New Commentaries on Marriage, Divorce, and Separation as to the Law, Evidence, Pleading, Practice, Forms and the Evidence of Marriage in All Issues on a New System of Legal Exposition

some were horrified that I should have pictured the law as a beneficent power, instead of the woe-breeding pest which they had fondly cherished it as being. Yet even these gentlemen, as fast as they could be enticed into looking, have acknowledged the truth to be otherwise than they had supposed.

The whole idea may be illustrated by what I once happened to witness, ,-not a remarkable phenomenon, and doubtless more than once observed by every one of my readers. A skilled mechanic was in a dilemma how to do a thing. A boy without mechanical knowledge or years to acquire it was standing by, and pointed out the way; whereupon the thing was done. The boy from his simplicity and lowliness saw what the loftier mind overlooked.

In law writings, I am and hope always to remain the boy. I speak with no authority, rely on no learning, ask only of my readers that they look and decide for themselves; while simply I point out what my superiors from their loftier positions, and impelled by their nobler aspirations, have failed to discern. It is theirs to carry the banner and march up the hill to the cry of "Excelsior;" mine to humbly gather up the unglorified, unobserved, yet nevertheless priceless treasures at the foot.

The volumes here presented descend more simply and more fully into the obvious yet unthought of things than the ones they supersede. Therefore their conclusions are less easily resisted. Yet I do not claim that there is in them no explanation less full than it ought to be, or that there is absolutely nothing which I have overlooked. Still, what is here written is but a minute fragment of what I have "thought of." Especially I have not attempted in these pages to answer, though I have considered, the many objections which might be suggested to the views

here presented. An attempt thus to forestall adverse opinions would have swollen the work to unendurable dimensions. And it would be a misfortune should any writing be so constructed as to create in the reader the idea that there was nothing for him to think of beyond. To stimulate thought, not lull it to sleep, is the true work of every author; it has certainly been always mine.

It requires no words to show that this "new system of legal exposition" is as available to the practitioner as to the author. Obviously, also, its general use would work a revolution in legal practice and to outward appearance in the law itself. And the revolution would be an unmixed good, with no particle of attendant evil, to law students, to practising lawyers, to the judges, and to the entire public. It involves no substitution of a new system of law for an old one, changes the substance of no law, but it makes the law we have plain and easily understood, and beneficent, just, and uniform in its workings.

Further details, explanations, and unfoldings of practical methods appear in an Introduction following the "Contents."

CAMBRIDGE, May 1, 1891.

J. P. B.