vailing in several states under which a murderer can inherit or take under the will of his victim. In other words, to save those courts the necessity of any longer enunciating folly on this subject. Think of a statute enacting that no highway robber should be entitled to the valuables of which he despoils his victim!,No one has as yet deemed it essential to have such a law enacted. What difference does it make whether the victim's property is on his person or off it, or whether the criminal merely robs him or adds murder to his offense? In fact, under the decisions in question, it is safer to kill the possessor, provided the offender is willing to run his risk of detection or of punishment. No court has uttered good sense on this point except the New York Court of Appeals. The contrary de cisions constitute a curious instance of the benumb ing of the moral and logical senses by habitual stick ing in the back. "Physician Heal Thyself." — The Lord Chief Justice recently made an excellent speech on legal education, favoring the establishment of a great cen tral school of law, under the control of the existing legal authorities. In the course of that speech, given in full in the Law Journal, he is reported to have said: "Clearness above all things, with incisiveness and directness next, are qualities which stand by any man who has to use his tongue." This is clear, but it would be better if it were grammatical. His next sentence is better: "But while I have known hundreds of men who could, with facility and elegance, not to say glibness, say nothing, I have never known a man who had anything worth saying, who was not in command of adequate language to express it." With a very few exceptions, as in the instances of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and General Grant, and others incurably timid in speech, the utterance is correct. Schools that teach men to reason and think are more useful than those which teach them to speak.
The Genesis of Jokes. — In an exchange we find the following anecdote of Lord Chief-Justice Russell : " On another occasion, when he was visit ing this country, he was walking beside the Potomac river one day with William M. Evarts, who was then Secretary of State. When they arrived at a certain part of the river Mr. Evarts paused. 'This,' said he, ' is the place where George Washington threw a dollar across the Potomac' ' Oh,' responded Rus sell, ' that must have been quite an easy task for a man who cast a sovereign over the Atlantic' " It would seem that Mr. Evarts must be in constant at tendance on the shore of the Potomac, during the visits of the Lord Chief Justices, for it was reported
that when Lord Coleridge was visiting Mt. Vernon, Mr. Evarts made the same remark, and his lordship expressing surprise, because the river is there at least a mile wide, Evarts replied, " But you know that in those days a dollar went further than it does now." Old Hickory.— In the last issue of the " American Law Review" is a sketch of " Mr. Justice Jackson," part of an address delivered before the Tennessee Bar Association last summer by our distinguished friend, Seymour D. Thompson. It forms mighty good read ing, and the pages contain nothing unfavorable to the great hero except his portrait. We are glad to learn that it was " delivered orally," and not served upon the audience in writing. Thompson can describe a battle better than any other living writer — a great deal better than Professor Sloane, for example, who has achieved the distinction of making Napoleon's battles dull — and he can get himself madder, and make his readers madder, over history than anybody else. In reading his remarks on the employment by the English of the Indians in war against our people, and his denouncing a death by torture at their hands of King George Third as " retributive justice," it occurs to us, through a recent perusal of that eminent historical treatise, " The Last of the Mohicans," that the Indians always spared the insane.
NOTES OF CASES. "A Young Lady." — Some delicate satire was indulged in by Biddle, P. J., in his charge to the jury in Maher v. Phila. Traction Co., 181 Pa. St., 391. This action was brought by the administrator of the decedent alleged to have been killed by the negligence of the defendant. On the question of compensation, he said : " Unfortunately the young lady is not here to receive whatever sum you should think her due. . . . The trouble in all these cases is that most of them tend very much to excite one's feelings, particularly in a case where an accident like this happens to a young and attractive girl. Our sympathies are so excited that when we have listened to eloquent counsel, we can hardly come down to consider the matter, as we are bound to consider it, as a matter of business. . . . This young lady was six years of age. You will have to determine her earning power — how much it was." The satire was apparently wasted, for the jury gave a verdict for $8,000, and this was sustained on the appeal.
An Extraordinary Monument. — The case of Smith's Estate, 181 Pa. St., 109, exhibits an in stance of posthumous vanity and extravagance.
