Ancient Curious and Famous Wills

It has been thought appropriate, within a brief space, to introduce into this work some general observations on the importance and preparation of wills. For that purpose, the following address, under the title given this chapter, recently delivered before the Missouri Bankers’ Association, has been selected. It will be seen that the subject-matter is general in character, and this monograph has been favorably received by the legal profession and the legal and financial journals of the United States. “No doubt most of my audience will regard my subject a lifeless, if not a commonplace one. Yet it is of daily and vital importance to bankers and business men generally, and it is to be regretted that there exist so many inaccurate impressions regarding wills. “The North American Review in a recent editorial said, ‘The writing of a will is a serious and formal matter, and into one a man puts his deliberate and well-reflected intentions. This makes a will stupendously revealing, and to read one over is to come very close to the spirit of the man who wrote: to know his treasures, to understand his feeling toward men, and to measure his fitness for adventures among seraphic and angelic beings. The words a man desires to have read when he lies dumb, the gifts he leaves, the grace with which he gives, all these lay bare the spirit, the heart of disposition, as few other things can. For a will is that which is to live after one, and it is written knowing that no wound inflicted can be remedied, no neglect repaired. How egotism, or miserliness, or conceit, or self-satisfaction can shine out in a will! How little exalting it is in most cases to read wills, and how often they turn us back to the authoritative statement, that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.’ “The power to dispose of property by a written will in the form known to us does not appear in any of the primitive systems of law, except in Egypt; yet testamentary dispositions in some form have come down to us from the earliest times. In the year 1902, the French government sent out a commission to make archæological investigations in Persia. At the city of Susa, they uncovered a stone on which was written the laws of Hammurabi, who reigned twenty-three hundred years before Christ, or one thousand years before Moses received the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. This code was translated by Professor Robert Francis Harper, of the Chicago University, and furnishes one of the most remarkable and readable books which has ever come into my hands; it treats of the laws of money, banking, inheritance, weights and measures, divorce, dower, crimes, and, singularly enough, some of its provisions are present-day law. There is, however, no mention of wills. “In fact, the will, as we know it, is a Roman invention. Free liberty of disposition by will is by no means universal at this time. Complete freedom in this respect is the exception rather than the rule. Homesteads generally, estates of dower and curtesy frequently, as well as other portions of an estate, are not the subject of devise or bequest.