"He was always just that particular. Full of
principle."

Tom Sawyer had made over again one of the
earliest discoveries of the law. When legislation or
tradition prescribed case-knives for tasks for which
pickaxes were better adapted, it seemed better to
our forefathers, after a little vain effort with case-
knives, to adhere to principle--but use the pickax.
They granted that law ought not to change. Changes
in law were full of danger. But, on the other hand,
it was highly inconvenient to use case-knives. And
so the law has always managed to get a pickax in
its hands, though it steadfastly demanded a case-
knife and to wield it in the virtuous belief that it was
using the approved instrument.

It is worth while to recall some of the common
places of legal history by way of illustration. One
of the first difficulties encountered by archaic legal
systems, founded upon the family and postulating
for every sort of legal, social and religious institu-
tion the continuity of the household, was the failure
of issue, the want of the son to perpetuate the house-
hold worship whom religious and legal dogmas re-
quired. No one thought of superseding these dog-
mas, but their manifest inconvenience and injustice
were avoided by the device of adoption. Presently
a better way of disposing of property after death
without infringing upon ancient doctrines occurred
to some Roman. Why not sell his whole household
and estate to the person upon whom he desired it to
devolve? If he so sold it and the purchaser was
an honorable man, he would carry out oral instruc-

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