under the direction for the payment of debts." The result is that beneficiaries who happen also to be creditors of the estate are, under the rule of this case, absolutely at the mercy of the executor if the will contains a clause such as that here in question. The executor may allow the claim for a debt, in which case the claimant will receive both the debt and the legacy. Or he may, for any or no reason, reject the claim, and force the beneficiary either to abandon his debt or forfeit his legacy. Surely this was not what the testatrix meant the forfeiture clause to accomplish.

It is submitted that the contrary and general rule, that good faith contests will not result in forfeiture, is a more reasonable interpretation and application of such provisions. To say that the exclusion of contests in good faith from the operation of the provision will defeat its purpose, is to say that the courts are incompetent to distinguish between good faith and bad, for if forfeiture is enforced where actions are brought in bad faith, dishonest and undesirable contests will be discouraged just as effectively as if forfeiture were enforced without exception. E. H.

17 A clause directing the payment of debts is universally recognized as sufficient to rebut any presumption that legacies are intended in satisfaction of debts. 40 Cyc. 1886; 54 L. R. A. (N. S.) 1169.

Book Reviews

FEDERAL APPELLATE JURISDICTION AND PROCEDURE. By Elijah N. Zoline. Second edition by the author. Clark Boardman Co., Ltd., New York, 1924. pp. cvii, 939.

Simplicity of statement is an admirable feature in any law work dealing with the rules governing appellate procedure. The practitioner does not care to have theories confounded with statutory directions as to what perfects an appeal or writ of error. This book, written in simple and direct language, gives the rules governing federal procedure in a comprehensive yet understandable manner. The author has been careful to give what the law is rather than what it should be. Every statement in the text is supported by extensive footnotes containing authorities discussing the rule stated.

The first chapters of the work are devoted to the fundamental principles underlying appeal and error, and to an analysis of the question as to what constitutes reversible error. The next chapters deal with the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court on appeal or error from the lower federal courts and from the highest courts of the states. These chapters also give the jurisdiction of the Circuit Court of Appeals and of the Court of Customs Appeals, and consider appeals in habeas corpus and contempt of court cases.

The latter chapters give the machinery of appeal or writ of error. The preliminary steps for securing appeal or writ of error are given, and the bill of exceptions and the record in equity are considered. The inclusion of statutes and court rules in this part of the work makes a valuable treatise for the federal practitioner.

An appendix gives the revised court rules of the United States Supreme Court, as well as the rules of practice prevailing in each of the nine circuits of the United States Circuit Courts of Appeals. A list of forms is also included with a few notations, giving the cases in which a form has been sustained.

This book will undoubtedly lessen the uncertainty and confusion which exists in the subject of federal appellate jurisdiction and procedure. In most cases the rules governing the jurisdiction and procedure of the different reviewing courts are well defined. A study of this work will impress those rules upon the profession.

John Clare Jury.

LEGAL PHILOLOGY, EPIGRAMS AND EXCERPTS FROM THe Legal OPINIONS OF HON. HENRY LAMM. By Fred C. Mullinix. The F. H. Thomas Law Book Company, St. Louis, Mo., 1923. pp. 344.

This book is much funnier than the compiler supposes. Very little of the humor is furnished by Judge Lamm. The latter was evidently a competent and well-read person and his decisions are, as every lawyer knows, often exceptionally good. That he seems to have had the ambition of rivaling the English jokesmith judges may be forgiven him. We learn from the book without surprise

that Mr. Justice Lamm has read all the books that an intelligent school boy ought to know and can make allusions that an intelligent school boy will understand. His epigrams remind us of nothing so much as the mottoes on the crackers used at children's parties, and they have this additional resemblance to those crackers in that they rarely explode.

But it is Mr. Mullinix, who made the compilation and whose name alone appears on the outside, to whom we are indebted for most of the pleasure the book gives us. The cover is obviously borrowed from folders of automobile advertisements. From the title we should judge that the compiler thinks that "Philology" is a word something like "Mesopotamia" without any special meaning of its own but satisfactory in its sound. What he considers wise saws are often the simplest statements and just as often are jumbled quotations. But the index surpasses anything else of its kind. We have heard of the learned editor whose index contained an item like "Mind, Mr. Justice Maule, his great." It is reserved for this editor to give us items like "Athens, Owls to," "Conscience, Keeper of," "Dane, Melancholy," and "Tanalas, (Sic!) Cup of." Those who read the book will have only themselves to blame if they are not able thereafter to be as facetious and witty as good judges occasionally are in Missouri. Max Radin

THE AMERICAN JUDGE. By Andrew A. Bruce. The MacMillan Co., 1924. pp. 218.

Judge Bruce's little book ought perhaps to have been called -or should we say, entitled?-a Serious Effort to Correct Current Misconceptions of the Laity Concerning the Honourable Office of Judge and the Worshipful Holders Thereof. It forms part of Professor Ely's Citizens' Library Series and is addressed to those who, it may be supposed, desire to exercise their civic functions with some comprehension of what they are about. The reader will learn, what few lay readers know, that judges are busy and burdened men, that their work is made as difficult as possible for them, by ignorant and interested persons, that, when they set aside or interpret statutes or quote precedent, they are not wickedly sacrificing Justice on the altars of Tradition and Class Prejudice, but are working with the only tools available to perform duties that are quite indispensable.

