the injured workman shall, if required, and in order to fix the amount to be paid him, submit himself for examination by a doctor provided and paid by the employer, and if he refuses, his right of compensation shall be suspended until he complies. So, too, he must submit himself forexamination from time to time after he comes into receipt of his compensation. This comparatively low rate of compensation is in accordance with the view generally taken of the value of life and of a workman's capacity in this country, and, remarkable as it may seem, although the principle of the bill was bitterly fought over in the House of Commons there was no question raised by the labor representatives or others as to the scale of compensation. A fortnight ago the amount to be awarded in an action for damage for personal injuries where an engine driver was knocked down and run over in the street and so badly injured that one of his legs had to be amputated and the other was seriously hurt, was fixed by a common jury in a London County Court at £150. The new law has not yet gone into effect but it will be observed that this award is but little higher than the scale fixed in the Act.

The opening of the courts after the long vacation was celebrated this year for the first time for many generations by a religious ceremonial and a pageant of more than

usual brilliancy. Heretofore the judges, attended by the Queen's Counsel, have simply walked in a straggling procession through the Central Hall of the Royal Courts. On Monday last a service was first held in Westminster Abbey which was largely attended not only by judges and leaders and juniors, but by as many of the outside public, particularly ladies, as could gain admission. The scene was a most impressive as well as brilliant one, color being given to it by the scarlet and ermine of the judges, the full bottomed wigs and court dress of the Queen's Counsel, the rounded wigs and flowing robes of the juniors, and the surplices and academical vestments of the clergy. After the service, which lasted only forty-five minutes and consisted of a shortened form of matins, the procession was made through the hall of the courts, the sides being lined with hundreds of ladies. The judges upon reaching their respective courts sat but for a few moments while the crowd dispersed, many of the latter breaking up into tea parties in the chambers of the junior members of the bar. To these juniors and to the profession generally there was no little zest added to the festivities by the knowledge that the list of causes to be tried at this term is the largest for a number of years past. STUFF GOWN,

Current Topics, . .

Notes of Cases, etc.

CURRENT TOPICS.

SPECIAL PLEADING. It is evident that the editor of the London Law Journal" had a vacation in August. Usually that learned person is too serious and instructive to be quotable in these trifling columns, but in August his Obiter Dicta disclosed a lighter hand. For example, the summer editor thus cheerfully discoursed concerning special pleading:

"An entertaining article might be written on the humors of special pleading. How Littledale, a master of the art, in drawing an indictment for murder which had been committed with a double-barreled pistol, spent many hours in endeavoring to invent some form of words by which to cover the possibility of the fact of the ball having issued from either barrel; how another pleader lost his cause by miscalling vites arbores; how an indictment for forgery was quashed because it charged the prisoner as Bartw., when he had signed the damning note as Bartholomew; how Parke (Baron Surrebutter) took a demurrer to the bedside of a sick friend, feeling sure, he said, that the sight of it would restore the invalid, it was so exquisitely drafted. But of all the wire-drawn refinements of that wonderful science, could anything astonish the honest layman more than the case referred to in Rolle's Reports'? In this case, an action for words, the pleading was that Sir Thomas Holt hath taken a cleaver and stricken his cook upon the head so that one side of the head fell upon one shoulder, and the other side upon the other shoulder,' but it omitted to say that the cook was dead, 'il ne averr que le cook fuit mort,' so it was bad-'pur ceo fuit adjudge nemy bon' - the cook's death after this splitting of his head being matter of inference only. The case in which the above is cited as an authority is itself a charming illustration of the fastidious nicety of the old pleader. Thou art a thief,' the defendant had said to the plaintiff; ⚫thou hast stolen me a hundred of slatte.' 'Stolen me'! It puzzled the court where was the felony in stealing the defendant? Judgment for the defendant."

All this reminds us of our salad days when we dared write so irreverently of Charles O'Conor and the other devotees of that awful science of special pleading. It must be confessed in candor that in Holt's case there was no necessary inference that the cook was dead, for the cleaver might not have been used for its customary office of cleaving, but might have been employed simply as a bat, knocking the culinary mechanic's head to right and left and not seriously injuring him. So in the case last above

DELAYS OF THE LAW.

