Two of the titans of our ranks --
Georgia10 and
Swing State Project's DavidNYC -- are sitting for the Bar Exam in their respective states starting tomorrow.
Surely, we can all agree that the guild of lawyers will only be enhanced by their presence, and it is incumbent upon all of us to be thinking good thoughts and sharing advice as the clock ticks towards tomorrow.
My only advice for them, and all others similarly situated, is this: relax. For once in your life, there is no incentive to get the best score. Just pass. And at this point, every new thing you try to learn is only going to crowd out two things you already knew.
Still, I feel obligated to provide a refresher in the fabled contract law case of Sherwood v Walker, 66 Mich. 568, 33 N.W. 919, 11 Am. St. Rep. 531 (1887), pertaining to the doctrine of mutual mistake, as explained by the late Prof. Brainerd Currie:
As originally published in the Harvard Law School Record, 1954. Part I of V:
I
'T is the middle of night on the Greenfield farm
And the creatures are huddled to keep them from harm.
Ah me!--Ah moo!
Respectively their quidsome balm
How mournfuly they chew!
And one there is who stands apart
With hanging head and heavy heart.
Have pity on her sore distress,
This norm of bovine loveliness.
Her gentle limbs, her hornless brow
Proclaim no ordinary cow:
Fair as a pasture sweet with hay
Mown in the very month of May!
Nay, fairer yet! And yet more fair!
She stands alone, the short black hair
Heaving sometimes on her breast,
Shunned and despised by all the rest.
If one should ask her why she doth grieve
She would answer sadly, "I can't conceive."
Her shame is a weary weight like stone
For Rose the Second of Aberlone.
Her sire is of a noble line
Of most aristocratic kine:
Angus of Aberdeen, black and polled;
Their name is proud and their get pure gold.
Their procreation hath won renown,
But Rose the Second hath let them down.
Her forebears have labored for bitter meed,
For Rose is barren and will not breed.
Now the gate that is strait and the way that narrow
Call for a cow to forgo being farrow.
In a cow one condones a trifle of loose
Morality if she will just reproduce.
The stars in their courses deliver us
From the cow that is non-frugiferous!
If a heifer aspires to a niche on high
She must certainly plan to fructify,
And when she reaches puberty
Must concentrate on uberty.
No honor is there for the boss of that ilk
That produceth no young and giveth no milk;
And this is the reason her kith make moan
For Rose the Second of Aberlone.
Nor maid nor mother, she stands forlorn,
The tragic object of pity and scorn,
Her very beauty a mockery
Of all that a proper cow should be.
Rue and hemlock! Sorrow and shame!
She bears a noble and fertile name,
But her lot is woe, unleavened by weal:
She bears the name, but she bears no veal.
She is hardly worth the price of her feed,
For Rose is barren and will not breed.
In a world of logic she finds no room;
The curse of Verwekoe hath sealed her doom.
Hiram Walker (no kin, I'm sure,
To the proximate cause of the water cure)--
Hiram Walker, of Walkerville,
Hiram Walker, of Greenfield lord--
Here was a wight with an eye on the till!
Quoth he to himself, "I can't afford
To yield me to sentiments weak and rash;
The critter's no 'count, and I need the cash.
The rule is laid down from time immemorial
That a cow must have qualities more than pictorial."
And so he hath sold her to Banker Sherwood,
His eyes cast down, for a glance at her would
Have melted a heart of the hardest stone.
O weep for the Rose of Aberlone!
Sold like a carcase, as if for beef!
From the pain of that there is no relief.
Five and a half mean cents per pound
(What will it be when the meat is ground?).
Allow two score and ten for shrink!
What would her sainted fathers think?
The deal is closed, the parties bound;
Will her loins be lean, will her steaks be round?
Sold for a pittance, and sold incog--
Lot 56 in a catalogue!
Insult and injury! Humiliation!
This is no end for a cow of her station!
Said Walker to Sherwood, "I wait your pleasure.
Take her and welcome. And for good measure
I'll throw in a halter [What callous mirth!]
Just to insure you your money's worth!"
At this there escaped a hapless groan
From Rose the Second of Aberlone.
How does it end?
Keep reading. Apologies to the non-lawyers who have no idea what this is about.