DOWNING COLLEGE,
CAMBRIDGE.
_15 Nov. 1903._
Your very kind letter of the 4th is exactly what I wanted. But surely
there is nothing "odd" in my asking you questions which you of living
men can answer best. It would be odd if I went elsewhere.
The brief in Howe _v._ Morse is extremely interesting. I think that an
English Court would take your view in such a case, but when it comes to
questions about legacies our judges sometimes _say_ things which stray
from the path of rectitude as drawn by Prof. Gray.
I have been trying all this summer to finish an essay designed to
explain to Germans the nature of a trust, and especially the manner
in which the trust enabled us to keep alive all sorts of "bodies"
which were not technically corporate. I am obliged now to flee to
the Canaries leaving this unfinished, for a particularly fraudulent
summer has made me very useless. Some one ought to explain our trust to
the world at large, for I am inclined to think that the construction
thereof is the greatest feat that men of our race have performed in the
field of jurisprudence. Whether I shall be able to do this remains to
be seen--but it ought to be done.