violence round the pendant world. We can not come at present. Trusting this will not inconve nience you." This letter which was read as the pro duction of a " mind diseased," was heard with con siderable laughter in court. The merriment was however directed into another channel when counsel in support of the will produced a pocket edition of Shakespeare and elicited the fact that the alleged in sane production was merely an adapted quotation from memory of certain passages in Hamlet and Measure for Measure. Hardly a school-boy in this country would not have recognized their parentage. Those English must have been of the class of whom it is related that one hearing Hamlet for the first time, turned to a friend and exclaimed in surprise, " Why, how full of quotations this play is!"
A Rural Doctrine. — To find anything amusing in the " Law Quarterly Review " is so unusual that it ought to be celebrated and commemorated. Lest our readers should not discover what we now refer to we give below an extract from an article on " Contin gent Remainders " by T. Cyprian Williams in the July number : — "The true source of the error promulgated in Whitby v. Mitchell appears in 1786 in a somewhat confused opinion of Mr. Booth, which he afterwards acknowledged to have been written when he was in the country and extremely engaged. In this he not only stated that a limitation to the first son of an unborn tenant for life is a possibility upon a possibility, but also asserted that the possible children ofUn born children are such as the law will not expect. The un soundness, nay, the utter rottenness of this proposition is exposed by what has been said above as to the validity of gifts to a man's issue or descendants. But what a wanton perversion is here to the doctrine against double possibilities! In the name of our common humanity why should a man's descendants be expected to fail after the first generation. Are not our offspring of like passions with ourselves? Words fail to express our abhorrence of the monstrous unreason of Mr. Booth's supposition. There was no need for him to tell us that his opinion was of the kind that is produced ' in the country'; it is evident that he had come under the spell of the wood-nymphs. The piping of the god Pan must have charmed him till he spake with the spirit of Dogberry and of Bumble; for to formulate such a doctrine as his is indeed to write down the law an ass. Surely our common law is undeserving of this insult. It takes due notice of natural phenonema, and favors the lawful propagation of the race. lias it not rejected all conditions in general restraint of marriage as ' repugnant to the original institution of the creation of mankind?'"
NOTES OF CASES. Fortune Telling. — Our prophetic friend at Atlantic City, according to the law, is liable to pro secution as a " disorderly person." People v.
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Elmer, 109 Mich. 493. By the English statute he would be "a rogue and a vagabond." Penny v. Hanson, 16 Cox C. C. 173. In the Michigan case the " Doctor" had testified on his own behalf, and admitted that he had advised a woman, one of the witnesses for the people, to leave her husband, be cause when he was in a trance he had seen him in the act of killing her. {Vide Hawthorne's tale, "The Prophetic Pictures.") The able doctor could tell how much money one had in his pocket, and what he had eaten during the last twenty-four hours.
"Mad Cow." — In Rivard v. Rivard, 109 Mich. 114, an action to set aside a will on account of de lusions of the testator against his children, whom he disinherited, it was shown that he became angry at them, and turned them out of his house, telling them to " go and eat mad cow." He was evidently of French extraction, and on the trial testimony was adduced to explain the meaning of the singular phrase. In French it is, "Mange de lavache enragi" an expression much used in southern France among the country folk, and means, " Go and have a hard time." The Husband Seducer. — The influential Su preme Court of Pennsylvania has now joined the noble army of courts which hold that a wife may maintain an action against the seducer or enticeraway of her husband, be the offender female or male. Gernerd v. Gernerd, 185 Pa. St. 549; 40 L. R. A. 549. The defendant was the husband's father. The court says : — "The right of a husband to maintain an action against one who has wrongfully induced his wife to separate from him seems not to have been doubted since the case of Winsmore v. Greenback (decided in 1745), Willes Rep. 577. The right of a wife to maintain an action for the same cause has been denied, because of the common-law unity of husband and wife, and of her want of property in his society and assistance. There was certainly an incon sistency in permitting a recovery when her husband was a necessary party to the action, and she had no separate legal existence or interest, and the damages recovered would belong to him, but the gist of the action is the same in either case. There is no substantial difference in the right which each has to the society, companionship and aid of the other, and the injury is the same whether it affects the husband or the wife. Where the wife has been freed from her common-law disabilities, and may sue in her own name and right for torts done her, we see no reason to doubt her right to maintain an action against one who has wrongfully induced her husband to leave her. Generally, this right has been recognized and sustained in jurisdictions where she has the capacity to sue, notably in the cases of Bennett v. Bennett, 116 N. Y. 584, 6L. R. A. 553; Footr. Card, 58 Conn. 4, 6 L, K. A. 829; Seaver v. Adams, 66
