I cannot refrain from expressing my personal appreciation of your eloquent address. Warmest congratulations.
Your address last night was splendid. What a gift you have. Sincerest 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."