And so of parties advertising rewards or making public offers.

And so of telegraph companies.

1 Wh. on Neg. sec 756; infra, sec 1056. 2 See supra, sec 707, 756.

3 See supra, sec 24. 4 Op. cit. 418.

5 Supra, sec 25, 800; see Wh. on Neg. sec 662, 810. The duty of diligentia in contrahendo, so argues Ihering, does not begin until acceptance. When a proposal is still unacted on, the party addressed has no claim against the party making the proposal. As soon, however, as there is acceptance, or such action on the proposal as is equivalent to acceptance, then the party so accepting may have redress from the proposer in case either the contract is not complied with, or the party imposed on is subjected to injury by an illusory contract. As soon, therefore, as a party takes action on a general proposal, he has a claim against the proposer. See supra, sec 24.

1 See supra, sec 27; and see Bigelow, Cases on Tort, 621.

2 Supra, sec 791; Wh. on Neg. sec 756-7; New York Tel. Co. V. Dryburg, 35 Penn. St. 303 Aikin V. Tel. Co., 5 S. C. 358; De la Grange V. Tel. Co., 25 La. An. 383.

3 Supra, sec 791. See, however, discussion in Big. Lead. Cas. on Torts, 621.

4 Elwood V. Tel. Co., 45 N. Y. 549; S. P. as to liability for sending a false message, Bank of Cal. V. Tel. Co., 52 Cal. 280; and see supra, sec 791.

1 Supra, sec 27.

2 The following is from an instructive article in Blackwood's Mag. for April, 1881, Eng. ed. vol. 129, pp. 469 et seq.: -.

"In any system of symbols for letters, consisting of such simple elements as the telegraph alphabet does - viz. dots and dashes - it is inevitable that there should be considerable similarity between the symbols of some words - a similarity which is, of course, productive of mistakes. We may take it that the Morse system of telegraph symbols, having been adopted universally throughout the telegraphing world, is the best for the purpose that has been devised; and we presume that it is not likely now to be improved upon. And yet there are many words which are so perilously alike that errors in them are sure to recur from time to time. To name but one instance, 'bad' and ' dead' are composed of the same number of dots and dashes, the sole difference being that there is in 'dead' a 'space' or pause wanting in 'bad' - a difference so slight as to require the nicest perception to distinguish it..But it is short-sighted policy to make the wording obscure, in order to frustrate hypothetic official curiosity. If secrecy is important, it would be better to use a cipher. In the majority of cases, however, the true plan is to take the officials into your confidence, and write your message in such guise that he who runs may read. As an illustration of the ingenuity with which people will express themselves, as if for the very purpose of defeating their own object, we may cite the following: A lady, some short time since, telegraphed, ' Send them both thanks,' by which she meant, ' Thank you; send them both' (the ' both' referred to two servants). The telegram reached its destination as 'send them both back,' thus making sense as the official mind would understand it, but a complete perversion of the meaning of the writer..We may roughly classify the different kinds of errors perpetrated by the telegraph into: 1st. Errors which are due to pure guessing - sheer carelessness, we may call it - against which nothing is proof. 2d. Errors closely akin to the first, but in which the first letter or two are common to both words. 3d. There are errors due to the similarity, more or less great, between the signals of different words. Obviousness of meaning will often help to prevent these also.

"We will now present to the reader a curious collection of telegraph blunders, illustrative of the three categories we have mentioned. The names, we need scarcely remark, are in all cases fictitious. The first category, as we have said, consists of blunders of sheer guessing; and these in their turn may be subdivided into two classes: 1st. Those in which the different idea conveyed is an allied or a cognate idea, or a widely different idea; and 2d. Those in which the different idea conveyed is the exact opposite to the original idea. Let us take those in which a cognate or a widely different idea is given. Here we have: 'send three tons linseed oil,' transmitted as ' Send three tons linseed meal.' - ' Please to send fifteen waggons of Burgie daily till further orders,' transmitted as ' Please to send us fifteen tons of Burgie daily till further orders.' - ' Send us two waiters,' transmitted as 'send us twenty waiters.' - ' Warmest sympathy to Ellen and yourself in your sad loss,' transmitted as ' Warmest congratulations to Ellen and yourself in your sad loss.' - ' Ask Lady Grantly if Cox can read aloud,' etc., rendered as ' Ask Lady Grantly if you can read aloud,' etc. - ' Cox' seems to have rather an unfortunate tendency to be converted into 'you,' for here is another case of it: 'Have just written to Cox to send no more milk,' was rendered 'Have just' written to you to send no more milk."