est congratulations.

Heartiest congratulations on your splendid speech of last
night. Everybody is praising it.

CHAPTER XI

THE LAW OF LETTERS--CONTRACT LETTERS

There are forty-eight states in this Union, and each of them has its own
laws and courts. In addition we have the Federal Government with its own
laws and courts. In one class of cases, the Federal courts follow the
state laws which govern the particular occasion; in another class of
cases, notably in those involving the interpretation or application of
the United States statutes, the Federal courts follow Federal law. There
is not even a degree of uniformity governing the state laws, and
especially is this true in criminal actions, for crimes are purely
statutory creations.

Therefore it is extremely misleading to give any but the vaguest and
most elementary suggestions on the law which governs letters. To be
clear and specific means inevitably to be misleading. I was talking with
a lawyer friend not long since about general text-books on law which
might be useful to the layman. He was rather a commercially minded
person and he spoke fervently:

"If I wanted to build up a practice and I did not care how I did it, I
should select one hundred well-to-do people and see that each of them
got a copy of a compendium of business law. Then I should sit back and
wait for them to come in--and come in they would, for every mother's son
of them would decide that he had a knowledge of the law and cheerfully
go ahead getting himself into trouble."

Sharpen up a man's knowledge of the law and he is sure to cut himself.
For the law is rarely absolute. Most questions are of mixed fact and
law. Were it otherwise, there would be no occasion for juries, for,
roughly, juries decide facts. The court decides the application of the
law. The layman tends to think that laws are rules, when more often they
are only guides. The cheapest and best way to decide points of law is to
refer them to counsel for decision. Unless a layman will take the time
and the trouble most exhaustively to read works of law and gain
something in the nature of a working legal knowledge, he had best take
for granted that he knows nothing whatsoever of law and refer all legal
matters to counsel.

There are, however, a few principles of general application that may
serve, not in the stead of legal knowledge, but to acquaint one with the
fact that a legal question may be involved, for l