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NOTES.
A New York firm applied to Abraham Lincoln, some years before he became President, for in formation as to the financial standing of one of his neighbors. Mr. Lincoln replied as follows : "Yours of the 1oth inst. received. I am well acquainted with Mr. X., and know his circum stances. First of all, he has a wife and baby; together, they ought to be worth fifty thousand dollars. Secondly, he has an office, in which there is a table worth one and a half dollars, and three chairs, worth, say, one dollar. Last of all, there is in one corner a large rat-hole, which will bear looking into. — Respectfully yours, "A. L1ncoln." Earl Russell, who has just entered his name as a student at law at Gray's Inn, is a grandson of England's famous premier, and until he came into his title made his living as a journeyman electrician. He is the second English peer to qualify for the bar. The first is Lord Coleridge, a son of the late chancellor.
Professor Lombroso's daughter, Paola, has been sentenced in the criminal court of Turin to twenty-two days' imprisonment and a fine of sixty-two lire. Her crime was publishing an article in a socialistic paper in which she de scribed the misery she herself had seen among the poor people, and declared that the social system which made such evil conditions should be overthrown. A New Jersey judge has created a decided sensation by declaring that boys sent to the State Reform School come out first-class criminals. In a State noted for the strictness of its judicial ad ministration this seems a startling accusation. Unfortunately, this judge's opinion is shared, to some extent at least, by many high police officials. Reform schools are benevolently intended to be a refuge for wayward children where they may be brought to a knowledge of their duties to themselves and to society. The system on which they are based has long been supposed to be the best that modern thought and wisdom could devise. If they fail in their mission, a most serious condition is created.
Experts in penology are, for the most part, agreed that the reformation of a boy is a far more uncertain problem than that of a girl, al leging that women and girls seldom become way ward from choice, and that where a depraved instinct exists naturally it is stronger in a boy than in a girl. The present direction of thought to the subject is far from being new. It invites the profoundest study of practical humanitarians. Even wayward youth are of sufficient importance to enlist the best efforts to disprove in their behalf the police axiom, " Once a criminal, always a criminal." A famous blunder was made in the last century by the trustees of Yale University when they leased a farm belonging to the college for an annual rental of about five hundred dollars a year for a term of nine hundred and ninety-nine years. They considered the land of littje value and chuckled when they thought of the good bargain they had made in sticking the lessee and his heirs for a few months less than ten centuries. But it so happened that the rich and fashionable city of Newport rose upon the site of this farm, and the descendants of the original tenant have cut the farm up into lots and are now living in pampered luxury upon the rentals. They prac tically own the land, and the expiration of the lease about nine centuries in the future does not give them the slightest concern. It aggravates the trustees whenever the modest little payment for rent comes in to think that if the lease had been made out for ninety-nine years instead of nine hundred and ninety-nine, the university would now be in command of a princely revenue from this one property alone.
A b1ll has been introduced into the New York legislature intended to prevent mistrials through the sickness of a juryman that at least possesses the element of novelty. It proposes to amend the Code of Criminal Procedure by providing that when a trial jury is formed in cases where the crime is punishable with death, or in any case which in the judgment of the court is deemed extraordinary, the number of trial jurors drawn shall be thirteen instead of twelve.
