To John C. Gray.
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.