"Well, sir," said Rollo.
"Well," repeated his father, "now as this property was bailed to you solely for the advantage of the bailor, the question whether you ought to pay for the loss of it, depends on whether you was grossly careless, or not. If you took good ordinary care, and it was lost by accident, then you are not liable."
"Well, father, I think it was accident; I do, truly."
"I rather think so myself," said his father, with a smile, "and I am inclined to think that you are not responsible. If any body asks a boy like you to carry money for them, gratuitously, then they take themselves the ordinary risks of such a conveyance, and I think that, on the whole, this accident comes within the ordinary risks. There was not such gross carelessness as to make you liable. But then I am very sorry to have Sarah lose her money."
"So am I," said Rollo. "And the wallet is gone too."
"How good a wallet was it?" asked his father.
"O, pretty good; only it was considerably worn."
"Haven"t you got one that is pretty much the same, that you don"t care a great deal about?"
"Yes, sir," said Rollo; "it is in my desk. I had as lief that she would have it as not."
"Very well," said his father; "you give her your wallet, and I will replace the money."
So Rollo went to his desk, and soon came back, bringing his little wallet. He unfastened its steel clasp, and opened the wallet, and took out some little pictures which he had treasured up there, and some small pieces of white paper, which he said were marks. They were to put into his books to keep the place, when he was reading. He had got quite a quant.i.ty of them all prepared for use. When Rollo had got his wallet ready, his father took out half a dollar from his pocket, and also another small silver coin, about as large as Rollo said the one was, which was lost; and then sent Rollo to carry it to Dorothy.
In a few minutes, Rollo came back with the money in his hand, and said,
"She won"t take it. She said I must bring it back. It was as much as I could do to get her to take the wallet."
"But she _must_ take it," replied his father. "You carry it to her again, and tell her she has nothing to do with the business. The money is for Sarah, and she must not refuse it, but take it and give it to her the first opportunity."
So Rollo carried the money again to Dorothy. She received it this time, and put it in the wallet, and then deposited both in a safe place in her work-table. Then Rollo came back to his father to ask him a little more about bailments.
"Father," said Rollo, when he came back, "if James should give me his knife, or any thing, for my own, would that be a bailment?"
"No," said his father. "A bailment is only where property is intrusted to another, for a certain purpose, to be returned again to the possession of the owner, when the purpose is accomplished. For instance, when Jonas is sawing wood with my saw, the saw is a bailment from me to him; it remains my property; but he is to use it for a specific purpose, and then return it to my possession."
"He does not bring it back to you," said Rollo.
"No, but he hangs it up in its place in my shed, which is putting it again in my possession. And so all the things which Dorothy uses in the kitchen are bailments."
"And if she breaks them, must she pay for them?"
"No, not unless she is grossly careless. If she exercises good ordinary care, such as prudent persons exercise about their own things, then she is not liable, because she is using them mainly for my benefit, and of course it must be at my risk. But if Sarah should come and borrow a pitcher to carry some milk home in, and should let it fall and break it by the way, even if it was not gross carelessness, she ought to pay for it; that is, the person that sent her ought to pay for it, for it was bailed to her for her benefit alone; and therefore it was at her risk."
"I should not think you would make her pay for it," said Rollo.
"No, I certainly should not. I am only telling what I should have a right to do if I chose.
"Sometimes a thing is bailed to a person," continued Rollo"s father, "for the benefit of both persons, the bailor and the bailee."
"The bailee?" said James.
"Yes, the bailee is the person the thing is bailed to. For instance, if I leave my watch at the watchmaker"s to be mended, and I am going to pay him for it, in that case you see it is for his advantage and mine too."
"And then, if it is lost, must he pay for it?"
"Yes; unless he takes _good_ care of it. If it is for his benefit alone, then he must take _special_ care of it, or else he is liable for the loss of it. If it is for my benefit alone, then he must take _ordinary_ care of it. For instance, suppose I had a very superior repeater watch, which the watchmaker should come and borrow of me, in order to see the construction of it. Then suppose I should leave another watch of mine,--a _lever_,--at his shop to be repaired. Suppose also I should have a third watch, a lady"s watch, which I had just bought somewhere, and I should ask him to be kind enough to keep it for me, a day or two, till my watch was done. These would be three different kinds of bailments. The _repeater_ would be bailed to him for his benefit; the _lever_ for his and mine jointly, and the _lady"s watch_ for my benefit alone.
"Now, you see," continued Rollo"s father, "that if these watches should get lost or injured in any way, the question whether the watchmaker would have to pay for them or not, would depend upon the degree of care it would have required to save them. For instance, if he locked them all up with special care, and particularly the repeater, and then the building were struck with lightning and the watches all destroyed, he would not have to pay for any of them; for this would be an inevitable accident, which all his care could not guard against. It would have been as likely to have happened to my repeater, if I had kept it at home.
