subsequent ratification
of such a promise could make it binding. The Court further instructed
you that if the plaintiff was unchaste at the time of the promise of
marriage, and her unchastity was not known to defendant, that the
marriage contract, if entered into, was not binding. The entire record
in this case teems with the history of her licentiousness. No witness
has been so reckless as to swear that within the last ten years she has
had either virtuous habits or virtuous associations. That she was
virtuous in 1860, or rather, that if then vicious, her character in this
regard was then unknown to her neighbors in Indiana and Wisconsin, is
rendered highly probable from the evidence. But there was a period
preceding this by many years, when the maiden merged into the woman,
that the almost exhaustless evidence produced by the defendant shows to
have been a time without shame, and when her keen shrewdness and wicked
nature had already been developed to a degree of depravity beyond human
belief; and there has since been a period when the vilest inmate of the
lowest den of prostitution was happy in her virgin purity in comparison
with this woman!

"Previous to the first-mentioned time the plaintiff had followed the
army of the Southwest in its weary marches--not, however, as the
evidence discloses, for any honest purpose. She had wandered infinitely
further from purity than from her Northern home. And yet you have at
tempted to render a verdict that after all these wanderings, and after
this incomparably vile career, she is fit to become the wife of a
respectable citizen of Rochester, the mistress of his mansion, and the
sharer of his large fortune.

"You were further instructed that if a promise of marriage had been
made, and if the plaintiff had at that time been virtuous, and had
subsequently become unchaste the defendant was released from the
obligation of such a promise; what regard, in view of the evidence in
this case, have you paid to that instruction?

"Am I too severe, then, when I say that when, through four long days and
nights in your jury room, some of this jury have attempted to force a
verdict in favor of the plaintiff, notwithstanding she was not entitled
to it, and the defendant's witnesses had proven that she was utterly
unworthy of it, you have been actuated by passion and prejudice, and
have attempted to pervert justice? Had you been able to infect all your
comrades with your pestilential breath,