WYOMING.-SHERIDAN: William S. Metz, Be., '78, Judge, Fourth Judicial District Wyoming.

The words of America's leading fraternity jeweler: "In all my experience, I have known no other fraternity to show so great a development, in an equal period of time, as Phi Delta Phi has shown during the past two years."

A GOOD SAMARITAN.

In the Sixth District Municipal Court, New York, not more than a month ago, a young lawyer, and a pretty green one, too, was floundering badly among the objections and technicalities raised by his opponent. He was making a mess of things when an older lawyer, who was waiting for his case to be called, walked over and sat down beside him and began quietly to advise him, and the young fellow was sensible enough to take the advice. When the matter was over the young lawyer thanked the intruder who replied, "Oh, that's all right. saw your pin. I am a member of Conkling chapter."

I

In considering the petition of the Ranny law club, for the first time in the history of the Fraternity, every chapter voted on as petition, and all voted in the affirmative. No chapter was barred by the sixty-day limit.

WHAT PETITIONS SHOULD BE GRANTED.

Four petitions, so far, have been before the Fraternity this season. Dame Rumor says that many more are coming next year. She is right. There will be at least six, if inquiries mean anything. What shall we do with the petitions! Why, do as we have done in the past; kill some, and grant some. But kill which and grant which-there's the rub.

We still have the fool system of sending petitions to the chapters for separate action-the system ought to be changed at the next convention and the power given to the conventions

to grant chapters by a three-fourth vote-and the result based on returns is amusing. One set of chapters almost invariably votes affirmatively on every petition, probably on the boom theory. Another set votes in accordance with the recommendation of the chapter nearest the petitioners-a somewhat lazy but safe procedure. A third set sits tight and votes not, thinking omission a less offense than commission and forgetting that unless they vote within sixty days their vote is recorded by the Secretary in the affirmative. The fourth set-praise be it they are few—are the cold-footed, anti-expansionists, who vote invariably in the negative, urging that a fraternity of thirty chapters is entirely large enough, perhaps too large now to be select, and that all our efforts should be centered on developing and keeping what we now have rather than reaching for more. Numbers, they say, is weakness, and that if Phi Delta Phi keeps adding more chapters it will go to the very bow wows. Of course, this is all tommy, perhaps 'tis tabby-I am not sure of the gender-rot. If a petition shows all the marks and essentials that indicate it will make a strong chapter, why, grant the petition; but if it shows the opposite, kill it.

But what should those marks and essentials be? We ought to have a standard by which to gauge petitions and those contemplating petitioning ought to know about what they must show before they spend a hundred or two hundred dollars on a petition.

I commented briefly on these essentials in the last BRIEF and stated them to be these: (1) A petition should be from a body of students in a law school, which is a part of a university; (2) The law school should have a three-year course; (3) The petitioners must have a lease of club rooms for at least one year. To these should be added a fourth, that the name of the new chapter be approved by the Council.

University connection insures scholarship and permanency. True, we have a very good chapter (Dwight, in the New York law school) without this requirement, but that school is in a class by itself. The three-year-course essential may be qualified at times. The club-room lease should be enforced strictly. After a petition is granted it is hard to get chapters to take

rooms, while if they start with rooms they will not be given up. New chapters should have appropriate names. Appropriate names may be scarce; there is no need in giving a new chapter the name of one with only a local reputation and who has enough life left in him yet to cut up all sorts of didos should he be so moved. Chapters should have the names of nationally eminent lawers and jurists, who are either dead, or whose work is practically completed. Petitions should also be printed as supplements to the BRIEF and sent to all undergraduates.

Five chapters, which formerly waited until fall before electing officers, have already held their elections and will be ready for work in October.

a success.

NO CONVENTION UNTIL FALL.

