the offer is the moment of the meeting of minds.
It is not a difficult thing to determine this mom
ent in the case of contracts made in the presence
of both parties, but the question becomes difficult
and very important when the offer and accept
ance are made by letter, telegram, messenger, or
otherwise. At what moment is the contract con
summated ? Is it the moment of the posting of
the answer, or the receipt of same? Is it the
moment the message is started on its way or the
moment it reaches and is thus communicated to
the offerer. In general a communication of ah
acceptance is necessary to a forming of the con
tract. In this essential requisite complied with
when the party to whom the offer is made does
all he can do to deliver his acceptance (whether
it ever reaches its destination or not) or must the
acceptance h ave reached its destination before it
can have the effect of binding the parties?
It is now decided that the acceptence is made
when the acceptor has done all that he can to
communicate his intention. The moment then
despatch of acceptance is the moment the contract
has its beginning and once having despatched the
acceptance it is irrevocable. It is understood
that one making an offer by letter is making that
offer continuously during every instance of the
time the letter is traveling, so that if the letter is
delayed in transit, and on its receipt a letter is at
once posted accepting the offer, the contract is
complete, even tho’ in the meantime the party
offering may have sold the goods which were the
basis of the offer. Suppose the letter of accept
ance be lost and does not reach the party offering.
Is there a contract ? The logical result of the
position that the contract is made when the ac
ceptance is posted leads us to infer that the ques
tion demands an affirmative answer, and such is
the law. The settled rule in our Courts is that
the time of mailing the acceptance is the time the
contract is complete, and that the subsequent fate
of the letter is immaterial. This is so on the
theory that the post office is the agent of the per
son who makes an offer by post, and the delivery
THE FREE LANCE.
of the letter to the post is the delivery to the
agent of the person making the offer.
Suppose that a letter revoking the proposal is
mailed before the acceptance is mailed, this does
not affect the result unless the revocation is re
ceived before the acceptance is mailed. One in
making a proposal may state it as a condition to
the making of the contract that the notice of the
acceptance be received in order to be binding.
Many other interesting and important conditions
arise, a treatment of which we postpone until our
next.
“I ought not to have taken a course in chemis
try anyway. I have always heard that too close
application to a technical course made one nar
row-minded- Perhaps if I had taken a classica
course or even a Latin scientific, 1 might be able
to see some beauty even in an arbutus blossom
that to me now is but a common place flower.
Perhaps I might be able to content myself with
second rate specimens and find them more than
eneugh, instead of tramping over every acre of
barrens in the county.”
So said Tiberius Turnip to himself as he wan
dered through a dismal stretch of swam p in search
of the first wild flower of spring. He was not a
very sociable youth, this Tiberius Turnip, andhada
selected a technical course simply because he had
been advised to do so, and had banished, or tried
to banish, all ethical and ideal subjects from his
mind. In this he had partly succeeded. For
days at a time his mind would be content to re
main occupied with test tubes and wash bottles,
but at times like the present, when the sun was
an hour high, and trailing arbutus a beautiful
mirage a half mile across the barrens, his mind
would wander from its acoustomed path and seek
the beautiful plains of idealism.
As he stalked along with his hat half filled with
second rate arbutus, his mind was filled with mis
givings, and he felt like a belated traveler who
AN ARBUTUS ADVENTURE.