guest in artistic circles; his keen sporting instincts made him a familiar figure in the world of sport, and rendered him a popular host at his country house near Scarborough; and his early efforts on the stage and the deep interest he took in the drama brought him the friendship of the leaders of the dramatic profession. His death has created in the social world a gap no less wide than it has created at the bar." His address on Dickens, with a picture from his pencil of Sergeant Buzfuz, rests on our shelves and forms a pleasant reminder of this genial gentleman and charming companion.
NOTES OF CASES. An Indisputable Proposition. — The leading head-note to Dennis v. Dennis, 68 Conn. 186; 57 Am. St. Rep. 95, is as follows: " ' Habitual intem perance ' is a condition; and when any person gets into that condition he is said to be ' habitually intem perate. Exactly so. " It is a condition and not a theory that confronts us." Q. e. d.
Mental Suffering. — We regret to see that the Iowa Supreme Court, in Mentzer v. Western Union Telegraph Co., 93 Iowa, 752; 57 Am. St. Rep. 295, at last surrender themselves to the ridiculous heresy that damages may be awarded for mental suffering on account of the negligent failure of a telegraph com pany to deliver a message. There is little use in arguing the question, for a court that can bring itself to believe that damages for mental suffering are a proper part of the recovery for unintentional breach of contract will believe anything. This fantastic doc trine was never dreamed of for fifty years, until the Texas court, which seems to dwell in the border-land of legal dreams, laid it down in the So Relle case (55 Tex. 308; 40 Am. Rep. 805). In the Iowa case the court try to cover themselves with the theory that the recovery may be either in contract or for wrong, under which theory a similar recovery might be justified for willful refusal to deliver stocks accord ing to contract; and it may well be believed that the feelings of a stock speculator would be more deeply wounded by such a failure than by the loss of an op portunity to be present at his mother's funeral. The Iowa court essay to cite the authorities pro and con on this question. On their side they correctly array Texas, Tennessee, Indiana, Alabama, North Caro lina, Kentucky, and wrongly Illinois: on the other side they cite a Federal circuit, Dakota, Kansas, Mississippi, Georgia, Missouri, Florida, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, but omit Ohio (Morton v. Western Union Telegraph Co., 53 Ohio St. 431; 53 Am. St.
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Rep. 448); Arkansas, and two States which are prac tically committed to the other doctrine (Wyman v. Leavitt, 71 Maine, 227; 36 Am. Rep. 303; Mitchell v. Rochester Ry. Co., 151 N. Y. 107; 56 Am. St. Rep. 604) . Most of the cases cited by the Iowa court, and the other courts agreeing with it, are those of positive corporeal injury, or of trespass on lands or person, or of interference with another's right of some kind, in which such damages may properly be allowed; as for wrongful ejection from a railway train, and in assault, like the famous case of the railroad conductor kissing the female passenger (Craker v. Chicago, etc. Ry. Co., 36 Wis. 657; 17 Am. Rep. 507); or that of the wrongful removal of a child's body from the lot where the parent had buried it (Meagher v. Driscoll, 99 Mass. 281; 96 Am. Dec. 759); or that of the unauthorized dissection of the dead body of the plain tiff's husband (Larson v. Chase, 47 Minn. 307; 28 Am. St. Rep. 370); or that of seduction (Stevenson v. Helknap, 6 Iowa, 103; 71 Am. Doc. 392). In all such cases there is an exterior basis, on which to found damages for mental suffering, in the wrong done to, or outrage inflicted on. something else than the mere mind or affections. In other words, in such cases mental suffering may properly be regarded as an aggravation of the other injury. But such injury must always be willfully tortious, and not merely neg ligent. The action for breach of promise of marriage is cited as an instance to sustain the rulings in ques tion, but that is a case of intentional breach of a con tract which deals not only with business, but with feelings. The domain into which the principle has been carried by these Southern and Western courts is too vague and boundless to form the proper dwel ling-place of a legal doctrine. Carried to its legit imate conclusion, it would justify a recovery for out raged feelings in every case of intentional breach of contract. All the plaintiff would have to do would be to testify that the breach made him feel mad or bad, and the work is done. How bad or how mad would always be mere guesswork. A case of grief might easily be imagined so deep that it would result in chronic melancholy, as where an hysterical woman should be deprived of the satisfaction of attending the funeral of her sister-in-law (whom perhaps she had not seen for a generation) and observing how unbecoming w;eeds were to the other female relatives. Mental suffering is all very well as a fruit, when it legitimately hangs on a twig connected by a branch with a trunk proceeding from the soil; but if courts will make an independent tree of it, it will prove an unwholesome upas. We quite fully agree with the Minnesota court when it says that " the harvest of 'intolerable litigation' which is being reached in Texas has not yet matured in those states " (Ala bama, Kentucky, Tennessee. Xorth Carolina and In
