take your chances on an indictment for maintaining an illegal
obstruction in the highway. If you deposit on the roadside logs,
lumber, shingles, stones, or anything else which constitutes an
obstruction to travel or a defect in the way, or which is calculated
to frighten horses of ordinary gentleness, and allow the same to
remain for an unreasonable length of time, you are liable to respond
in damages for all injuries resulting therefrom. Even if the town
should have to settle for the damages in the first instance, you
might still be called upon to reimburse the town.[108]

[107] 107 Mass. 234.

[108] Wood on Nuisances, Secs. 326, 327; 102 Mass. 341; 18 Me.
286; 41 Vt. 435.

Don't ride on the outside platform of a passenger coach; for if you
cling upon a crowded stage-coach or street car, and voluntarily take
a position in which your hold is necessarily precarious and
uncertain, you have no right to complain of any accident that is the
direct result of the danger to which you have seen fit to expose
yourself. However, if the coach is stopped for you to get on and
fare is taken for your ride, the fact that you are on the platform
is not conclusive evidence against you; but the court will allow the
jury to determine, upon all the evidence and under all the
circumstances, whether you were in the exercise of due care,
instructing them that the burden of proof is upon you to show that
the injury resulted solely by the negligence of the proprietors of
the coach.[109]

[109] 103 Mass. 391; 8 Allen, 234; 115 Mass. 239.

Don't jump off a passenger coach when it is in motion; for if you
get off without doing or saying anything, or if you ring the bell
and then get off before the coach is stopped, without any notice to
those in charge of it, and without their knowing, or being negligent
in not knowing, what you are doing, the coach proprietors are not
liable for any injury you may receive through a fall occasioned by
the sudden starting of the coach during your attempt to get off.[110]

[110] 106 Mass. 463.

Don't wilfully break down, injure, remove, or destroy a milestone,
mile-board, or guide-post erected upon a public way, or wilfully
deface or alter the inscription on any such stone or board, or
extinguish a lamp, or break, destroy, or remove a lamp, lamp-post,
railing, or posts erected on a street or other public place; for if
you do you are liable to six months' imprisonment or a fine o