ment originally arose in Com. v. Murphy, 14 Mass. 387, where it was announced without any expressed consideration. The reporter in a note said, "This decision has no authority to sustain it "; and it was directly and very forcibly overruled in Com. v. Churchill, 11 Met. 538; 45 Am. Dec. 229, "as a deviation from the established rule of the common law," and "not required by any strong considera tions of fitness or expediency." The Missouri and early Massachusetts doctrine is denied in Bakeman v. Rose, 18 Wend. 146; Spears v. Forrest, 15 Vt. 435; Holland v. Barnes, 53 Ala. 83; 25 Am. Rep. 595; Birmingham U. Ry. Co. v. Hale, 90 Ala. 8; 24 Am. St. Rep. 748; Gilchrist v. McKee, 4 Watts, 480; 28 Am. Dec. 721; State v. Hobgood, 46 La. Ann. : State v. Eberline, 47 Kan. 155. There is some disagreement whether the impeachment should be directed to general moral character or to reputation for truth and veracity, but very little as to the doctrine that it must be aimed at general reputation and not at particular acts. The Chan cellor said, in Bakeman 7'. Rose, above, that it would be better to follow the practice of some Eastern countries and shut out female witnesses altogether, than to allow their impeachment for unchastity. We agree with the editor of the New York Law Journal, that this Missouri doctrine, whether applied to women or to men, is unwise, as it also is opposed to the great preponderance of authority. Applied to women it is manifestly unjust, and as applied to men it is grotesque, for no human being's tendency to commit perjury should be inferred from the vio lence of her or his sexual passion. Such a rule applied to men would have shut out many of the wisest and most famous of mankind, from David and Solomon down to the present century, and even to this very decade in the very highest quarters in every Christian country. The only recognized exception to the general rule is that upon the question of con sent, a prosecutrix for rape perhaps may be impeached by proof that she is reputed to be unchaste : 3 Grenl. Ev. sect. 214; People v. McLean, 71 Mich. 309; 15 Am. St. Rep. 263; McDermott v. State, 13 Ohio St. 338; 82 Am. Dec. 444; McQuirk. v. State, 48 Ala. 435 : 5 Am. St. Rep. 381; and this has been extended to actions for critn. con. and prosecutions for seduction. But this was denied in State v. Eberline, 47 Kans. 155.
Proximate Cause. — The most amusing case of the assertion of this doctrine is Gulf etc. Ry. Co. v. Shields (Texas), 29 S. W. Rep. 652. A passenger, slightly intoxicated, enters the smoking car of a rail road train and places his baggage, which is in the form of an old tow sack filled with coffee grinders,
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scrap iron and a jug of alcohol, on the seat beside him, projecting slightly into the aisle. The motion of the train causes the sack to tumble out into the aisle of the car, breaking the jug and spilling the alcohol on the floor. As this flows along the aisle, another pas senger, who is just lighting a cigar, throws a match in the way, and the alcohol burns up to the ceiling of the car; a third passenger, with silk stockings and celluloid cuffs, has his feet, hand and eyebrows seri ously scorched and sues the railroad company for damages. Held, that the contents of the sack being unknown to the conductor, and the passenger's con duct not sufficiently boisterous to warrant his eject ment, it was not actionable negligence unless it was a proximate cause of the injury.
Bailment of Hat. — The Supreme Court of Georgia has decided a very interesting and important question concerning hats — a favorite subject of this Chairman's discourse. (He regrets that he did not learn of it in time to include it in his just now pub lished manual on Bailments.) The majority of the Court held that the proprietor of a barber shop, kept for public patronage, is liable to a customer for the value of his hat, which was deposited on a hat-rack in the shop, and which, while the customer was being shaved, disappeared from the shop and was thus lost, such proprietor being under these circumstances a bailee for hire as to the customer's hat. The main inter ests of the opinion however consists in Chief-Justice Bleckley's dissenting opinion. (The Chairman is strongly opposed to the promulgation of dissenting opinions, as a rule, but makes an exception' in favor of this wise and witty magistrate, who has good sense and humor enough for half a dozen average judges.) He observes : — "It hath never happened, from the earliest time to the present, that barbers, who are an ancient order of small craftsmen, serving their customers for a small fee, and enter taining them the while with the small gossip of the town or village, have been held responsible for mistake made by one customer whereby he taketh the hat of another from the com mon rack or hanging place appointed for all customers to hang their hats; this rack or place being in the same room in which customers sat to be shaved. The reason is that there is no complete bailment of the hat. The barber had no exclusive custody thereof, and the fee for shaving is too small to compensate him for keepirig a servant to watch it. He himself could not watch it, and at the same time the owner. Moreover, the value of an ordinary gentleman's hat is so much, in proportion to the fee for shaving, that to make the barber an insurer against such mistakes of his customers would be unreasonable. The loss of one hat would absorb his earnings for a whole day; perhaps many days. The barber is a craftsman laboring for wages, not a capitalist conducting a business of trade or trust." This reasoning seems effectually to take the case
