If I have departed from the accustomed silence of judges in the face of misrepresentation, the extraordinary character and persistency of the warfare upon me is my excuse; and the subject being of national importance, both by its nature and by reason of the wide circulation given to the accusation. I hope I shall not be deemed presumptuous in asking, as I do ask, the public press generally, whether hitherto hostile or friendly, to award me a hearing. Outside of this letter the documents I offer in proof are too bulky to be copied, but editors can read them and say, if they will, whether or not I am justified in the confident assurance with which I make my appeal, not, as my accusers have endeavored to make theirs, to the ballot-box, where, with other issues to be settled, there can be no verdict whose meaning in respect to me can be known, but to the judgments and consciences of men who, disposed to think well of their neighbor and of human nature, are willing and able to be just..

Respectfully,

INDIANAPOLIS, September 20th.

W. A. Woods.

[SOME of Judge Wood's rulings in Indiana election cases are considered in The American Law Register for June last (pp. 350 and 351), and it there appears that his rulings were more nearly correct than those of Judge Gresham. The matter of the Dudley case, as well as of the Coy and other election cases, is far too important to be discussed with political heat, especially as political bias is unavoidable. To many of the profession, and to a large majority of the lay people, the statement of what is the law of punishment for violating Federal elections is quite unknown. It would seem that those, especially who opposed any Federal control, ought to know what they are opposing.-Ed.]

THE DIFFERENCE between a life-like reproduction of a photograph or even of a striking likeness in a steel engraving, is apparent by comparing the portraits of Chief Justice Taney in the recent numbers of THE CURRENT COMMENT with that in The Chicago Law Times, for October, 1888, where an engraving by Jackman is printed from the plate. The same defect is noticeable in Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biography.

THE VICTORIOUS commander triumpheth; yet he would not have conquered had he not fought, and the greater the peril of the battle, the more the rejoicing of the triumph.-S. Aug. Conf. viii, 3.

UNIFORMITY OF PUBLISHED BOOKS.-Robert Grimshaw, in The Writer for July, makes a proposition which, at first, may seem revolutionary, but which, in fact, is worthy of consideration: "Every one whose range of reading is at all extended, and who has to buy books, has felt the inconvenience of having so many different sizes and proportions of bound volumes. Every one who has a library, particularly if he classifies his books according to subjects, will agree with me that the nuisance of having so many sizes and styles, and so many colors, is grievous. Here are octavos of 94x6, 9x64, 8x63%, 84x51⁄2 inches, and so on, jostling so-called duodecimos, 734x54, 7x5, 62x42, and all sorts of sizes; and, indeed, some alleged octavos are smaller than some which, by reason of the sheet having been folded a certain number of times-a process which does not in the least interest the reader --are dubbed duodecimos. The result is that a distinction, which once meant something and aided a trifle in library classification, is now a distinction without a difference'; in fact, may result in serious misinformation. Just how many pages of type a printer locks up within one chase of iron, of size unknown to the reader, and affecting him not the slightest, the reader cares not. Just how many times a binder folds a sheet has no bearing upon anything that the book-reader or the book-buyer wants to know, or which could help him in any way did he know it. But whether a bookowner can stow within a space seven by ten feet eight hundred or nine hundred volumes of a given thickness concerns him. Whether or not he can fill each shelf well, all the way across, so as to leave little space for dust to sift in between the shelf and the book-tops, concerns him. Whether his case has to project eight inches or ten makes a difference to him, and whether he can put his books in neat rows, well aligned in front, or only straggled and uneven, is likewise of moment to him. It also makes a difference, in cost, whether books are printed from about four or five different sizes of paper, or are made from forty to fifty, because the more sizes paper-dealers have to carry and mills have to make, the higher the price per pound will be for any one size. The time may come when publishers will unite in producing but a certain number of sizes, so that all of one nominal page dimension (outside of margin) shall line up well when in battle array or on dress parade in their shelves or cases."-The Publishers' Weekly.

THE PERFECTION of injustice is to seem just without really being so.-Repub. Plato, ii, 361.

PARTUS SEQUITUR VENTREM, is a well-known law maxim, giving the offspring to the owner of the mother, and its application to gallinaceous matters is to be new to the law no longer. For there is a little suburb of Brooklyn called Parkville which has long enjoyed a reputation for picturesqueness and quietude. The tastes of the people generally led to the cultivation of their front gardens and to the keeping of hens for purposes of revenue only. They had no ambition for fancy breeds, and held that a plain, everyday hen which attended strictly to business was the equal of a stuck-up Shanghai or Dorking. But in an evil hour a resident of the village suddenly developed a weakness for fancy chickens, and when, after spending as much money as would have paid a halfyear's interest on his mortgage, he took his Brahmapootras to a fair on Long Island, and the judges placed upon the coop a card which read "highly commended," he looked with contempt upon the want of ambition displayed by the other villagers. His next-door neighbor's hens were of very low degree, and he scarcely ever gave them a thought.

