Produced by Chuck Greif, ellinora, MWS and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) +-----------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's note: Words surrounded by | | <u> and </u> were underlined in the | | original text. The symbols ^{} indicate | | that the letters enclosed were | | superscripts in the original. | +-----------------------------------------+ ANCIENT, CURIOUS AND FAMOUS WILLS “A truce to jesting; let me have a confessor to confess me, and a notary to make my will." ANCIENT CURIOUS AND FAMOUS WILLS BY VIRGIL M. HARRIS MEMBER OF THE SAINT LOUIS BAR, LECTURER ON WILLS IN THE SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF LAW, TRUST OFFICER OF THE MERCANTILE TRUST COMPANY OF SAINT LOUIS, MISSOURI, AND AUTHOR OF “THE TRUST COMPANY OF TO-DAY,” ETC. “The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave, Await alike the inevitable hour: The paths of glory lead but to the grave.” BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1911 COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. _All rights reserved._ Printed by C. H. Simonds &. Co. Boston, U. S. A. TO THE LATE HONORABLE JACOB KLEIN OF SAINT LOUIS, MISSOURI WHOSE LONG AND USEFUL CAREER AT THE BAR AND WHOSE STERLING CHARACTER, LEARNING AND WISDOM ENTITLE HIS NAME TO A PLACE IN THE GALAXY OF GREAT AMERICAN LAWYERS THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED PREFACE “Let’s choose executors, and talk of wills; And yet not so,--for what can we bequeath, Save our deposed bodies to the ground?” An addition to the fifteen millions of books of which the world is now possessed demands an explanation, if not an apology.