108 HISTORY OF THE GRANGE MOVEMENT; OR, 



and brought suit against them in the Superior Court of 

 Massachusetts for ten thousand dollars damages. The 

 first trial of the case occurred in April, 1869. The 

 judge charged directly against passengers upon every 

 point. He ruled that the ticket was a contract. That 

 the road had a right to make any rule it pleased for 

 its own government; and if a passenger broke a rule, 

 he was a trespasser ; and, being a trespasser, the road 

 had the same right to eject him from its cars that one 

 of the jurymen had to eject a man from his private 

 house if he did not want him there. The only question 

 for the jury to consider was, whether an excess of 

 violence had been used by the road in the maintenance 

 of a right. The jury, after being out only one hour, 

 awarded me thirty-three hundred dollars damages. The 

 judge, at the request of the road, after several weeks' 

 delay, set the verdict aside on the exclusive ground 

 that the amount was excessive. 



" The second trial occurred in the same court in Jan- 

 uary, 1870, and resulted in a disagreement of the jury. 

 They stood eleven to one for me, arid it was afterwards 

 understood that the man who disagreed had been con- 

 nected in some capacity with the road. The third trial 

 took place in May, 1870, and resulted in an award of 

 thirty-four hundred and fifty dollars damages. Again 

 the road demanded a new trial, which the judge refused 

 to grant. The road then appealed to the Supreme 

 Court upon points of law. The judge in charging the 

 jury had happened to say, that if the resistance of the 

 plaintiff to ejectment from the car consisted in simply 

 refusing to walk out when he was told to go by the 

 conductor, of course blows on the head, such as had 

 been testified to, were unnecessary ; and if the jury were 



