Extraordinary Wills. should be paid $25 each to perform such operations on his body as would kill him in case he were yet alive. The Viscount de Garros Lima directed that his body should be watched by his heirs until decomposition set in. A similar provision was made by an Irish gentleman, who died last year. A Vienna millionaire seemed to have a horror of darkness, for he provided not only that the vault in which his body was to be, should be lighted by electricity, but that the coffin also should be similarly illumined. Lord Newborough made provision for two separate interments. There are some remarkable " waiting wills " on record. Not long ago an eccen tric German died, who directed that his estate, amounting to $10,000, be turned in to money and put out at compound interest for 200 years. At the end of that period the whole sum is to be safely invested, and the interest applied to the relief of suffering and poverty. Count Hardegg, who recently died, left $300,000 to the University of Vienna, on condition that it should be put out at compound interest for I OO years, at the end of which period he estimated that his bequest would have increased to $18,000,000. Instances are innumerable where legatees are compelled to wait a long term of years for the property devised to them, simply because of some whim or caprice of the testator. Not many years ago a queer old native of Finland devised all his property to the Devil, and the State at once took possession of it, without attempting to establish its identity with the personage named in the will. There is a tendency in England, on the part of en gaged men, to draw up wills in favor of the ladies to whom they are engaged. By thus anticipating what they would probably do after marriage, they not only take duty by the forelock, so to speak, but reap a present reward in the increased ardor of the adored one. Merely to catalogue the eccentric wills
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that have been made in the United States would fill a volume. Some of these wills betray that grotesque sense of humor that in so many other things characterizes the Ameri can people, while others reveal a perverse crankiness on the part of the testators, which, to say the least, is not pleasant to contem plate. In one of the wildest gorges of the Blue Ridge in Western North Carolina, there lived a few years ago a man who was a most ferocious infidel. When he died it was dis covered that in his will he directed that he should be buried on the summit of one of the loftiest peaks of the Blue Ridge, and that his epitaph should disclose that he died reviling Christianity. Instead of carrying out his wishes, however, his relatives buried him in a Christian cemetery, and on the spot where he desired to be buried placed a large white cross. There arc probably few who will criti cise them for their action in the matter. One finds it difficult not to think harshly of the man recently deceased in this State, who in his will left his property to " the woman who lives with me," meaning by that his true and lawful wife. Not long ago a Boston man died, whose will left his wife penniless unless she married again within five years, the reason given for this proviso being that he wanted somebody else to find out how hard it was to live with her — truly a monstrous revelation of post-mortem spite, and one that any decent court ought to set aside. But such wills are rare; it is much more common to find testamentary provisions against wives marrying again. If report speaks truly, such prohibitions do not always strike the grief-stricken widow as wise or proper. Wills cutting off some prodigal son with a shilling are too familiar in English life to ex cite any special remark, and in that country, where a man's last will and testament is re garded as a very sacred thing, the prodigal son generally has to take the shilling and say nothing. But in this country there is a strong, though perhaps latent, sentiment in
