tive but to yield. The sale of a single volume, it may be readily anticipated, will be greater if the purchasing lawyers can be made to believe it has all the cases on its topic, than if the topic were swelled to four volumes, containing truly all of them. So, of the volume just mentioned, the advertisements by the publishers, as far as I have noticed, open by declaring it to contain all the American decisions upon its topic, from the earliest period to the time of publication; though they have an ending in the terms of the preface. Here is a conflict. Did the pressure proceed from them to the author, or from the author to them?

Moreover, a style of preface is sometimes adopted leaving it not quite clear to every reader what is meant. An author, for example, uses, in the main, the English text-books, instead of the reports, in making so much of his book as does not depend on the American decisions; and copies the citations from those books into his notes. Then, in his preface, he tenders a sort of acknowledgment of indebtedness to English authors for help in general and particular. There happens to be an English book which, I will suppose, is named The Chum Cud; it is in several volumes; and, among its subjects, is that of our American author. Other subjects in The Chum Cud have no relation to this one. It appropriates a separate volume to one such subject, and in some new editions of the work this volume is enriched by various cases not in the regular reports, or reported in them less perfectly. So, our American author makes a special bow to The Chum Cud, from which, he says, he has repeatedly drawn cases not in the reports, or given in them but imperfectly. Now, does he mean that he has mingled the topic of this special volume of The Chum Cud with his own? A slight examination will show that, most judiciously, he has not. Has he, in fact, drawn any cases, as he seems to say he has, from The Chum Cud? No, not from this special volume, nor particularly from any volume of the edition mentioned. In one of the English text-books from which he compiled the English part of his own there is a reference to The Chum Cud for a single sentence in one case, which, however, is given at great length

in the reports. So, our author has this reference for this one case; but for no other case does he cite The Chum Cud. And that is right; because it contains no cases of the sort under consideration, relating to his subject. What, then, is meant? Is the statement in the preface false? Of course it is not. Should your friend tell you that he had just been strengthened by eating an ice-cream out of the new moon, you would not understand him as literally affirming that the new moon is a dish, that ice-creams are in it, and that he had just been there and eaten one. Why? Because the thing is palpably impossible. You would rather understand him as indulging in some pleasant figure of speech. In the instance before us it is not important to enquire what is the rhetorical name of the figure of speech in which the author of the preface indulged, or what is the literal meaning intended to be conveyed. But a practical difficulty distinguishes a case like this from the supposed one of the moon. Everybody sees the moon, and knows all about it. Few could be made to believe, even on the authority of an astronomer, that the new moon is a dish, filled with a ball of ice-cream. But The Chum Cud is not, in this country, a familiar object, like the moon; it is a book seen, with us, only in large libraries, and rarely or never used; and few American lawyers know what particular editing has been done to its several volumes in each successive edition. Hence, profitless time has been spent in searching in the Cud for the supposed cases which it reports perfectly, but which are given imperfectly, or not at all, in the reports, upon the subject of the American book. So that, in an hour of disappointment, the ungracious thought has even arisen that an American author, who merely sought to please his readers by an unique figure of speech in his preface, conveying really, it may be, the idea that the supposition of his having looked beyond the English text-books for the English law would be as mistaken as to suppose he had gone to The Chum Cud for cases not elsewhere to be found, had, instead thereof, attempted to mislead his readers by pretending to a wider research than truly he had made.

That such a mistake is not unnatural will appear from a further illustration. There is an excellent English book, familiarly known to the American profession, especially through successive American reprints. After a certain edition of it in England had been before the profession twelve years, a new and revised edition there appeared. And, when this new English edition had become well known both there and here, a fresh American edition was issued, "reprinted," said the American editor, "from the last London edition." In fact, the reprint was from the twelve-year-old edition, and not from the one which was the last at the time when it was published and the title-page took its date. But, on a careful inspection, one could see that the date of the American. editor's announcement was long before the day of publication, in the year preceding the one standing on the titlepage, and a fair space of time anterior to the English issue. Moreover, plain on the title-page stood the English numbering of the edition, and the name of its English editor. The English date was nowhere given. Everything, therefore, was really all right, the same as in the case of the book which referred to The Chum Cud. But I have before me a magazine notice of this reprint, written by one of the most careful, honored, and able legal persons in the country, wherein he has observations, arising from an inspection of the reprint, upon legislative changes of the law in England "within the past quarter of a century!" Nor will any one blame him for the blunder. Few American lawyers can carry in their memories the numbers and dates of English editions, and the names of the respective editors, with such accuracy as to say that an American reprint, just issued, and professing to be from the "last London edition," is really from an earlier one.

