in plaintiff's company and his utter misery unless in her society. The parties had ex changed daguerreotypes, the defendant had taught the plaintiff's nephew to call him uncle, and had told the plaintiff's brother-inlaw that "all the courting was done," little suspecting that the plaintiff would take a hand at "courting" in the presence of judge and jury. The defendant afterward went on a voyage, and while on the sea he indited effu sive love letters to the plaintiff, telling her how constantly he thought of her while awake and how he dreamed of her while asleep, touchingly adding: "While I am tossed to and fro on this wide ocean, I love thee still." The picture here presented is intensely dramatic, and is well calculated to inspire the belief that this was a case of mad infatuation. Those who had lived through a "tossing to and fro on a wide ocean," and who recall the exact state of their emotions, will readily subscribe to the belief that he who can, while the tossing is in active prog ress, write, "I love thee still," is more madly in love than was ever Romeo or Abelard. Yet, notwithstanding all this, this mad lover broke off the engagement, thereby verifying the poet's observation that "Men have died from time to time and worms have eaten them—but not for love." The plaintiff's "courting" was fully as suc cessful as had been that of the defendant, for she recovered a judgment for $1,500. In a Vermont case the plaintiff and defend ant were neighbors, and the defendant paid neighborly visits to the plaintiff's family. It was shown that these visits were at first to the entire family, and that they were gradu ally narrowed until they were confined to the plaintiff alone. This fact, together with the proof that during the periods of the de fendant's visits lights were frequently seen burning in the parlor on Saturday and Sun day evenings, and some other circumstances, led the jury to find for the plaintiff. Just how
far the circumstantial evidence of the burn ing lights on Saturday and Sunday nights conduced to the verdict, the reported case does not state, but it may be safely asserted that if the defendant ever runs across those poetic lines— "How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night, Like softest music to attending ears," he will scarcely appreciate the poetic beauty of the lines, having, as they naturally would, to his "attending ears," a sort of silvery jingle—pitiless reminder of the clinking specie paid by him at the instigation o£ a jury. A very cruel case occurred in Michigan. A man, who, strange to relate, bore the name of Constant, while engaged in courting, had his financial eye open and borrowed money from the lady. On his last visit to her he renewed his notes for one and two years, and then went off and married the other girl. The court held that it was proper to allow proof of this money transaction, holding that "an engagement broken off suddenly and without warning would very naturally create more pain and mortification than if ended under any other circumstances, and, if a jury were to regard this conduct concern ing money matters as calculated, under the circumstances, to have caused additional grounds of pain or grievance to the defend ant in error, we think they would not be violating ordinary probabilities." But slight evidence is necessary to prove the lady's acceptance. This is the law, not upon any presumption that ladies generally are easily persuaded—perish the thought,— but out of due deference to the modesty oí the sex. When we consider the touching delicacy of the contractual relation, affecting, as it does, the tenderest emotions of the human heart, it seems like gross inconsistency that