But one day he chanced to look over his neighbor's fence and saw a hen of a very homely aspect industriously clucking and scratching for the benefit of a flock of equally plain-looking chickens. Amongst the number, however, was one chicken which, to his eye, experienced as he believed himself to be in gallinaceous matters, had a distinguished air. It eyed its companions with disdainful glances, and seemed to be as much out of its element as Maud S. would be if yoked to the average horse on a street-car. Instinctively he felt that one of his blue-blooded hens in a fit of absent-mindedness, such as all hens are prone to, had scaled the fence and laid a precious egg on the adjoining premises. No plebeian hen, he argued, could ever have succeeded in hatching such an aristocratic looking chicken, and so he made a formal demand upon his neighbor for the immediate surrender of the highbred pullet. But the neighbor sturdily refused to listen to him. There were, he argued, well-known cases in which in a family of very plain children there could be seen one child of a rare beauty, which had probably been the characteristic of some old-time ancestor and had mysteriously blossomed out after lying dormant for generations. If this happened to men and women, why not to hens? And, again, the egg had been laid on his premises, and if one of his hens, with true feminine thoughtfulness, had sat upon it to prevent it being wasted, as it might otherwise have been, it belonged to her by right of discovery and of maturity. The village

was soon in a ferment over the quarrel, and party feeling ran high. The claimant to the chicken has sued for its recovery, the case is set for trial for the October term of court, and the question to whom the chicken belongs under such circumstances is likely at last to be settled according to the rules of judicial interpretation. -Philadelphia Record.

A COLORED LAWYER in West Virginia has a romantic history, and one especially interesting to the veterans of the Fifteenth Maine regiment. Away back in 1865, during the campaign in Shenandoah Valley, under Sheridan, there came to the camp of the Fifteenth Maine a bright little colored boy, less than a dozen years old, a native of Charlestown, W. Va., who sought refuge and employment. He was a negro, and yet, but for the presence of certain unmistakable indications other than "color," African descent could not have been recognized. His skin was lighter than the average of our own race; his hair, though very light, was curly like the negro's.

The little fellow became a great favorite in camp, and, when the war closed, an officer of the regiment-Major J. H. Whitmore, then of Bowdoinham, now of Lynn, Mass.-found himself so much attached to little "Johnnie" that he brought him to Maine and installed him as a member of his father's household in Bowdoinham. The boy was sent to school, and proved a very apt scholar, and, at the age of twenty, he had fitted for college and was teaching school in Bowdoinham. At the age of twenty-two he entered a Bath law-office, and, proving diligent and studious, was admitted to practice at the Sagadahoc bar two years later. Then he returned to West Virginia, with the design of practicing his profession there. Although he encountered many discouragements, he was finally admitted to practice, being the first negro to obtain that privilege from a Virginia Court. His one-time soldier benefactor is now Superintendent of Public Works in Lynn, and a prominent man in that busy city.-Bath Times.

FUN IN COURT.-The other day a prisoner was arraigned for theft and pleaded not guilty. He asked for counsel, and a wellknown lawyer was detailed by the court to defend the man. He immediately pleaded guilty, much to the amusement of the spec

tators.

LIMA, OHIO, September 29th, 1890.

EDITOR CURRent CommenT AND LEGAL MISCELLANY:

I desire to ask the readers of your valuable journal through its columns to answer this question for me:

Under the provisions of our Ohio statute, a transcript filed in the Clerk's office of a judgment of a Justice's Court, taken during vacation of the Court of Common Pleas, is made a lien from the date of its filing, except as against a judgment taken at the following term of the Common Pleas Court, against which it shall be considered as of the first day of that term.

A obtained judgment against X on July 25th in a Justice's Court, and on the 11th of August filed his transcript according to law. B took a mortgage on the property of X for a valuable consideration on the 20th day of the same month. At the ensuing term of the Common Pleas Court, C obtained judgment against X. X's property is not sufficient to pay the three liens. What is the order in which they should be marshalled under this statute? W. C. P.

MR. EDITOR:

I noticed recently an advertisement of a law bookseller, offering "The American Law Register, vols. 1 to 9, old series; 1 to 9 inclusive, new series and digest, 29 volumes, $30.00." Now, I wanted the old series without paying the publishers' price of five dollars per volume, and I wrote for the cost of these old series volumes-separate from the new series volumes-and received this answer, showing that I ought not to have taken the advertisement literally. Now how am I to understand other law-book advertisements? Yours truly,

[The following is the answer alluded to without the name and address of the advertiser.

DEAR SIR:

& CO.,

Law-Books and Law Stationery,

Street,

1890.

We regret to say we can only furnish volumes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 old series American Law Register @ $2.50 per volume. The cost of delivery will be about 50 cents additional.

We trust we may be favored with your order for the same.

Yours very truly,

[Evidently not as literally expressed-ED.]