might have her marriage annulled because her hus band had unlawfully kept a pool-room before marriage, unknown to her. The Court acknowledge that there is little authority for such holding, but rely on a pre vious case in the same court (Keyes v. Keyes, 6 Misc. 355), where a marriage was annulled because the hus band had represented himself as honest .and indus trious, whereas he was a professional thief, and his portrait was in the Rogue's Gallery. Directly the contrary was held in Wier v. Still, 31 Iowa, 107, where a man prevailed on a reluctant widow to marry him, and it turned out, contrary to his professions of goodness, that he was just out from a third term in the State prison. The parties had never cohabited; indeed, on the way from the minister's, the wife " felt so badly " that she had consented without more in vestigation, that she refused to live with the man. But the Court declined to bother their heads about it. A violent example of this recent New York outbreak may be found in the unspeakable case of Meyer v. Meyer, 49 How. Pr. 311. A more commendable ruling was made in Moot v. Moot, 37 Hun. 288. Here a schoolgirl of fifteen was visited by a man at school, away from her parents, and induced to marry him. She insisted that she should have her parents' consent, and he falsely assured her that they knew of his visit and its purpose, and did not disapprove, and that she need not live with him for three or four years. The marriage was not consummated. The act of the man was a criminal offense . The Court annulled the marriage on the ground that the fraud went to the very essence of the contract. We regard the doctrine of the King and Keyes cases as extremely unsound and impolitic. Of course it is plausible to urge that no harm can be done by setting aside an unconsummated marriage in such circumstances, and that it is hard thus to tie up an innocent woman; but the answer is that such leniency will tend to render people more careless and hasty in forming marriages, and lead them into matrimonial bargains which may ruin their lives, because of the discovery of the fraud only after mari tal cohabitation. In one of the cases in question, the judge excuses the carelessness on the ground that "love is blind." Very true, but that is no reason why it should be encouraged in imbecility. Let such fools go to South Dakota or Oklahoma, and spare our civilized courts this wild and lawless administration of justice. Too Much Piano. — The newspapers have had a good deal to say of the embitterment of the last hours of the late Judge Martine of New York, by the ex cessive piano-playing of a female next-door neighbor, who had a reputation to keep up as an amateur. It was thought that the offense was beyond legal pro hibition, because the playing was in private. There
may be some doubt of this, for a thing may be a nui sance although it is private, as for example a private stable. As to public playing, in Feeney v. Bartoldo, New Jersey Court of Chancery (30 Atl. R., 1101), it was held that where a saloon-keeper causes a piano to be played in his saloon each night from 7 o'clock till 10, and sometimes till 11 o'clock, to the music of which dancing, accompanied by loud noises, is in dulged in, the effect of which is to prevent the occu pant of an adjoining dwelling from sleeping, a pre liminary injunction will, at the suit of such occupant, be granted, restraining the use of the piano after 9 p.m. Piano cases seem to be rare. In the West minster County Court, in London, in 1877, there was an attempt by a literary man, having chambers in Lincoln's Inn Fields, to restrain the playing of an organ by a tenant of the next floor below. It was played two or three times a week from 7 to 10 p.m. Two neighboring solicitors testified that they did not object to the music, while an artist and a scientific man corroborated the plaintiff. An injunction was denied. But in Inchbold v. Barrington, L. R. 4 Ch. App. 388, a circus brass band was shut off. Old Comyn said, " the setting up a school so near my study, who am of the profession of the law, that the noise in terrupted my studies," would be a nuisance. But in State v. Baldwin, 1 Dev. and Bat. 195, it was held no nuisance to curse and swear so loud at a tavern as to break up a neighboring singing school. Miss Phelps, in "Gates Ajar," conjectured that there will be pianos in heaven. Our own idea of heaven is that it is a place where the noise of piano-practicing will never be heard. It would be too bad to subject poor Judge Martine to any more of it, and it would be a righteous retribution on that unkind woman that she shall be condemned to practice eternally in some other place. Highway — Use of. - - To our note on the use of highways {ante, 201), the reader may add the case of Sidlinger v. Kansas City, Missouri Supreme Court, 26 L. R. A. 723, where it was held that one who breaks the guard-rail of a viaduct in a street, while running a race in the dark, with full knowledge of the situation, cannot recover for injuries thereby received on his claim that the rail was defective. It appeared "that the plaintiff, with a number of other young men, was drinking beer from a bucket in the rear of the saloon in the immediate vicinity of the viaduct shortly before the accident occurred, and that plaintiff was more or less under the influence of liquor at the time of the happening of the accident." The Court held that the street was not designed for pedestrians to run races in, citing McCarthy v. Portland, 67 Me. 167; 24 Am. Rep. 23, which laid down the like doctrine in respect to horse-racing.