Some fault has been found with the delays of the law. But delay in some cases would seem to be advantageous in eliciting the truth. It is recorded in recent newspapers that in Kansas, in a suit for damages by a woman against a railroad company, a dozen physicians testified that on account of the injuries sustained by the plaintiff, maternity must be to her a thing unknown. The verdict was for the plaintiff, and the company appealed to the Supreme Court, where, after the lapse of a number of years, the decision of the lower court has just been affirmed. Meanwhile the woman has given birth to three children. We dare say that if the decision had been reversed, the plaintiff would have recovered more damages on the new trial. That is the way it always works. The jury would have awarded more damages to the woman on account of her supposed mortification in being convicted of mistake.

A PROLIX WILL.

In the very agreeable memoir of Chief-Justice Doe, in the June GREEN Bag, is given a copy of his will, from which the writer thinks "not more than three or four words could be omitted." But the Chief Justice was always prolix. He could not help it, and his will is prolix. Turning to page 252 of our June issue, the reader will see how much that document could have been condensed. Forgive, devise and bequeath" read "give." For all the rest and residue of my estate, real and personal” read “the residue of my estate." In the third clause, formy said wife, Edith H. Doe," read my wife," for the virtuous chief could not have had more than one, and he had already stated her name. Instead of and direct that she shall be

You may be startled by my proposition that genius does not need education, but I speak of a very few of one or two or three of a century who really deserve the name of genius, such as Homer, Shakespeare, Peter the Great, Napoleon, Beethoven, Michael Angelo, Abraham Lincoln, all comparatively uneducated men. If Homer had been a profoundly educated man, he might possibly have been as absurd a pedant as those German commentators who insist that he was a syndicate and can tell us exactly what verses have been interpolated since the original poems were first recited. If Shakespeare had been as well educated as his contemporary, Bacon, he would probably have written as bad verses as he. Could a broad education have made a greater soldier or a wiser civil administrator of Napoleon? Would the ability to spell correctly have added anything to the moral stature of Washington?

What did education ever do for Abraham Lincoln? Who wrote the wisest, most admirably expressed State papers of modern times? Look at the difference between mere talent and heaven-descended genius, as shown at the dedication of the Gettysburg Cemetery, where the best educated and most polished orator of his day and the comparatively uneducated President came in competition. Edward Everett, scholarly and elegant, with all the artifices of a trained declaimer, delivered from memory an oration three hours long. Abraham Lincoln, ungainly, homely, awkward, read through his spectacles, and a little through his nose, in a tone inaudible fifty feet distant, an address fifteen minutes in length. Very few of us have read Everett's oration, and nobody in the future will read it, but those inspired words of Abraham Lincoln, with the soul of the seer and martyr behind them, have been read by every intelligent man, woman and youth in our land, and never by any of us who lived in this time without tears and silent blessing. They are in the pages of school readers; they will be read and admired 2,400 years hence even more than those of Pericles on a similar occasion are now admired, though spoken 2,400 years ago; and they will inspire a noble love of

country in our descendants when the very name of Everett shall be forgotten. Now this gift is something which education could not have given and could not have enhanced."

ROOSTER LAW.

Some time ago the Chairman queried whether he had a right to an injunction against early-rising roosters in the immediate vicinity of his domicile. In respect to this, Mr. C. E. Littlefield of Rockland, Me., writes him as follows:

I had called to my attention recently a case which, although it is not perhaps an illustration of the elasticity of the common law, is an illustration of an application of its well settled principles to a novel state of facts. In connection with your early waking and late rising, during the interval between which you seem to have been seriously oppressed by the unbridled conduct of certain roosters, I thought it would perhaps interest you to know that the court of Maine, in the case referred to, have recently held that the keeping of hens (and roosters included, of course), under circumstances evidently like those to which you refer, constituted a nuisance kept at the annoyance of the plaintiff, for which he was entitled to damages. See the unreported case of Timothy F. Desmond v. James H. Smith, Androscoggin County.

