A well-established departure from the hearsay rule applies when the very fact in controversy is whether certain things were said, and not whether these things were true or false. Hence, in a breach of contract case, the contract is not hearsay. The contract must be authenticated, but here the plaintiff did so by showing that it had received an assignment of the lease which it introduced and had acted under it. It authenticated the landlord’s agreement to sell the property to a third party by showing that it obtained a copy of that agreement from the third party’s lawyer and by showing that the landlord’s agent’s signature on both documents matched.