Part 50 (1/2)

Heartiest congratulations on your nomination (election).

Your nomination (election) testifies to the esteem in which you are held by your fellow citizens. Heartiest congratulations.

Congratulations on your victory, a hard fight, well won by the best man.

Your splendid majority must be a great satisfaction to you.

Sincerest congratulations on your election.

Congratulations upon your nomination. You will have the support of the best element in the community and your election should be a foregone conclusion. I wish you every success.

You fought a good fight in a good cause. Heartiest congratulations on your splendid success.

Nothing in your career should fill you with greater satisfaction than your successful election. I congratulate you with all my heart.

No man deserves success more than you. You have worked hard for your const.i.tuents and they appreciate it. Heartiest congratulations.

Your nomination (election) is received with the greatest enthusiasm by your friends here and by none more than myself.

Heartiest congratulations.

I congratulate you upon your new honors won by distinguished services to your fellow citizens.

Your campaign was vigorous and fine. Your victory testifies to the people's confidence in you and your cause. Warmest congratulations.

Congratulations upon your well-won victory and best wishes for your future success.

You deserve your splendid success. Sincerest congratulations.

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 cla.s.s of cases, the Federal courts follow the state laws which govern the particular occasion; in another cla.s.s 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.