have forgotten the date, so courts have held that offers afterwards in good faith to con summate the marriage would relieve him. The woman must be long suffering, if the man asks a postponement of the marriage and gives sufficient reasons — that a jury must be the judge of — accompanied with new offers to consummate at a future date; she must submit or he may be held not to be at fault, even though his dilly-dallying has broken the woman's heart. Because a woman has a little spirit and after being jilted returns the engagement ring, it is no defense that the return of the ring was a free and voluntary relinquish ment of the man from the payment of the bill for the broken heart. The woman tes tified that " after three months' engagement the man commenced to break off; when I learned he was in earnest it almost made me crazy. I could not eat or sleep. I went to him, he treated me very cool, said it was time to break off the engagement, that his feelings were changed, that he could not marry me, that he loved another woman, that he loved her before he met me. I took off the ring he had given me and gave it up to him and told him he did not talk that way when he courted me, and won my love and told him the way he had treated me had broke my heart." The price for this tragedy of a woman's heart was fixed at three thousand dollars. An Indiana man turned the tables on a woman. He reasoned if a rich man must pay more than a poor man to break a heart, that the law must recognize other distinc tions. He was accordingly permitted to prove that he was subject to fits of epilepsy to bear in mitigation of damages, as the advantages of a union with such a man as he was would be much less in a commercial sense than if he were in full health and vigor with a reasonable expectation of long life and good health. It is doubtful whether the distinction made in this case could be appreciated by those who furnish hearts to
be broken and valued. They would doubt less reason that the older the man is, the poorer his state of health and the heavier his pocket book, the greater their pain and distress for the havoc made of their hearts. Bluffing with broad washes of white lies is not allowed in the market of hearts. A woman is not bound to relate anything at all about her family connections, or her past history, or any other facts to show the desirability of a match with her, but when she does talk of such things she is bound to state the facts truly. It has been held that a man is not justified in refusing to perform a contract to marry on the ground that the woman has some negro blood in her veins, or that her motives were mercenary, if there is no fraud on the woman's part. However, where one having the taint of negro blood falsely tells of the high standing of her fam ily or parentage to mislead, the man can legally refuse to perform his part of the contract and escape the payment for the heart that may be broken. A good legal bluff by woman must be an artistic exposi tion of the things she does not do, and the thoughts she does not speak. It is one thing to attack the character of a woman, and another to do it success fully, and unless so done it is better for the man never to attempt it. Juries do not like unproven suggestions or insinuations. They lose patience with a man who jilts a woman and then seeks to escape the pay ment of his fun by attacking her character. In one case the attempt was only so far suc cessful as to reduce the price of the heart to five hundred dollars, in others the value ran a little higher than the average price of hearts, to three and five thousand dollars. A large number of the cases suggest the conclusion that a woman's heart is not alto gether broken by being jilted. A woman might allow her heart to be jilted as a mer ry sport, if man did not add insult to injury by immediately attaching himself in mar riage to some other woman. This is the
