tend across the chart, cutting the state and territory columns at right angles, so the law of any state or territory on any of the subheads can be seen at a glance.

The work is necessarily extremely condensed and abbreviated, so much so that in places it is a bit ambiguous, but it is most valuable for a ready reference and it gives a panoramic view of the divorce conditions of our country that will be appreciated by the student of divorce.

C. H. T.

Where to Look for the Law. Lawyers' Coöperative Publishing Co., Rochester, N. Y.

This is the fifth annual edition of this booklet. This year it is neatly bound in buckram instead of paper, and consists of 100 pages, 16 devoted to a catalogue of the recent text-books and reports issued by this company. The remaining 84 pages contain an alphabetical list -from Abridgments to X-rays-of almost all imaginable legal topics. If a text-book reference, the author's name, the edition, year of publication, and price are given; special points in the various subjects are brought out by referring to the Lawyers' Reports Annotated. The index is very complete in spite of the fact that a few such books as Chase's Stephens and Simonton's Municipal Corporations are omitted. It will be found of great assistance when one is looking up some evasive point of law. The publishers will send it free on application. M. I. ST. J.

The Law of Wills. By PROF. JAMES SCHOULER, Webster, of the Boston University Law School. Pp. lxvi + 762, 8vo. Sheep. The Boston Book Co., Boston.

This the third edition of this book; the first was issued in 1887, the second in 1892. The general text of the earlier editions is preserved, the footnotes being increased by the addition of cases decided since the second edition was published. In the very last pages is given a list of cases in point decided while the volume was in press.

The treatise is divided into five parts, with subchapters under each Part I., The "Nature and Origin of Testamentary Disposition"; Part II., "Capacity and Incapacity to Make a Will," treating of general capacity, the incapacities of infants, of married women, of idiots and imbeciles, of lunatics, or those suffering from delirium, drunkenness and insane delusions, and of those laboring under error, fraud and undue influence, also as to the proof of capacity and incapacity; Part III., " Requisites of a Will," treating of what constitutes a will, its signature and attestation; Part IV., " Revocation,

Alteration, and Republication"; Part V., "Wills Executed Upon a Valuable Consideration," being joint and mutual wills; Part VI., "Construction of Wills," giving general rules of construction, details of construction, extent of admission of extraneous evidence to aid construction, and miscellaneous and unclassified provisions affecting construction. In the appendix are given the leading wills acts, viz. : The English statute, I. Victoria, Ch. 26, American statutes of Massachussetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. He also gives seven types or forms of wills ranging from the most simple to the most complex. At the close are excellent suggestions to an intending testator, which if followed too closely might cause many surrogate practitioners to change their specialty.

It

The book is used as a text-book in many of our law schools. aims to put in a definite and succinct form the law on a subject which at its best is one that cannot be tied down to any cast-iron rules. Still one has a feeling of indefiniteness after finishing some chapters and wondering just what is the law after all, for instance, Sec. 538: "In general, legatees will take per capita rather than per stirpes, or vice versa, where it is clearly apparent what the testator intended." One might wish, too, that a sharper distinction was drawn between the older and the newer statutes, and between the older and the newer

cases.

The author uses a number of poetical expressions, and involved metaphors, which would make even the most skeptical admit that law is not always prosy; e. g., Sec. 106, "For Reason, when thrown from her seat, struggles almost instinctively to recover it before succumbing to adverse circumstances, as the swimmer who is swept down a current reaches out convulsively for rope or spar until despair overwhelms him;" Sec. 129, "Reason flickers low in the socket and then dies out"; Sec. 213, "When the soul wrestled with the body"; sec

About 4,000 cases are cited as against about 3,400 in the second edition, and there are 30 more pages added. One notices very slight differences between this and the second edition, and it is only natural that it should be so, as wills is a branch of law that was developed even before that of real property.

We have received the following:

D. A. R.

The Law of Bankruptcy. By EDWIN C. BRANDENBURG, Marshall, of the Columbian University law school and Department of Justice, Washington. 2d edition. 8vo, pp. lii + 988. Sheep, $6.00. Callaghan & Co., Chicago.

