Courting and the Courts. sel, or his conduct, meant solely as an act of gallantry, is sufficient in the eyes of the law to support proof of a promise to marry. In the light of the adjudicated cases, the verdict in the famous case of Bardell against Pickwick was probably justified. Mrs. Bardell's construction of Mr. Pickwick's earnest question as to whether it would be a greater expense, in her opinion, to keep two persons than to keep one; the fact that Mr. Pickwick asked the plaintiff's little boy how he would like to have another father, coupled with the very damaging testimony that Mr. Pickwick was discovered supporting the fainting lady in his arms, to say nothing of the covert allu sions, according to Sergeant Buzfuz, veiled under those poetic effusions "chops" and "tomato sauce," made, at least, a prima facie case in favor of the plaintiff. A gentleman once concluded that it would be a very elegant and a very funny thing to send to his dulcinea a newspaper article en titled "Love, the Conqueror," marking it: "Read this." The lady did read it, and when the funny gentleman declined to marry her, she brought suit against him and read the article to the jury, who gave her four thou sand dollars damages. The Supreme Court of Illinois, sustaining the verdict, said: "The article may be regarded as the defendant's own letter; it doubtless contained sentiments, which he sanctioned, couched in language more choice than he could compose. It was his appeal for marriage—it foretold in clear and emphatic language his object and intent in his courtship with her. She doubtless placed this construction upon it, as she well might do, and laid it aside as a rare treasure." Perhaps there is no more wily suitor than the widower. He is no novice, and his ex perience should count for something. But that even the widower is not proof against folly was proved in a New York case, in which it was shown that the widower, a pious elder of fifty-three, soon after the death of his wife, visited the plaintiff, a maiden lady
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of thirty, and taking out a memorandum book, from which he read, or pretended to read, stated in a confidential way, that he had noted down some requests made by his wife four days before her death; that it was some thing he "could not tell her now," but that she (the maiden lady) "would know some day," darkly hinting, so the lady took it, that the deceased wife had requested the forlorn widower to lighten his grief by marrying the plaintiff. It was proved that after this con fidential talk, there were rides and drives to gether, frequent visits extending till late in the evening, and, to cap the climax, the widower told the plaintiff that after the lapse of a year from the death of his wife (the widower's quarantine, it seems), he intended to marry, and he then entered into a minute description oi the lady he wanted to marry, which description was an exact photograph of the plaintiff. While we cannot but admire the shrewd diplomacy of this wily widower, courting by dark insinuations and covert suggestions, and not committing himself by an open avowal, yet, as the sequel shows, he ran amuck of the doctrine of estoppel. The sanctimonious Proteus forgot his Julia and found him another sweetheart and, knowing that he had become somewhat in volved in his affair with the plaintiff, and, seeming to have some faint notion of the legal maxim, Viguantibus et non dormientibus jura subscrviunt, he diplomatically undertook to checkmate the lady. He told her that he did not want her people to think that he was paying her the attentions of a lover so soon after the death of his wife, and, in order to allay that suspicion, he drew up a note, in which the plaintiff was made to say that she regarded his visits as "simply evidences of friendship and nothing more," and got her to sign it. The jury found in her favor and the Court of Appeals of New York upheld the verdict. In a Connecticut case the defendant had been heard to remark on his happiness when