Some will chide me for saying so much of the preface, which, they will affirm, is not, like the rest of the book, used as a tool of the legal trade. But a tool without an owner is of no use in anything; and a book, to be serviceable, must find purchasers. The preface is not sold separate from the VOL. 4, NO. 1-5

rest; and, as Sir Knight Hudibras wisely reasoned of his horse and single spur, if the preface side of a book is stimulated to an "active trot," the tool side will go with it.

In truth, however, the preface is a tool, and often a very important one. If Mr. A has in court a cause involving large interests, and Mr. B is the lawyer opposed to him, then, if A can prevent B from laying before the tribunal a series of unanswerable adjudications on B's side, Mr. A may so manage the argument as to obtain a victory to which he is not justly entitled. If Mr. B has already in possession a book which, according to the preface as he reads it, contains all the cases on the subject, so as to render any further looking unnecessary, yet it has not in fact all of them, or especially those on which B's success depends, here is "luck for A. The preface has performed its mission as a tool, without A's putting it in motion. But A is on excellent social terms with B, open-hearted and generous, and perhaps B does not own the book; so, A kindly loans it to him. Here the preface, as a tool, dexterously handled by A, is lodged in the soft part of B's brain, and the cause is won.

We see, therefore, why a preface, when it is to do this sort of work, should be so framed as to admit of being read two ways. The sharp lawyers, looking into it, will comprehend the situation and purchase the book, not so much for personal use as to lend to their less sagacious brethren; and, of course, they will always have for it a good word. The other class, when able, will buy it to use themselves, because of what they believe it to be. If, for example, they understand it as professing to have all the cases, no doubt that it has them will cross their minds; and they will be happy in the reflection that the labor of searching through many books is at an end, and that now they will be even with the other fellow who has beaten them so many times. In such happiness, though unfounded, we see a beautiful compensation which nature makes for the want of original bake in the understanding. And, assuming that such a lawyer belongs to the class who will learn only in the school of experience,

he acquires, on being unexpectedly overcome through something which his book does not contain, a valuable lesson, lasting him through life.

In former times it was the function of a preface to impart to the reader some correct idea of the book to which it is prefixed. And, even at the present day, we have among authors more or less "old fogies" who cleave to the old plan. At what precise date the new method came into being, or by whom it was originated, I do not know. It seems to work admirably, and, as far as I can judge, it gains daily in popularity. Some three years ago, if my recollection serves me, and I write only from memory, there were two law journals-possibly more-whose editors put in a protest against carrying the plan so far as to reprint an English book with an altered title-page, if thereby the American reader will be led to believe it to be some book other than it is. But their protest was unavailing; and the plan, carried even to this extent, appears now to be established as entirely just and proper.

Yet I cannot doubt that what seems at first to work so well will be found in the end not profitable. The real, inner merit of the new plan—that for which considerate men will praise it is that it tends to harden soft brains in our profession, and to open blind eyes. But, when the brains are hardened and the eyes are opened, there will be no more use for the "tool." It becomes like the stick which guided upward the expired rocket. And, when the fireworks are thus over for the season, the shop of the pyrotechnist will of necessity be closed.

The number of cases or the original date of a reprint, or the fidelity of its title-page to the original, or a question like that of drawing cases from The Chum Cud, is not the only thing to be considered in comparing together the preface and the book. For instance, I take into my hands a book, not the first edition. The author, in his preface to this edition, speaks of additions to it, and describes them as "large" and "new." A collating of it with the prior edition shows that truly there are additions, and they are "large,"