In that case, however, only nominal damages were assessed, as the plaintiff expressed his willingness to accept such a result, probably being satisfied with having established his right to maintain the action.

You will therefore observe that you have a remedy at law, and while you might not be able to sustain an injunction until you had established at law the fact of the nuisance, and the roosters had demonstrated an intention to continue indefinitely to your irreparable damage, it is not absolutely necessary for you to take the law into your own hands, because there is yet a "Balm in Gilead" for sufferers like yourself.

CAVE. In reading the comments of the 66 London Legal Press" on the recent death of Mr. Justice Cave, the Chairman is led to suspect that there was a bear inside that Cave.

NOTES OF CASES.

UNHEALTHY JAIL.- If a man is compelled to be incarcerated in an unhealthy jail, although it makes no difference as to his health or comfort whether it is owned by a county, a town, or a city, yet it seems he may be better off in his purse if it is a town or a city jail. It has recently been held in North Carolina that a town is liable for injury to the health of a prisoner by confinement in an iron or steel guardhouse, with a tin or zinc floor covered with ice, and with broken windows, during a bitter cold, windy night in which he suffers intensely and has his feet badly frostbitten, when the authorities had known

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edged to entitle it, the ordinary deed of real estate, to be recorded. Deere v. Losey is therefore overruled." The section correctly set forth is as follows: Such assignment shall be in writing, and shall be executed and acknowledged in the manner in which a conveyance of real estate is or shall be required to be executed and acknowledged in order to entitle the same to be recorded." The trouble was the interpolation of a comma after the latter acknowledged," which changed the application of "the same."

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GOAT NOT A PERSON. The Queen's Bench Division has decided that a goat is not a person or mankind. Osborne v. Chocqued [1896] 2 Q. B. 109. This was an action of damages by the bite of a dog. The plaintiff failed to show that the dog had ever bitten any person before, but did show that he had bitten a goat. This was held not to be an equivalent.

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ROBBERY OF GUEST BY INNKEEPER'S SERVANT. — Judge Dent, in Cunningham v. Bucky, p. 675, an action by a drunken guest at an inn for robbery by the innkeeper's servant, quoting from Judge Dixon, in another case, says: If drunk, the plaintiff might still have claimed the protection of his host, as did Falstaff when he fell asleep behind the arras, and might say with him : Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn, but I shall have my pocket picked?" "

court accounts for this by "judicious advertising, and also by the fact that, unlike the complainant, the defendant insists that during the time of taking the supposed remedy, the patient should not discontinue the use of tobacco," observing: "In this we think the defendant has the decided advantage, because it does not insist upon the exercise of the will, but cures, or professes to cure, in despite of the will. Therein it strikes a great popular chord,' in that it enables one to indulge a habit of which he desires to be rid, while partaking of the cure. An easy road to health will always be as popular as an easy road to wealth." So one need not be off with the old love before he gets on with the new. But isNo-to-bac" a valid trade mark anyhow? Is it not merely descriptive?

State v. Glenn, 119

A TRANSFORMATION. N. C. 804, is a funny case. Glenn and the co-defendant, Amis, were indicted for an affray. G. had been walking up and down the street, swearing he could whip a man, and struck A. a blow in the face with his fist, knocking his head against a post, so that the "lick " was heard across the street. A. retorted with a pair of iron plyers. G. then put his hand in his pocket as if to draw a knife, whereupon A. caught and held his arms fast, but G., getting loose, jumped upon a box, announced that he was an officer, and commanded the peace. A. pleaded guilty, and the court gave G. thirty days in jail on a verdict of guilty. Chief-Justice Faircloth, observed: We are not informed whether the weapons used were deadly weapons or not, but we do observe that the application of the pair of iron plyers, whatever they may be, had an immediate and salutary effect by transforming a sixfoot clubber into an officer, who at once began to discharge his duties by commanding the peace If we were permitted to consider the question we think we could approve this verdict. We have no doubt that his honor in pronouncing judgment gave the defendant full credit for his good intentions in trying to preserve the peace." Amis ought to have got off free.