her hat and stay a while. She knows she has to stay and that she is
not going to enjoy it.

She is the important witness who was riding in the car at the time it
crashed into the grocery wagon. She is honest, of average
intelligence, and wants to tell the truth. She is asked:

"At the time of the accident, where were you?" She says that she was
in the car going up-town to see her married daughter whose children
were sick with the measles and she was in a hurry. The lawyer moves to
strike out the latter part of the answer. The fact that she was going
to see her daughter, that the children had the measles, and that she
was in a hurry are not relevant and have nothing to do with the case.
The only relevant fact is that she was in the up-town car.

She was sitting four seats from the front and thinking the car was
going very slowly and the children would be asleep before she got
there. It is immaterial that she was thinking about her grandchildren
or the measles, or that she was thinking about the car going slowly.
The real question is how fast the car was going.

The reason for the rule of evidence is that the court always wants to
know not what she thought, but what she actually saw. She will not be
allowed to tell what she thought or what she told her daughter after
the accident. The daughter can not be called to the stand to testify
what her mother told her, when she reached her house, about what had
happened. Newspaper accounts of the accident may not be allowed in
evidence, nor what the policemen reported on the accident, because he
arrived afterward. Anglo-Saxon law holds the proof down to what was
actually perceived by the five senses. The court makes up its own mind