HERITAGE

The making of "freak" wills has become a common proceeding. Old persons of large fortune and eccentric taste are heard of daily who have left behind them, when they departed this life, some charitable gift to be administered in its own peculiar way. In one newspaper yesterday, at least two such cases offered news for Sunday readers. The first was of a Marblehead resident whose will provided a fund, the income from which should be divided annually among the fathers of twins born in the town during that year. The other was the bequest of a wealthy New York woman, whose parting gift to the world stated her candid opinion of it. Her fortune goes to the S. P. C. A., which is to build a palatial hospital for invalid animals, not in spacious grounds. In the hallway a statue of the donor will be erected over her ashes; above the portal all who enter may read: "The more I saw of people, the more I thought of dogs".

It is natural in man to wish to perpetuate himself in the world, and originality of this sort is often his only resource. Always well-meant, and often valuable, still it imposes a difficult burden on those who come after. A will is the most real kind of ghost, one which it is hard to "lay". Any endowed organization has had its difficulties with clauses made to fit one set of conditions, and made inflexible against all change by their binding nature. A simple phrase, "at the discretion of the administrator", makes a will adaptable to circumstances, but testators are sometimes careless and often stubborn, and without some such loophole even the courts are powerless.

The countless romances and tragedies that have been written around this theme are no exaggeration of the fact. Men will continue to be forced to marry, or women not to marry, if they are to win their inheritance. Nevada will continue to have as many Rhodes Scholars as New York. Cat-sanitariums and homes for eeble-minded poll-parrots will continue to prosper, while "humanitarian" institutions in the literal sense of the word are suffering from want of funds. This is a part of the heritage of Past to Present.