There is much in the book that is sensible and solid and much that emphatically needs to be said. It does not, it is true, contain a tithe of the useful and important information that is crowded into the rather dry pages of Baldwin's "American Judiciary," a book published in a similar series for the same group of readers. Judge Bruce is not dry. He is argumentative, advocative, combative and, at several points, persuasive. He approaches his task with the triple qualifications of a practitioner, a teacher and a judge, and of his integrity and sincerity I can imagine no reasonable question.

The prevailing tone of his presentation is apparent enough. Judge Bruce knows that there are corrupt and incompetent judges just as he knows that there are noisy demagogues, though one must regretfully note that he considers the former as less dangerous than the latter. What he would like to do is keep a middle course between such blatant mouthings as are quoted on page 11, from an eminent attorney, and the fulsome rhetoric with which honest Tories syrup their political thinking into the sweetest of sleeps. Unfortunately, to steer a middle course against the wind requires a number of tackings from one side to another, and even a certain amount of "wearing,"—which, as I am credibly informed, causes the ship to veer around completely. I fear that parts of the book were written when our judicial helmsman was on an extreme tack to windward and when the wind which was blowing was an ill and reactionary one.

It is too bad to see Judge Bruce discussing the Child Labor decision in the spirit of the "dreadful consequences argufier,” (pp. 164 seq.). If he should become a member of the Supreme Court, would he really find it impossible to prohibit interstate commerce in the products of child labor without feeling it incumbent on him at the same time to tax California fruit out of markets desired for Michigan products? He says so but I do not believe it. The logical feat of distinguishing between these two courses of action is not a great one and I will not be convinced that he is incapable of it.

Few chapters are so bad as the long one on the "Misinformed Enthusiast," which contains enough enthusiastic misinformation to justify the title he selects. It is hard to see how the chapter could have been written by one as conscious as the author is of the evils of expensive litigation, of class-conscious legislation, (It is Judge Bruce that uses this horrendous phrase!), of imprisonment for fines, and the like. If there is such an urgent need of reform, it is not well to bewail the insidiously undermining activities of reformers. Judge Bruce, in fact, does not let his right chapter know what his left chapter doeth. The optimism of Rotarius Kiwanissimus pervades many of his pages, but, on the other hand, there are several quotations from that licentious pamphlet, "An Outline of the Cleveland Crime Survey". I am afraid we shall hardly get the changes he advocates, if he is content to leave so much to a prayerful hope that wise and good men will prevail in our councils.

The book makes no pretense at carrying a learned apparatus. Yet it may be pointed out that it contains many misleading statements. The bar of France did not "constitute an order of nobility, fully recognized as such," as Mr. Weeks says and Judge Bruce accepts. South America is not quite the cauldron of anarchy that he seems to think it. And it really was not French criminal procedure that caused the conviction of Dreyfus, but brute perjury and forgery, neither of which is wholly un

known to our system. Again when he tells his readers on pages 31-32, that the courts, and not the legislature, established the rules imposing on the employer the duty of providing a safe place to work for his laborers, he might also have told them that these rules were palliatives for the pestilential "fellow-servant" and "assumption of risk" doctrines, also of court origin. To turn to other matters, one need not be a Hohfeldian to raise a questioning eyebrow at the citation from the Illinois Law Review, page 60, which speaks of "the privilege of exercising the right of the franchise which is the privilege and duty of all." Such lapses as the double use of "who" as an object, on page 143, are of no importance. But these and others raise the doubt whether the book has been as carefully revised as books by lawyers always are.

The second edition can easily correct all these things, I trust it will soon be called for.

Max Radin.

THE LIFE OF JOSEPH HODGES CHOATE. By Edward Sandford Martin. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1920. In two volumes, pp. vi, 471; 439.

"The Life of Joseph Hodges Choate" is largely autobiographical. The first 134 pages are Choate's own story of his early life, with a few miscellaneous reminiscences of his later years. The remainder of the two volumes consists of letters, written between 1848 and 1917, and made into a more or less connected narrative by the interpolations of the editor.

Even apart from its literary merits, the subject-matter of the Life makes it intensely interesting. Choate lived from 1832 until 1917, and his secure reputation as one of the ablest American lawyers rests upon some sixty years of practice with great men, great cases, and great events.

"I have never had my horoscope cast," he says in his Autobiography, "but it must have been propitious". It was indeed. Introduced in 1855 by his illustrious cousin, Rufus Choate, to the firm of Evarts & Southmayd, his professional life began under highly favorable auspices, and his fortune never changed. Nature endowed him with beauty, forceful ability, and sound health; Choate himself added personal charm, unflagging industry and sufficient self-esteem; fate gave him early opportunities, serenity at home, and a long life in which occurred momentous changes in science, government and law.

To summarize, even briefly, Choate's experience as a lawyer would require a volume. The Tilton-Beecher case, the Vanderbilt Will Contest, the Federal Income Tax Cases, the Bering Sea case, are isolated examples of important cases in which he appeared. Honors, crowned by his appointment in 1899 as Ambassador to England, came in variety and profusion.

Choate's rich experiences are pleasingly told in the auto