egal questions by no
means always formally present themselves in barristers' gowns. They
spring up casually and unexpectedly.

Take the whole question of contract. A contract is not of necessity a
formal instrument. A contract is a meeting of minds. If I say to a man:
"Will you cut my lawn for ten dollars?" and he answers, "Yes," as valid
a contract is established as though we had gone to a scrivener and had
covered a folio of parchment with "Whereases" and "Know all men by these
presents" and "Be it therefore" and had wound up with red seals and
ribbons. But of course many legal questions could spring out of this
oral agreement. We might dispute as to what was meant by cutting the
lawn. And then, again, the time element would enter. Was the agreement
that the lawn should be cut the next day, or the next month, or the next
year? Contracts do not have to be in writing. All that the writing does
is to make the proof of the exact contract easier.

If we have the entirety of a contract within the four corners of a sheet
of paper, then we need no further evidence as to the existence of the
contract, although we may be in just as hopeless a mess trying to define
what the words of the contract mean. If we have not a written contract,
we have the bother of introducing oral evidence to show that there was a
contract. Most contracts nowadays are formed by the interchange of
letters, and the general point to remember is that the acceptance must
be in terms of the offer. If X writes saying: "I will sell you twenty
tons of coal at fifteen dollars a ton," and Y replies: "I will take
thirty tons of coal at thirteen dollars a ton," there is no contract,
but merely a series of offers. If, however, X ships the thirty tons of
coal, he can hold Y only at thirteen dollars a ton for he has abandoned
his original offer and accepted Y's offer. It can be taken as a general
principle that if an offer be not accepted in its terms and a new
condition be introduced, then the acceptance really becomes an offer,
and if the one who made the original offer goes ahead, it can be assumed
that he has agreed to the modifications of the unresponsive acceptance.
If X writes to Y making an offer, one of the conditions of which is that
it must be accepted within ten days, and Y accepts in fifteen days, then
X can, if he likes, disregard the acceptance, but he can waive his
ten-day time limit and take Y's acceptance as a really binding
agreement.

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