sometimes discovers that she has made a serious mistake. Four years ago the Lon don (England) newspapers reported that a publican (saloonkeeper) took a curious re venge on a nagging wife, whose sharp tongue had given him many bad days while he lived. On his will being read, she learned that in order to receive any property she must walk barefooted to the market place each time the anniversary of his death came around. Holding a candle in her hand, she was there to read a paper confessing her un seemly behavior to her husband while he lived, and stating that had her tongue been shorter her husband's days would probably have been longer. By refusing to comply with these terms she had to be satisfied with twenty pounds a year "to keep her off the parish." The restrictions imposed upon widows and other legatees with regard to matrimony are often arbitrary, and sometimes suggest cruelty. A husband who died in 1896 left his widow an annual income of about five thou sand dollars, which was to be reduced to four thousand in the event of the lady marrying a second time. Another reduction of a thou sand dollars was to be made on the birth of the first child of the second marriage, and every additional child was to involve the fur ther loss of five hundred dollars per annum. An eccentric Frenchman left his estate to his six nephews and six nieces on the con dition that "every one of my nephews mar ries a woman named Antonie and that every one of my nieces marries a man named Anton." They were further required tp give the Christian name Antonie or Anton to every first-born child according to the sex. The marriage of each nephew was to be celebrated on one of the St. Anthony's Days, either January i7th, May toth, or June I3th, and if, in any in stance, this last provision was not complied with before July, 1896, one-half of the legacy ••was in that case to be forfeited.
It seems undesirable to refer to recent will contests in this country. In many instances the facts are quite well known to the pro fession. The cases already cited are most of them notorious, and such as are not are taken from foreign records, chiefly British. They exemplify extreme eccentricity of a very varied character. But between this characteristic and insanity there is, of course, a wide dividing line, and the display of eccen tricity by a testator is no proof whatever that he was mentally unbalanced when he made his will. History shows that neither lawyers nor laymen can be trusted to make their own wills. Sir Joseph Jekyll, who died in 1/38, without children, bequeathed £20,000 after his wife's death to the commissioners of the national debt to be applied as a sinking fund. A portion of this fund was resorted to the testator's residuary legatees by an act of Par liament passed in 1747. At this period the British national debt was about eight hun dred million pounds, and Lord Mansfield is said to have remarked that Sir Joseoh "might as well have attempted to stop tne middle arch of Blackfriars' Bridge with his full-bottomed wig." The will was set aside on account of the mental condition of the maker at the time when it was made. Lord Mansfield made his own will, and although it was declared valid, it was far from being in regular form. Lord St. Leonards was one of the most distinguished judges the English bench has known. He made his own will, and it was a source of long and costly litigation. But it cannot be said that the testator was the sole cause of this, for the document, which had been signed some years before his death, had mysteriously disappeared when it was wanted for probate. The resulting lawsuit established the "admissibility of secondary evidence of the contents of a will in the ab sence of a presumption that the testator had destroved it animo rcvocandi."