A Treatise on the Law of Sale of Personal Property. By PROF. FLOYD R. MECHEM, Kent, of the University of Michigan law school. Pp. ccxi + 1578. Sheep, $12.00. Callaghan & Co., Chicago.

Liability of Municipal Corporations for Tort. By WATERM L. WILLIAMS. 8vo, pp. xxxix + 345, 8vo. Sheep, $3.00. Little, Brown & Co., Boston.

The Law of Contracts. By PROF. EDWARD AVERY HARRIMAN, Booth, of the Northwestern University law school. 2d edition. 8vo, pp. liii + 409. Buckram and sheep, $3.00 and $3.50.

Little, Brown & Co., Boston.

The Law of Sales of Personal Property. By PROF. FRANCIS M. BURDICK, Story, of the Columbia University law school. 2d edition. 8vo, pp. xli + 299. Buckram and sheep, $3.00 and $3.50. Little, Brown & Co., Boston.

The Law of Agency. By PROF. ERNEST W. HUFFENT, of the Cornell University law school. 2d edition. 8vo. pp. li + 406. Buckram and sheep, $3.00 and $3.50. Little, Brown & Co., Boston.

In Lighter Vein.

NEXT.

An attorney certainly works like a horse for he draws many a conveyance.

THE VERDICT.

"Have a cigar, Judge," said the young lawyer. "By the way, did you ever try this brand?"

"Yes," replied the Judge, "and I regret to say I found it guilty." -Chicago News.

PROXIMATE CAUSE.

Jones is always appearing with legal stunts. in with this: "Got a mighty funny case up stairs. teeth. Put them in a hip pocket. down in a street car. Teeth bit him. now the insurance company claims it is

Last week he came Insured had store Forgot they were there. Sat He died of hydrophobia, and a case of suicide and wont pay."

WHY THE TALK WON.

"While I was in the State Attorney's office," says William C. Smith, formerly Deputy State Attorney of Maryland, "I had to try a case against an otherwise honest German for selling liquor on Sunday. The defendant had retained a certain member of the bar who is noted for his high C voice. During this attorney's rather loud address his German client looked on in rapt admiration, and he was heard to remark:

"Ach! dot's der kind of lawyer to haf, yet.'

"Why?' he was asked.

"'Because,' was the reply, he hollers so loud he scares der jury.'"-Exchange.

EXPLAINING.

He was rather the worse for liquor when he faced the magistrate and it didn't require a rich brogue to indicate his ancestry. The remnants of a fighting Sunday jag had left him very loquacious.

"What is your name?" asked the magistrate.

"Michael O'Halloran," was the reply.

"What is your occupation?"

"Phwat's that?"

"What is your occupation? What work do you do?"

"Oi'm a sailor."

The magistrate looked incredulous.

"I don't believe you ever saw a ship," he said.

"Didn't Oi, thin," said the prisoner. "An' phwat do yiz t'ink Oi cum over in, a hack?"

A

After that it went hard with Michael.-Philadelphia Record.

A BURNING INCIDENT.

Hays City, Kansas, some years ago had a young lawyer, Billy -, fat and good natured, but whose intellect can be gauged by his asking a witness on cross examination" if there was any other loud talk he did not hear." Two men worked a farm near the town one summer on shares. After harvest they quarrelled and one of them burned a large straw stack in which each had a half interest and was sued by his partner. Billy A- - was for the defense and the town turned out to hear him.

As a matter of fact, there wasn't much of a trial, as the prisoner made no denial of the charge that he had set fire to the stack. But when "Billy" came to address the Court, he advanced one of the most remarkable legal propositions the lawyers had ever heard. "Your Honor," he said, "we make no denial of the fact that we set fire to that straw stack, and we stand on the immortal principle handed down to us from Magna Charta that a man has the right to do what he will with his own. It is not denied that we owned half of that burned straw stack. Your Honor, we claim here that we set fire to only our own half, and unless it can be shown that with malice pretense we caused the fire to communicate with the other half we cannot be held for the destruction of the other man's property, which was a mere incident of the exercise of our own rights. Your Honor," and here "Billy," thundered into his peroration, "if a man can't burn his own straw stack, in the name of all that is holy, in the name of that stareyed goddess whose smooth right arm bears aloft the scales of justice, whose straw stack can he burn?"-Kansas City Journal.