picion that the shooting of our London brethren was accomplished after the manner of the Wall Street broker, who put a number of shots into his barn door, and then painted a target around them. If we were called upon for a toast to the volunteers at this particular time, we would give, " May they never shoot better! " But why do not the members of the New York City Bar Association imitate the example of these scholarly and clever men, and have theatri cals and target excursions? We take ourselves too seriously in this country. Nearly all the fun the pro fession here enjoy is in reading the Green Bag. Really, we should have some other resources against the appearance of the big Annual and American digests.
A Remarkable Apology. — Our esteemed and always interesting neighbor, the " American Law Review," is one of the very few law periodicals that have the courage of their convictions, and is not much given to apology for uttering them. In fact, its apologies are even more to be dreaded than its de nunciations, if one may judge from the following, in the May-June number : — "After the explanation given by Judge Rose, ... we must withdraw, with regret, the imputation of ignor ance and stupidity which we put upon the Judge, who decided Ex parte Conway, in the article referred to." This is almost as ambiguous as the apology said to have been made in Congress : "I said that the member from blank was a hog, it is true, and I am sorry for it."
Law Reform Writing. — The cool reception given by the editor of the "North American Re view " to Chief-Justice Appleton's heretical article on Evidence, narrated in a recent number of this pe riodical, reminds the present writer of his first at tempt at law reform. On graduating at the law school in 1858, he wrote a thesis on " Disqualifica tion of Parties as Witnesses," advocating the admis sion of parties as witnesses in their own behalf in civil actions. The faculty sent it for publication to the " American Law Register," and it was published with the following editorial footnote: "We do not entirely concur with our correspondent, but we pre sent his well-written paper to our readers for their consideration." It was a boyish performance, marked by what Talleyrand would have deemed too much "zeal," but the writer has never found any reason to be ashamed of it, and the views advocated in it, fol lowing Chief-Justice Appleton, are not now, and have not for many years been thought extreme in this country, even in Pennsylvania.
NOTES OF CASES. Trade Monopoly of a Family Name. — Recent mention by the " New York Law Journal" (whose selection of cases for comment is always ex cellent) of Meneely v. Meneely, 62 N. Y. 429; 20 Am. Rep. 489, reminds the writer of one of his early professional experiences. The action was brought against his client by his two elder brothers to restrain him from carrying on the business of making bells at Troy, N. Y., in the name of Meneely, because their father had given to the two elder brothers, by will, his old bell-foundry at West Troy, N. Y., and the "good-will " of that business. Fraud and deception were originally charged, but none were proved. In the trial court the plaintiffs prevailed, but this was reversed in the upper courts. The case is the lead ing one in this country on this point, and although it was an expensive litigation for the young and strug gling bell-founder, it proved a most efficient adver tisement for him; and his bells, like the morning cannon of Great Britain, now send forth a continu ous peal almost around the globe, and his Chicago "Liberty Bell " traverses these States to attend fairs. From the argument of the defendant's counsel we ex tract the following, never before publicly printed : — "Now what is this great principle which the eminent counsel is recommending to the favor of your honors? What is the principle for which he invokes the sanction of a court of equity and good conscience? Why, if I under stand the counsel, it is just this : If John Smith has made wooden buttons in Troy for forty years, and stamped them ' John Smith,' and acquired a good reputation for them, he has thereby made a trade-mark of the name of John Smith, and acquired a monopoly of that name in the wooden but ton business at Troy, and no one of the thirty other John Smiths in Troy can thereafter make wooden buttons, and stamp them with his own name in the honest pursuit of that business. "Is it possible that society is organized on any such in convenient and precarious basis as this? Are the com mercial world the prey of such coincidences? Do courts recognize such a doctrine as pre-emption in patronymics? Can a man ' squat ' on his family name? Has Iiarnum, for instance, acquired a monopoly of the use of that name in the showman's business in New York? Can no other Edwin Booth play ' Hamlet ' to metropolitan audiences? Why, such an idea is only fit for a moot-court of lunatics, the realm of feverish imagination, or the kingdom of Utopia. It is just such a doctrine as a judge might dream he had enunciated, if he fell asleep on his back, and had a nightmare, and what a blessed sense of relief he would experience on waking up and finding that it was but a dream! It would be just as reasonable to ask to restrain a man from carrying on business because of a personal re semblance to a rival tradesman, or because of a similarity in advertising, or dressing his shop windows. It is indeed difficult to think of this claim as other than a colossal joke on the part of my friend, and it might be a tolerable jest were it not for the expenses attendant on its perpetration.
