Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 23.pdf/614

 On Willsl BY LEE M. FRIEDMAN, or ‘rm: BOSTON BAR

Fair held our breeze behind us —— ‘twas warm with lovers‘ prayers; We'd stolen wills for ballast and a crew of missing heirs; They shipped as able Bastards till the wicked nurse confessed, And they worked the old three-decker to the Islands of the Blast. —Rudyard Kipling.

IN “JULIUS CAESAR," when Shaks pere showed the mob calling on

Marc Anthony to read Caesar's will be fore they decided on what they would do to his murderers, he illustrated both the natural curiosity over how the deceased planned to distribute his estate as well

as how tremendously the provisions of a will may change the point of view. It was the fact that they, as the Roman Public, were named as Caesar's heir that stimulated the mob to revenge. So from time immemorial the provisions of wills have made and unmade men,

and played an all-important part not merely in the estimate and memories

of the dead but in the lives of the living. All literature is so full of stories and romances of the surprises and disappoint ments of heirs, and of wills, good and ‘bad, curious and unexpected, that Kip ling, in this quotation from his delight ful little poem on the good old three volume novel of bygone days, represents willsas part of the regular stock in trade

of the novelist. Most lawyers will agree with Lord Coke that “wills and the construction of them do more perplex a man than any other learning; and to make a cer IAncient, Curious and Famous Wills. By Virgil M. Harris, member of the St. Louis bar, lecturer on Wills in the St. Louis University Institute of Law, trust oﬂicer of the Mercantile Trust Company of St. Louis and author of "The Trust Company of Today," etc. Little, Brown 8: Co., Boston. Pp. 454+ 18 (index). ($4 net.)

tain construction of them exceedeth jur isprudentum artem." It is impossible to explain to a layman those principles of law that are involved in such cases as that of the will of the pious Jew who bequeathed his estate for the instruc tion of the Jewish youths of London in the learning of their religion, which the

courts decided was as good as a public charitable bequest, but could not be so

applied and carried out what they were pleased to call the testator’s intention by using his money to maintain a Chris tian Foundling Asylum. It is with a feeling of some fear that a man today writes a will without the

advice of a lawyer, so the quaint and pic turesque wills of the past are becoming more uncommon. The spread of the news of litigation over wills by the news

papers has done much to teach the pub lic to heed the advice that “a man may work out his religion from within and for himself, but where it comes to writ ing headed a will, lawyer thecannot advicebeofoverestimated a good, level_ ."

Actual wills, as they illustrate the cus toms and habits of a generation or coun try, or as they mirror the characteristics of some famous person, are even more interesting and absorbing than the wills

of ﬁction. While it is curious to observe that the “Father of his Country" misspelled words in writing his will, it is a historic fact of some importance to learn that Washing