who pass their lives in expressing the juice out of all these adjudications for the information of the profes sion, and we have especial sympathy with those whose duty it is to classify and arrange the infinite number of paragraphs, and we gladly bestow the heartiest commendation for the expert manner in which this essential part of the herculean task is per formed. Ten years hence what will these formidable tomes be good for? Possibly, like Doctor Johnson's big book, to hurl at a polecat if we meet one of those unsavory animals late at night and happen to have the book under our arm. The wife may use it to press flowers or ferns in; the young mother may put it in the baby's chair at table to bring him to the requisite height; or the little girl may utilize it to compress the mucilage with which she puts together her paper dolls. For all these domestic purposes it may supplant the current dictionary, which has hitherto been the favorite resource. We undertook to lug it to our law lecture the other day, to exhibit to our students as an argument for codification, but we had not the strength to carry it. A Lawyer's Will. — It seems that the trustees of Columbia College have offered the trustees of the Tilden Library fund to give them a site on the new grounds of the college for the library building, and to start the library off with the 200,000 volumes of the college library. Mr. Bigelow, one of the Tilden fund trustees, answers that it is doubtful that the proposal should be accepted, because Mr. Tilden meant to endow a public library and not a college library. To this a clever correspondent of " The Critic " answers : — "Is not Mr. Bigelow in error in thinking that if Mr. Tilden had meant to endow a college library he would have done it? Could it not be said as well that if Mr. Tilden had meant to endow a public library he would have done it? The fact is that either Mr. Tilden did not know his own mind or he did not know how to draw a will. In his will he mentions a library, and he also suggests a desire to further education." It must be conceded that Mr. Tilden did not know his own will. NOTES OF CASES. Burial — Widow's right of. — In Thompson v. Deeds, Iowa Supreme Court, 61 Northw. Rep. 842, a widow tried to remove her husband's body from his daughter's lot, because the latter would not allow her to erect a monument at the grave and a coping around the lot. It was held that the widow should be restrained from the removal, and that she might erect the monument but not the coping. The Court said : —
"When plaintiff consented to the burial of her father in her lot, she knew, or ought to have known, that that consent involved the right on the part of his widow to manifest her appreciation of and affection for the deceased in the usual way, followed from time immemorial by those who respect and revere their dead. This daughter and this widow should exercise a little Christian charity; should remember that whatever their differences may be, they should be lost sight of in the presence of the dead, and obliterated in a common desire and effort to suitably testify to their respect for one who was, as to one of them, a father, and as to the other, a husband. What matters it that the law has said that after burial of a husband the wife shall have no control over his remains; that his next of kin have the exclusive right of disposition thereof? . . . It always has been, and will ever continue to be, the duty of courts to see to it that the expressed wish of one, as to his final resting place, shall, so far as it is possible, be carried out. In one view, it is true it may not matter much where we rest after we are dead; and yet there has always ex isted, in every person, a fueling that leads him to wish that after his death his body shall repose beside those he loved in life. Call it sentiment, yet it is a sentiment and belief which the living should know will be respected after they are gone." The milk in the cocoa-nut was accounted for by the following further ruling of the Court : — "We think that no inscription should be permitted to be placed upon the monument in any way referring to the plaintiff or her first husband, whose remains lie in said lot." Libel — Standing of Plaintiff. — In Press Pub. Co. v. McDonald, 63 Fed. Rep. 239; 26 L. R. A. 531 (U. S. Circ. Ct. App.), it was held that in an action of libel it is competent for the plaintiff to prove his station in society and condition in life to enhance damages. The Court says: — "The authorities bearing upon this point arc conflicting. The text-writers are not in accord. In Massachusetts it was held, as far back as 1807, that the plaintiff in actions for defamation of character may give in evidence, to ag gravate the damages, his own rank and condition of life, because the degree of injury the plaintiff may sustain by the defamation may very much depend on his rank and condition in society. Larned v. Buffinton, 3 Mass. 546, 3 Am. Dec. 185. In Harding v. Brooks, 5 Pick. 247, Chief Justice Parker says : ' The rank and condition of the plain tiff are proper to be made known to a jury by evidence, because the damages may be lawfully affected thereby; but general character has not been the subject of inquiry, unless made necessary by the defense to the action, or to the claim of damages.' "In Pennsylvania it was held by Judge Sharswood in Klumph 7: Dunn, 66 Pa. 147, 5 Am. Rep. 355, that : ' The position in life, and the family of the plaintiff, are always important circumstances bearing upon the question of damages, and have always been held admissible for that purpose.'
- ' See also McAlmont v. McClelland, 14 Serg. & R. 359,
