Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 13.pdf/613

 568

looked upon the matter in a different way, for he wrote his will in rhyme, as follows: This is my last will, I insist on it still; To sneer on and welcome, And e'en laugh your fill. I, William Hickington, Poet of Pocklington, Do give and bequeath, As free as I breathe, To thee, Mary Jarum, The Queen of my Harum, My cash and my cattle, With every chattel, To have and to hold, Come heat or come cold, Sans hindrance or strife, Though thou art not my wife. As witness my hand, lust here as I stand, The twelfth of July, In the year Seventy. Wm. Hickington. This will was admitted to probate at the Deanery Court in the City of York, 1770. Another poetic will was proved in an Eng lish court in the year 1737, and is worthy a place among quaint and eccentric wills. It reads as follows: This fifth day of May, Being airy and gay, To trip not inclined, But of vigorous mind, And my body in health, I'll dispose of my wealth; And of all I'm to leave On this side the grave, To some one or other, I think to my brother. But because I presaw That my brothers-in-law I did not take care. Would come in for a share, Which I noways intended. Till their manners were mended— And of that there's no sign.

I do therefore enjoin, And strictly command, As witness my hand, That nought I have got Be brought to hotch-pot. And I give and devise, Much as in me lies, To the son of my mother, My own dear brother, To have and to hold All my silver and gold, As th' affectionate pledges Of his brother, John Hedges. An American, named Sanborn, living at Medford, Mass., in his will dated 1871, be queathed his body to Harvard University, and "especially to the manipulation of Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Agassiz." He requested that his skin be made into two drumheads, to become the property of his life-long friend. Warren Simpson, leader of a drum corps, of Cohasset, on condition that on Bunker Hill at sunrise, June I7th, each year, he should beat on the said drum the tune of "Yankee Doodle." On one drum head was to be inscribed Pope's "Universal Prayer," and on the other the "Declaration of Independence." "The remainder of my body," he con tinues, "unless for anatomical purposes, to be composted for a fertilizer to contribute to the growth of an American elm, to be planted in some rural thoroughfare, that the weary wayfarer may rest, and innocent chil dren play beneath its umbrageous branches rendered luxuriant by my remains." The distinguished author and founder of the school of Utilitarianism, Jeremy Beniham. bequeathed his body to Dr. Southwood Smith for dissection, desiring that a lecture might be delivered over it to medical students and the public generally. He had experimented with many embalm ing1 preparations, and on the day of his death declared himself satisfied with a