John Reed was gas-lighter of the Walnut Street Theatre, at Philadelphia, and filled this post for forty-four years, with a punctuality and fidelity rarely equalled; there is not on record a single representation at which he was not present. John Reed was somewhat of a character, and appears to have had his mute ambitions. As he never aspired, however, to appear on the stage in his lifetime, he imagined an ingenious device for assuming a rôle in one of Shakespeare’s plays after his decease; it was _not_ the ghost of Polonius, nor yet the handkerchief of Desdemona--no; it was the skull in Hamlet, and to this end he wrote a clause in his will thus: “My head to be separated from my body immediately after my death; the latter to be buried in a grave; the former, duly macerated and prepared, to be brought to the theatre, where I have served all my life, and to be employed to _represent_ the skull of Yorick--and to this end I bequeath my head to the properties.” WILL OF JOHN REDMAN The last will of John Redman, who died in 1798, citizen of the world, of Upminster, in Essex. “ ... My body to be buried in the ground in Bunhill Fields, where my grandfather, Captain John Redman, of the navy, in Queen Anne’s reign, lies interred. My grave to be ten feet deep, neither gravestone, atchment (_sic_), escutcheon, mutes, nor porters at the door, to be performed at seven o’clock in the morning.... All my wine to be drunk on the premises, or to be shared by and between my four executors.... Tylehurst Lodge farm, ... I devise to the eldest son of my second cousin, Mr. Benjamin Branfill, on condition that he, the eldest son, takes the name of Redman, or to his second or third son if the others decline it. It is hereby enjoined to the Branfills to keep the owner’s apartment and land in hand to be a check on shuffling sharping tenants, who are much disposed to impoverish the land.... Having provided handsomely for my daughter, Mary Smith Ord, on her marriage with Craven Ord of the Cursetor’s Office, London, I hereby bequeath to her children born or to be born (the eldest son excepted, whose father will provide for him), the sum of two thousand pounds to each of them at the age of one-and-twenty, for which purpose I bequeath all my valuable estates at Greensted and Ongar, late Rebotiers.... Holding my executors in such esteem, I desire them to pay all the legacies without the wicked swindling and base imposition of stamps that smell of blood and carnage.... To Mr. French of Harpur Street, ... a set of Tom Paine’s ‘Rights of Man,’ bound with common sense, with the answers intended by the longheads of the law, fatheads of the Church, and wiseheads of an insolent usurping aristocracy.... To that valuable friend of his country in the worst of times, Charles Fox, Member for Westminster, five hundred guineas. To each of the daughters of Horne Tooke, five hundred pounds.” CODICIL