Since the convention set for last December in St. Louis was postponed, owing to the chapters' not reporting delegates in time, the plan of holding a convention in Buffalo during the summer has been agitated. Daniels chapter at Buffalo declined to extend an invitation to the Fraternity, on the ground that with so many attractions in the city a convention would not be The action of Daniels chapter would make a Buffalo convention difficult but not impossible and so many of the eastern chapters had written enthusiastically about it, that Secretary Katzenberger, acting according to the direction of the constitution (Art. IX., sec. 1), put the matter before the chapter by writing the consul and pro-consul of each chapter asking for action by their chapter. Several chapters elected delegates, but up to May 20th, only one chapter had written to the secretary. Many chapters had then held their last meeting for the year and so, without authority and information to act on, a convention call could not be issued. The Fraternity has thus let slip its first opportunity to hold a great convention. This is not due so much to inactivity in the chapters-for they were never so strong as now—as to the faults in the Fraternity's plan of government. If called, a Buffalo convention would have been a great success, but the Council had no authority under the con

stitution to call one. The initiative in all matters is now in the chapters, scattered from Massachusetts to California. Their times for holding meetings are many and various, and to get quick action is impossible. When the chapters meet in the fall, the convention matter will again be taken up and when the convention meets it must not be adjourned, until we have a vertebrate constitution instead of the present invertebrate affair.

If each class in your chapter has not regularly maintained a quiz and review of each week's work, your chapter organization is faulty.

TO UNDERGRADUATE SUBSCRIBERS.

The Post Office department does not forward periodicals. A second copy of the BRIEF is not sent where non-delivery is due to a change of address of which we were not notified. The next BRIEF will be issued in August, when many of you will be at home, so if you wish to get the book you should notify this office at once of your summer's address.

One of New York's prominent lawyers says: "During my practice I have always sent my out-of-town business to Phi Delta Phi men. I have generally found them prompt and capable, and I have always found them honest and their charges reasonable."

NEW CHAPTERS.

The Fraternity now has two more chapters, viz., the Ranney chapter of the Western Reserve University law school and the Langdell chapter of the law department of the University of Illinois. Both petitions were before the Fraternity for more than a year. The standing of the institutions and the petitioners were thoroughly considered before the petitions were granted. Both will be strong chapters, and both will add strength to our Order, especially Ranney,' for its location in Cleveland, Ohio, 1 A letter describing the installation among the chapter letters.

where there are so many unorganized alumni, will make it a nucleus around which an alumnus chapter will soon form.

The Shiras petition from the law school of the Western University of Pennsylvania is still before the chapters. Whether the petitioners are successful or unsuccessful now, it is certain that a chapter will, sooner or later, be placed in the school, for the Pittsburgh alumni interests demand it.

The petition of the Malone Law Club, of the law school of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, is also before the Fraternity. These petitioners, six of whom were Kappa Alpha (Southern) fellows wrote the Council, after petitioning, fearing that Kappa Alpha was opposed to Phi Delta Phi. Consul Manton Davis, of Minor, K. A. (So.) quiets these fears by referring them to section 166 of the Kappa Alpha constitution, which expressly excepts professional fraternities from a prohibition aimed, we think, at Theta Nu Epsilon. Phi Delta Phi needs more strength in the South and we trust that there will be two or three new chapters in Southern law schools before many years go by.

NAMES.

A minority Erie stockholder has sought to question the action of J. P. Morgan in selling his coal lands to the Erie railroad on the ground that Mr. Morgan, being one of the Erie's voting trustees, could not sell to himself, etc. The name of the objector was Richard Pine-Coffin. Of course he lost.

Law Notes (Am.) reports this:

TERMS OF ENDEARment in PLEADING.-In Wade v. State (Tex.) 4 S. W. Rep., 896 an indictment for murder alleged that the defendant killed "Smutty, My Darling." A motion in arrest of judgment was made on the ground that it did not appear from the face of the indictment whether the defendant killed a man or beast or some inanimate object. The court, while admitting that the term used might apply to a "bird or devil," and that if "Smutty, My Darling," was the name of a human being, it was a very unusual one-one which they could not recall from their lists of acquaintances, and which had perhaps never been applied to a human being before—yet held the indictment to be good, on the ground that in an indictment for murder it is sufficient to allege the name of the deceased without further alleging that the deceased was a "reasonable creature in being."