"MAN FROM TOWN."

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXII, Issue LXII, 6 May 1911, Page 9

"MAN FROM TOWN."

VILLAGE BEAUTY'S BREACH OF PROMISE SUir. The question of how justly to assess the damages in a breach of promise suit has become a burning problem in New York, as the result of the action of Mr Justice Eflanger in denouncing as excessive the £2000 awarded' by a jury to Miss Henrietta French, a bewitching young woman from the little town, of Pierre, South Dakota. The defendant was Mr David Decker, a successful engineer of New York, who, according to Miss French, visited Pierre, fell in love with her, became engaged, and then returned to New York. From New York the defendant wrote a series of rhapsodical letters in which the plaintiff was addressed as,, "sweet honey-bunchums," "dearest dadling sweetheart," and "glorious girl of the golden west.". Suddenly, however, his ardor cooled, and he married a New York On +his Miss French travelled 2000 miles to New York and sued him for £50001 No sooner had the sympathetic jury allowed her £2000 than the judge declared it excessive. "Except for the hurt naturally arising from a breach of promise," he said, "not a dollar of damage was shown." He invited briefs on the question of reducing the amount. Miss French's brief on this subject is of remarkable originality. The argument she lays stress on is the glamor exercised on country maidens by a man from the great metropolis. "He comes out from New York," she points out, "and all the girls are flattered by any attention he shows them, because his manners and clothes and everything about him make him' oil! so different from the men whom we ordinarily m^et. So from being a very commonplace man in New York, he becomes out west a veritable Prince

Charming. "In due course he returns east ami forgets all about the girl whose life in ever afterwards a daily agony owing to the sneers of other girls whom Prince Charming ignored, and the malice of the men whom she had neglected on his account."