r written
words. Acts or signs may and constantly do signify proposal and assent.
One does not in terms request a ferryman to put one across the river.
Stepping into the boat is an offer to pay the usual fare for being
ferried over, and the ferryman accepts it by putting off. This is a very
simple case, but the principle is the same in all cases. Acts fitted to
convey to a reasonable man the proposal of an agreement, or the
acceptance of a proposal he has made, are as good in law as equivalent
express words. The term "implied contract" is current in this connexion,
but it is unfortunately ambiguous. It sometimes means a contract
concluded by acts, not words, of one or both parties, but still a real
agreement; sometimes an obligation imposed by law where there is not any
agreement in fact, for which the name "quasi-contract" is more
appropriate and now usual.

Interpretation.

The obligation of contract is an obligation created and determined by
the will of the parties. Herein is the characteristic difference of
contract from all other branches of law. The business of the law,
therefore, is to give effect so far as possible to the intention of the
parties, and all the rules for interpreting contracts go back to this
fundamental principle and are controlled by it. Every one knows that its
application is not always obvious. Parties often express themselves
obscurely; still oftener they leave large parts of their intention
unexpressed, or (which for the law is the same thing) have not formed
any intention at all as to what is to be done in certain events. But
even where the law has to fill up gaps by judicial conjecture, the
guiding principle still is, or ought to be, the consideration of what
either party has given the other reasonable cause to expect of him. The
court aims not at imposing terms on the parties, but at fixing the terms
left blank as the parties would or reasonably might have fixed them if
all the possibilities had been clearly before their minds. For this
purpose resort must be had to various tests: the court may look to the
analogy of what the parties have expressly provided in case of other
specified events, to the constant or general usage of persons engaged in
like business, and, at need, ultimately to the court's own sense of what
is just and expedient. All auxiliary rules of this kind are subject to
the actual will of the parties, and are applied only for want of
sufficient declaration of it by