inventor and test the credulity or patience of his readers, but can answer no useful purpose. Contem porary estimate is the best test after all. Bacon was regarded as deserving of serious blame by his contemporaries for accepting presents from suitors in his court, and nobody but Mr. Hepworth Dixon ever , was robust enough to gainsay the opinion. Jeffreys was regarded by the best of his contemporaries as a cruel monster. It would be a darker picture than is justified by history, to set forth Jeffreys and Scroggs as fairly representing the moral and judicial sense of their era. Indeed, as to Jeffreys, there is pretty direct evidence that he was not so regarded, for the trembling wretch narrowly escaped death at the hands of a mob on his downfall. Such gross mis representations of history as this ought not to be encouraged even in the mild and polite way of our learned contemporary. There may be something to palliate the offence of Judas, and he gave evidence of remorse; for Jeffries there is not a word of excuse possible, except possibly that he was a veritable lunatic. Israel Putnam. — Speaking of Lampblack re minds us that among other heroes of the American Revolution General Putnam has suffered some obscur ation of his fame at the hands of modern historians. Mr. Dawson, of Yonkers, a good many years ago, made an attack on him, in which he essayed to show that the scene of his famous ride, " Breakneck hill," at Greenwich, Conn., was a very moderate declivity, down which, as we should infer, for the purpose of up-to-date comparison, a school-boy would ride his bicycle with indifference and safety. But now within a few weeks conies Mr. Clinton Scollard, poet, in glowing and patriotic verse, to celebrate "Israel Putnam's Ride." One stanza runs thus : "Into the valley a rocky stair Led from an ancient house of prayer; Out from the highway he leaped his steed, And dashed adown at a desperate speed, While round about him he heard the hum Of the bullets of those who dared not come; Flinging a taunt at each red-coat clown, On he rode into Stamford town, Gathered all who could strike a blow, And backward turned to harry the foe." Mr. Scollard should peruse Mr. Dawson's criti cisms. That iconoclastic writer, in commenting on the allegation that Putnam's blanket was riddled by Indian bullets on his escape from captivity in Canada, acutely suggests that as he must have worn the blanket rolled up on his back, one bullet would have appeared, when the blanket was unrolled, to have made a great number of holes. As to the general's rides, we have an impression that his ride from his
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farm in Pomfret to the war, on his horse unharnessed from the plough, left sticking in the furrow, is more worthy of eulogy than his ride down Breakneck hill. The latter was to "get there," and the former was only to get away from there. Mr. Dawson also girds considerably at the wolf-den exploit, but that must have been true, for there is a picture of it on an old tavern sign preserved at the Grand Union hotel at Saratoga. A Correction. — The air is full of war. It even pervades the printing-shop. In last month's Easy Chair, the last word in the first paragraph on page 172 is rather seriously misinterpreted. We wrote "sticking in the bark" but the printer, doubtless thinking wrathfully about the " Maine " and Spanish manners, has rendered the phrase, " sticking in the back."1 There is a difference between close con struction and assassination.
NOTES OF CASES. An Hysterical Verdict. — In Slingerland v . East Jersey Water Works Co., 58 N. J. E. 411, a girl of eighteen was left by her father for a few hours in charge of his farm in his absence. In his absence workmen came to lay down water pipes in land con demned for that purpose. She put herself in the way of the laborers, and they mildly removed her, and once a pipe rolled gently against her. She alleged that this shook her nerves, and a jury gave her S5, 000. The court set the verdict aside, observ ing : " When a girl of eighteen entered upon the extravagance enterprise of placing her body as an obstacle in the way of over fifty laborers in the prose cution of their work, it is plain that she must have been wrought up to the highest point of nervous excitement, and if disease in that time ensued the cause is obvious. A Cold-Blooded Verdict. — In Miller v. Dela ware, etc., R. Co., j8 N. J. L. 428, the plaintiff, a woman, had sustained a serious, painful and chronic hurt in her stepping off a car at an insufficiently lighted landing. There was no counter evidence. The jury awarded her six cents! The court set it aside, observing that " so miscompulous a body should not be permitted to settle the rights of either the plaintiff or defendant."
"Family Expense." — A diamond shirt stud worn by the husband, is a " family expense," for which both husband and wife are chargeable. Nearham v. McNair (Iowa), 38 L. R. A. 847. The court observed : —