"But suppose now he should hang all three watches up at his window, and a boy in the street should accidentally throw a stone and hit the window, so that the stone should go through the gla.s.s and break one of the watches. Now, if the repeater was the one that was. .h.i.t, I should think the man would be bound to pay for it: because he was bound to take _very special_ care of that, as it was borrowed for his benefit alone.
But if it was the lady"s watch, which he had taken only as an accommodation to me, then he would not be obliged to pay; for, by hanging it up with his other watches, he took _ordinary_ care of it, and that was all that he was obliged to take."
"I should think," said James, "that the boy would have to pay, if he broke the watches."
"Yes," said Rollo"s father; "but we have nothing to do with the boy now, we are only considering the liabilities of the watchmaker."
"And if it had been the lever that was broken," asked Rollo, "what then?"
"Why, as to the lever," said his father, "he was bound to take _good_ care of it,--something more than mere ordinary care; and I don"t know whether the law would consider hanging watches up at a window as _good_ care or not. It would depend upon that, I suppose. But the watches might be lost in another way. Suppose the watchmaker had sent the repeater home to me, and then, at night, had put the lever and the lady"s watch into a small trunk with his other watches, and carried them to his house, as watchmakers do sometimes. Now suppose that, when he got home, he put the trunk of watches down in a corner of the room; and suppose that there was a leak in the roof of his house, so that the water could come in sometimes when it rained. In the night there comes up a shower, and the water gets into the trunk, and rusts and spoils the watches. Now I think it probable that he would not have to pay for the lady"s watch, for he took ordinary care of that,--that is, the same care that he was accustomed to take of his own watches. But he might have to pay for the other; for he was bound to take _good_ care of that one, as it was partly for _his_ benefit that it was bailed to him; and putting them where they were at all exposed to be wet, would be considered, I suppose, as not taking good care of them."
"And so he would not have to pay for the lady"s watch, in any case,"
said Rollo.
"Yes, he would, if he did not take _ordinary_ care of it; that is, if he was grossly negligent. For instance, if he should take all the rest of his watches home, and leave that in his shop upon the counter, where I had laid it down, and somebody should come in the night and steal it, then, perhaps he would be liable."
By this time, Rollo"s father began to think that his law lecture had been long enough for such young students, and so he said that he would not tell them any more about it then. "But now," said he, in conclusion, "I want you to remember what I have said, and practise according to it.
Boys bail things to one another very often, and a great many disputes arise among them, because they don"t understand the law of bailment. It applies to boys as well as men. It is founded on principles of justice and common sense, and, of course, what is just and equitable among men, is just and equitable among boys.
"You must remember that whenever any thing belonging to one boy is intrusted to another in any way, if it is for the benefit of the bailee, if any accident happens to it, he must make it good; unless it was some _inevitable_ accident, which could not have been prevented by the utmost care. If it is for the benefit of the bailor, that is, the boy who intrusts it, then he can"t require the other to pay for it, unless he was grossly negligent. And if it was for the common benefit of both, then if the bailee takes what may be called good care of it, he is not liable to pay; if he does not take good care, he is."
Here ended the lecture on the law of bailment. James soon after went home, and Rollo in due time went to bed. The next morning, when he got up and began to dress himself, he thought one of the legs of his pantaloons felt somewhat heavy. He put his hand down to ascertain what was there, and he felt something at the bottom, between the cloth and the lining. It was Sarah"s pocket-book. When Rollo put it into his pocket, as he thought, he in reality slipped it inside of the lining, and it worked itself down to the bottom, as he was playing about. He pulled it out, and then, after he had dressed himself, he ran very joyfully to his father, to show it to him. His father was very glad that it was found, and told Rollo to carry it to Dorothy. Dorothy was very glad, too, for she was very sorry to have Rollo lose his own wallet, or his father lose his money. So she gave him back his wallet, and he replaced it in his desk where it was before, after giving his father back his money.
CONFUSION.
Rollo explained his plan of collecting a museum of curiosities to his cousins Lucy and James, and to his sister Mary, who was a good deal older than he was. He also informed Henry, a playmate of his, who lived not a great way from his father"s house. All the children took a great deal of interest in the scheme, and promised to help him collect the curiosities.
At length, after a few days, Rollo, to his great joy, observed one evening signs of an approaching storm. The wind sighed through the trees, and thick, hazy clouds spread themselves over the sky.
"Don"t you think it is going to rain?" said Rollo to his father, as he came in to tea.
"I don"t know," said his father. "Which way is the wind?"
"I"ll go and see," said Rollo.
He went out and looked at the vane which Jonas had placed upon the top of the barn.
When he came in, he told his father that the wind was east. Then his father said he thought it would rain, and Rollo clapped his hands with delight.