Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II THE CONTRACT: ITS FORMATION An analysis of a valid contract and one enforceable at law, shows it to be made up of the following elements: 1. A communication by one party to the other and the reply: the offer and its acceptance. 2. The evidence of the intent to contract in the form of a consideration. 3. The necessary writing, wherever it is required by the Statute of Frauds. 4. The capacity of the parties to create a valid contract. 5. The legality of the subject-matter. If all of these elements are present the contract is valid. If one is missing the contract may be unenforceable, or voidable, or void. SECTION I. MUTUALITY. (a) Offer. Every promise involves two parties: a promisor who makes the promise, and a promisee to whom the promise is made. A promise set forth in the form of a proposition is an offer and according to the rules of law, it does not exist as such until it is communicated to the person to whom it is made. Negotiations leading to the agreement may be quite extensive and involved, but ultimately they may all be reduced to the simple question, "Will you do thus and so?" and the answer "I will." The presence in a station of a train ready to start is a standing offer, while it is there, of the railroad company to the public, of transportation to the specified destination; they offer an act—to carry the person—for a promise on the part of the person who boards the train to pay for such transportation. This may be called a unilateral contract, an act given for a promise. chapter{Section 4A property owner who has his lands injured by a vandal offers through an advertisement a reward for his capture: he offers a promise—the payment of the reward—for an act—the capture. When the act is performed the money is due. The con...