might have a judgment for the value of his awning, as if he had sold it. Such extravagant agreements are not enforced in modern courts. So in regard to forfeiting furniture, and all sums paid towards the price, for failure to pay one of the last instalments on the very day agreed. In the winter of 1879 two cases were observed in the New York police-court reports. The story in one was of a woman who had bought a looking-glass for sixteen dollars, upon instalments of three dollars a week; she had paid thirteen dollars, but could not pay the last three dollars on the day named. In the other a married couple had bought forty-two dollars and fifty cents' worth of furniture, and had paid instalments up to thirty dollars; then the husband's wages failed and the payments fell into arrears. The dealers sent for the furniture; but the woman complained to the policejustices, and the justices explained that they did not consider such forfeitures enforceable, and that if the merchants did not return the furniture, they would be chargeable with stealing. No doubt, thousands of cases have occurred in which buyers have submitted to lose property for which they had partly paid, and their money also, not knowing that they had any redress. The merchant, in reclaiming the goods, seems to be acting according to the letter of the contract; but it is far from being established that he has the law upon his side. These stringent stipulations are valid and enforceable in some aspects they may serve an important purpose in protecting the dealer against fraud by the customer. In Kansas an organ-dealer sold an organ upon the instalment plan, and the buyer surreptitiously moved it away from where he had agreed to keep it. The organ-dealer went for it, and showed his contract that it was to remain his until paid for. The court said that it did not belong to the buyer to move about, and the seller could reclaim it.* A seller is not bound to enter into lawsuit for his money *Hall v. Draper, 20 Kan. 137. in such cases, but may follow his property. Within limits, that is, he may; for if a liquor-dealer should buy a stock of whiskey on the instalment plan, it is very evident that the law cannot follow the whiskey down his customers' throats, but must consider it as becoming the barkeeper's property, the same as if he had bought it outright. Moreover, where the buyer of the furniture becomes so badly in debt that his creditors seize what they find in his house, the instalment plan protects the merchant. -A New York sheriff had an execution to collect, and went to the debtor's place, where he found a fine piano, which he seized and was going to sell. But a music-dealer objected; he said that the piano belonged to him, and he had sent it to the debtor for sale on the condition that it should continue to belong to the dealer until all the instalments were paid. The court said that was a valid condition, and the music-dealer's piano must not be sold to pay the agent's debts.* These, however, are quite different principles from enforcing the stipulation for the purpose of enabling the dealer to defraud or oppress the customer. In a pianoforte case in Michigan, the court said that if an instalment dealer wants his goods back, he must repay the instalments he has received, deducting a fair sum for use and wear of the articles. And there is little doubt that if the buyer wished to keep the things, instead of having his money back and surrendering them, the courts would, upon a proper suit brought, protect him from any grievous hardship by allowing him to make his final payments, adding interest after the contract day. * Cole v. Mann, 3 Thomp. & Co. 380; 62 N. Y. 1; Boon v. Moss, 70 N. Y. 466, which has been claimed as sustaining the instalment dealers in their exaction, was a case of the same kind. Preston v. Whitney, 23 Mich. 260. See, also, Howe Machine Co. v. Willie, 85 Ill. 333; Latham v. Sumner, 89 Ill. 233. CHAPTER XXXII. PHOTOGRAPHS. COURTS and lawyers are now putting photographs to novel uses. Sun-pictures of various kinds have been in popular use for a generation; but many years passed before they were adopted into the apparatus of courts of justice. The law of the land is a wary old fox, and scrutinizes a new invention for a long time before extending the paw to appropriate it. But of late years, when a person is to be identified, the judge and jury are very glad to bring in the aid of photographs. In such lawsuits as the great Tichborne trial, where a man claims to be a person who left the country years ago, and has not since been seen at home, if there are photographs of that person taken before he went, they may be of the greatest use in determining the identity of the claimant. Every one has heard of the Rogues' Galleries, in which the police keep photographs of noted