devine healer," was advertised on one of the piers. He is said to take no thought of his eating or drink ing or clothing, and it is evident he does not of his spelling. He insists that his very circulars have cura tive qualities, but although we chewed the margin of one it did our throat no good. He probably would say we ought to have chewed the print, but the great trouble was that we had not the requisite faith. Probably a man who is fool enough to believe on him would be fool enough to imagine himself cured. We must not omit the newsboys — there is one to every six planks in the Walk, and one is in danger of acquiring a permanent shaking palsy by continually wagging his head in the negative to their appeals. A largely patronized industry on the Walk is that of palmistry and astrology. The most extensive estab lishment of this kind is conducted by a man and his wife, the former interpreting the stars, and the latter the lines on the hand. Anybody who has read "Quentin Durward" knows enough about astrology, and we lost interest when the wise man told us that most great men are born under Mars, for we came to light under Virgo. When we instanced Napoleon to disprove his theory, he replied that he was so great that he could afford to be born under any sign, and retorted quite cleverly by reminding me that Na poleon was a believer in his star. The palmists all tell substantially the same story — the lines have cer tain and fixed values, and so palmistry is a sort of science, at least as trustworthy as history according to Voltaire, who said it " is lies agreed on." We saw Kip Van Winkle going into one of these places with an amused smile on his dear old face. (It occurred to us for the first time that Jo Jefferson is the most enviable man alive — he has not an enemy, and has given pleasure to and is loved by millions of his race.) Our particular oracle was a fat man, not too clean, who, when the oracular frenzy was not on him aired several King Charles spaniels on the Walk. Among other disclosures he assured us that the war will not be over when the present administration goes out, although a peace will be patched up about August loth, for the " Powers " will interfere. Also that President McKinley will be assassinated. He is a fervent believer in pyschic force, and that when a great many minds agree in wishing a thing it must come to pass. In proof of this he pulled open a drawer and exhibited a check which he had received that morning for a debt of long standing, for which he had been vainly dunning his debtor for many months, and which had come at last in answer to the joint mental direction of a Psychic Society of which he is a member, and to which in extremity he ap pealed for the putting forth of their aggregated will power. Why would this not be a good society for a collecting lawyer to belong to?
astrologer that he might do a thriving business in this way, but he smiled blandly, and said he did not care for money, and was deeply interested in the study of mind and the development of its powers. This wise man also told us that he believed that the feats of the Indian jugglers were accomplished by this principle of willing a certain appearance to be manifested, or of hypnotizing the spectators to seem to see it. The jugglers cannot deceive the camera, because it is not intelligent, and therefore it records nothing of what all the spectators agree in seeing. The sailing at Atlantic City is superb, but one can sail at other places, and there is no other place where one can see so many and such various types of human nature, and so many human beings unstrung and off guard, as it were, become so simple them selves and believing so implicitly in the simplicity of others. Therefore the Board Walk proved more at tractive to us than the sea. A tired lawyer asked us if there is any such thing as resting the brain. We responded quickly and unhesitatingly that there is only one rest for the brain, and that is novel-reading or playing solitaire. Accordingly we read seven new novels in the four weeks of our outing and played innumerable games of solitaire. Dissenting Opinions. — We have long been op posed to the publication of dissenting opinions, for reasons very well known to the profession, and not necessary to be stated or enlarged upon here. A case in which there is a strong dissent is never of author ity as a precedent, and the one State that almost never publishes them, or indicates a dissent, has the most authoritative jurisprudence of any in the Federal Union — namely, Massachusetts. (The writer says this with a full sense of the influence of the decisions of the New York courts.) The matter is very re cently suggested by the appearance of volume 155 of the New York Reports, in which there seems to be an unusually large number of decisions by a divided court, several by a bare majority, and in which the dissenting opinions are of noticeable merit, and, what is very striking, nearly all written by the same judge, O'Brien. We shall call special attention to several of these in our ' . Notes of Cases," and may remark, as a matter more of curiosity than of consequence, that the dissenters seem to us to have frequently the better of the argument. Those who favor the dissemination of dissenting opinions will seize on this admission as an argument on their side of the dispute, urging that the fact may lead eventually to a correction of the law announced. But it cannot be denied that the pub lication of these views has a tendency to leave the law unsettled, and to encourage other trials of the same questions; and in three cases out of four, the decis
