crop its ears to prevent it frightening horses on the road. The idea that an heir could not be disinherited unless he was given a shilling still survives in the phrase being 'cut off with a shilling.' When Sheridan was threatened with this last extremity by an indignant parent, he replied with characteristic coolness, ' You don't happen to have the «hilling about you, sir, do you?' This demand was pre mature; the said shilling need only (according to the vulgar view) be given by will."
Our impression has always been that the point of Sheridan's joke was his pretended eagerness to get the shilling ahead of the legal time, as he was an un scrupulous borrower and conscious spendthrift. We might add to the Journal's list two vulgar errors extremely common in America, and very likely in England, — one that a witness may escape the penal ties of perjury by simply kissing his thumb instead of the book, and the other that girls come of age at eighteen instead of twenty-one. We have some where read an ingenious vulgar way of evading the sanction of a part of the customary marriage vow, to the effect that a Sussex, England, horticultural correspondent announces, on the authority of his vicar, that nine out of ten among the humbler brides swear to "love and honor cherries and a berry. It is doubtless true that the promise, " with all my worldly goods I thee endow," menns in the common understanding to hand over all the said goods includ ing lands, tenements, and hereditaments, instead of a mere pledge of a dower right So the poor women almost universally suppose that their "thirds" means the ownership, and not merely the life use, of a third. The Journal includes among vulgar errors the notion that a deed executed on Sunday is void, and so it is an error at common law; but not so in some of our States, in one of which pious communi
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ties even a subscription on Sunday for church pur poses was held void. But the Journal is certainly wrong in saying that it is an error to suppose that "you may shoot a burglar or a cat trespasser which is making night hideous on the tiles." If the bur glar is in your house, and not on the tiles, you may safely assume that he means mischief to the inmates and kill him out of hand, and we are not sure that you may not slay him on the tiles. It is a case of the castle being threatened by night. As to the cat, it was long ago gravely held by the Supreme Court of this Slate (Brill ». Flagler. 23 Wend. 354), that you may kill an offending dog in similar circum stances. Said the great Judge Nelson, " It would be mockery to refer a party to his remedy by action; it is far too dilatory and impotent for the exigency of the case." See to the same effect, " Mother Hubbard's Dog," 4 Green Bag, 279. Still fewer rights has the cat. for she (and especially he) is far less useful, and spite of Shakespeare, is not " necessary." It is also a vulgar error to suppose that " drawn," in the ancient punishment of treason, meant evisceration. It simply meant dragged to the place of execution on a sledge, and the correct form of sentence was " drawn, hanged, and quartered." Evisceration followed after death. "PRINCETON SKETCHES." — This is the title of an attractive book of some two hundred pages, pub lished by Messrs. Putnam's Sons, of New York. The volume is beautifully printed, and charmingly and lavishly illustrated. The sub-title is " The Story of Nassau Hall;" and this is well told, and will prove interesting to graduates and patrons of this "fine old college, :> as Dr. McCosh reasonably calls it. Prince ton is probably more celebrated for the strength of the Calvinistic doses and of the football game which it "puts up," than for anything else in the estimation of the current young man; but it is a highly respect able institution, with an interesting history, ancient, for this country, and a highly honorable and useful record. It has had important endowments in recent times, and has taken a great stride in advance. If the Easy Chair had a son. he would not prohibit his going to Princeton, if he desired, but he would strictly bar out its theology and its football.
NOTES OF CASES
OBSTRUCTING THE HIGHWAY. — In Barber v. Penley, '93, 2 Ch. 447, it was substantially held, as we are given to understand — the text of the decision has not come under the Easy Chair's rocker — that an actor in a theatre may be restrained from being
