Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 01.pdf/516

Rh error of his ways, and prompt him to do justice. It is plain to him that he must set all things right by making a will in favor of the nephew whom he had disinherited. But how to carry out the plan on this spot, that is the question. Ink might be made from the heart's blood, as is done by lovers and prisoners. But here are no walls nor any other thing to serve as a substitute for paper. At last a happy thought strikes the lady. He shall tattoo the will upon her own person. Shame must yield to the good of her beloved hero. So she bares her back, and across her shoulders the will is punctured. The victim endures no end of dramatic agony, and faints away when the job is over. As might be expected, she is rescued by a passing vessel, rejoins her lover, and seeks to establish his rights. For this purpose the will must be probated, and here comes in a grand dilemma. The original will must be filed in the office. The law of course requires it. But is the lady to be locked up until the hearing? Perish the thought! Beauty in distress touches the heart of the Registrar. He allows a photograph of the will to be taken with due delicacy. Then he allows the original will with its female appurtenances to be taken away upon promise of future production. But of course the will is contested by other heirs. At the trial the counsel for the lady, a hitherto briefless barrister, is about to break down when a timely interruption from a compassionate quarter, gives him a chance to regain his confidence and deliver a splendid address. The arguments are, in fact, given at length, but do not make quite as lively reading as Mark Twain's amusing report of the decision upon the question whether an echo is real property, personal property, or any kind of property. But of course the original document must be introduced into evidence. The court-room is crowded; but it is for the sake of her lover, and the lady does not flinch from an exposure which cannot be helped. For a third time she becomes as bare of drapery as a ball-room belle. We are not told whether she has a Langtry bang or a Langtry back, but the ocular proof she offers is sufficiently convincing. Sympathy hovers around her, and victory perches on her shoulders. This is the real climax of the story. But we are carried on through the ringing of the marriage bells, to learn that they lived happy ever after, in spite of the fact that the heroine was almost as strikingly decorated as many a sailor, and was forever debarred from becoming such a type of beauty unadorned as may attend the Queen's receptions or the full-dress party of the period.

If we had opportunity to pass from the realm of the novel into that of general literature, poetry and drama would yield us no end of apt and ingenious instances of the ways and devices of will-makers. Should we not have to refer, at least, without touching on favorite authors or exploring the treasures in modern libraries of song, to the rhyme of the jolly testator who makes his own will, and to the well-framed account in verse of the lately revived twin puzzle? Then what thrilling and touching situations in plays turn upon the drawing or keeping of a will, its contents or its force! Countless are such incidents, from the days of the great old masters to the time of prolific producers like Scribe and Boucicault, and suggestive fun-makers like that modern Aristophanes, Gilbert, with his surface puns for the multitude and his subtle wit for the few. In one of the productions of the delineator of low life in New York, he finds a new hiding-place for the momentous testamentary document in the leather patch on a pair of breeches! Sensational scenes enough would have to disappear from the stage as well as from the story, if we were no more to see the will which untangles the plot suddenly appearing out of the depths of the mysterious drawer or the unsuspected panel, or were no longer to behold the tableau when at last the will is read which has been eternally made, and made by the crabbed arbiter of legacies.