CURIOUS WILLS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3098, 30 July 1913, Page 76

CURIOUS WILLS.

A will or testament may be defined as the legal documentary ‘instrument by which a person regulates the rights of others over his property or family after his death. It may be worth recalling that an official called the Public Trustee can in England act as executor or trustee to any person who may desire it, either under a will or under a settlement. He can also act as administrator either where there is no will or where there is a will if the testator so directs. The fees are -set on a low scale, and the wills so placed in custody already concern many millions sterling. At the beginning of 1913 the value of the business being administered and negotiated had reached a total of 921, millions sterling. The will, if not of Roman origin, owes to Roman law its completest development. Jacob’s will, the earliest on record, has been called a testamentary disposition. Professor Flinders Petrie, in his Egyptian excavations, has unearthed wills of 2550 ]i.c. That of Sennacherib, 681 n.c., was found in the royal library of Koyunjik. In India wills were not known until the British conquest. Among the oldest English wills arc those of Alfred the Great and of William the Conqueror, who devised the newly-acquired realm of England to his second son.. William Rufus. Somerset House holds the wills of Shakespeare, Milton, Vamlyck , Dr Johnson. Lord Nek-on, Edmund Burke, Sir Isaac

Newton, Inigo Jones, Izaak Walton, and the Duke of Wellington. Napoleon’s will had this spiteful passage; “I die prematurely, assassinated by the English oligarchy.” He left 10,000 francs to Cantillon, who was tried for attempting to assassinate the Duke of Wellington. “Cantillon had as ranch right to assassinate that oligarchist as the latter had to send me to perish on the rock of St. Helena.” I he will of Rabelais contained a characteristic clause: “I have no available property, I owe a great deal: the rest I give to the poor.” The wife of a clergyman called upon to render an inventory of her husband’s estate reported that the major part of his estate was invested in heavenly securities, the value of which had been variously declared in this world, and highly taxed by the various churches, but never realised. Then followed a list of some of his good deeds, none of which could be realised on a cash basis. Most trustees know more than the farmer who walked into a grocer's little chop with a firm step, saying, ” I want that tub of butter, and that lot of sugar, and all that other stuff.” “ (food gracious !” said the widow who kept the shop, ” whatever do you want with all them goods';” “ I dnnno,” said the farmer; “but, you see, I'm the executor of your husbands will, and the lawyer told me to carry out the provisions.” Ho. was not a* teetotal testator who left £IOOO to his nurse in a hospital for banishing a pink monkey from the foot of his hod. and the same sum to the cook who removed snakes from his broth. Neither was the Berlin gentleman who left instructions that his friends who followed Ids hoarse should take turns to roll a barrel of beer after it, which they were to consume at the grave over His remains. Tn a codicil of h;s will a fund was left, the interest of which was to lie expended in securing weekly a quarter of a tun of Bavarian beer to the frequenters of a certain hostelry. As soon as all the participants had passed away, the fund was to go to a foundling hospital. A cynical old man in a western town in America left his property to that man in the community who could prove himself a Christian. As nobody in his neighbourhood corresponded with the definition, the property went to the legal heirs.—Chambers’s Journal for June.