criminals. If a thief or vagrant, newly arrested, is suspected to be an old offender, he is taken to the gallery and confronted with the portrait. A photograph is an important auxiliary in the still-hunt for a defaulter. If a bank cashier or insurance secretary has absconded with money enough in his possession to warrant incurring the cost, detectives will quietly circulate copies of his photograph. Experts can usually form some judgment of the course of his journey, and a thousand dollars will put a cheap portrait and notice of reward into the hands of railway conductors and brakemen, hotel-clerks, hall-boys and porters, postmasters, baggage expressmen, newsvenders, keepers of saloons and restaurants, and all that multitude of alert, sharp-sighted, quick-witted men who watch the movements of travellers. The photographs, unsus pected by him, follow him; and he can hardly buy a newspaper, a meal, or a drink, go in and out at his hotel, or call at the express or post office, but some one is stealthily comparing the face of the stranger with the visage upon the card. This gives the detective police of our day an aid of which Bow Street officers and the old-time policemen of New York never dreamed. one. Photographs are even of service when the man to be identified is dead and buried. Probably the well-known case of the murder of Goss in Pennsylvania would never have been unravelled if there had not been a photograph.* The plot was a very crafty Udderzook and Goss united in a scheme to obtain money from a life-insurance company by insuring Goss's life, and then pretending he had died. The idea which Goss had was that he would conceal himself, while Udderzook collected the insurance money, and then the two would divide it. But Udderzook's plan was to kill Goss while he should be in concealment, and to keep the whole sum himself. He anticipated that, as Goss was to co-operate in making every one believe he was dead, there would be no further inquiry for him when he should be afterwards murdered. The two obtained a policy, and, soon afterwards, set the painter's shop of Goss on fire. It was burned to the ground, and Udderzook produced from the ruins what he declared were the half-burned remains of Goss; though in truth they were those of some unknown person, procured for the purpose of deceiving the company. He then proceeded to claim the insurance. Meantime Goss, adopting the false name of Wilson, travelled away, to conceal himself as agreed. Udderzook soon rejoined him, enticed him into lonely woods, and killed him. But it happened that the insurance agent, at the time when the policy was obtained, became somewhat intimate with Goss, and the two went to a photographer and had their portraits taken on one card. When the suspicion arose that the man found mur * Udderzook v. Commonwealth, 76 Pa. St. 340. dered in the woods, and who had called himself Wilson, was really Goss, the police carried the photograph along the route of the Udderzook and Wilson journey, and showed it to people wherever the two had stopped; and they all said, "The man standing by the insurance agent is the man who called himself Wilson." Thus the whole plot was exposed. Udderzook was tried for murder, and by the aid of the photograph was convicted. -There was a somewhat similar case, less familiar, of an Englishman who left wife and home in Canada to visit Alabama. He had not been there long when he became involved in some controversy, was arrested by the sheriff, and was then taken from the jail by an angry mob and killed. His widow brought—as by the law of Alabama she might-a suit against the county for her loss of support. But her husband had been in Alabama for only a short time, and had gone by two names; hence, when the county authorities challenged her lawyer to make proof that the husband from Canada and the man killed by the mob were the same person, he was perplexed. The man, meantime, had been buried, and there was no person who had known him in both Canada and Alabama. Fortunately for the widow, her husband had sent to her from Alabama his photograph, with his name upon it in his own handwriting. Upon the trial she produced the card and testified to the likeness and the autograph. The picture was then shown to the sheriff, and he said it was the portrait of the man whom he arrested, and whom the mob took from him. And persons concerned in the burial declared it was the man who was killed. Thus the case was won. * A photograph of a building or of a locality may be very useful. Suppose a traveller along a country road, by night, drives against a heap of stones or pile of rubbish, wrongfully left in the way, and is hurt. He desires to sue the town for damages; but, of course, the highway officers will send and remove the nui *Luke v. Calhoun County, 52 Ala. 115. |