I mean no disrespect in linking this decision of the Mayor with that of the Supreme Court of one of our great Western States. That Supreme Court recently handed down a decision on testamentary capacity. It would seem that extreme mental obliquity is not a bar to will-making: here is the syllabus in the case: “That where the testator used excessive amounts of a patent kidney medicine and recommended it to his friends for all kinds of diseases; manifested a hitherto unknown desire to make political speeches, and was positive in his utterances that certain candidates should not be permitted to run for office, and that Bryan was not honest and McKinley was not fit to be President, and that he could make a better President than McKinley; got up at night and sang Psalms; took his dogs and went hunting at night, though he got no game, and had not in former years been known to hunt; exhibited his stallion and other stock at church meetings, and failed to recognize acquaintances; carried on disconnected conversations, had a roaring in his head, used coal oil in his ears, and poured coal oil on trees and when it killed them said he had no sense,--neither these eccentricities nor other peculiarities like them show a want of capacity to make a will.” This testator was a being of a high order of reasoning as compared with many such cases to be met with. Old Diogenes said: “Most men are within a finger’s breadth of being mad; for if a man walk with his middle finger pointing out, folk will think him mad, but not so if it be his forefinger.” Ordinary mortals are very strict in measuring craziness: even a slight divergence from the normal standard, or their standard of normality, causes them to adjudge their neighbors crazy: the courts are, however, much more lenient in their judgments in dealing with matters testamentary, and seem inclined to the view that all men are sane, only some are less so: or, as the Kentuckian says of a certain liquid produced in his State, “It’s all good but some better than others”; in fact, that weird performances and peculiar actions are indications of individuality and not of mental incapacity. The Supreme Court of North Carolina has decided that while a failure to go to church is a moral delinquency, yet it does not unfit a man to make a will. The Supreme Court of New York has decided that though one believe in all the abominations and wanton rites of ancient Greece and Rome, and in sincerity worship Egypt’s wandering gods, disguised in brutish form, or, like the Hindoo, stand for a lifetime on one leg to secure salvation, or be yet a howling dervish, and rave and gash his naked body, thinking he is doing God service, yet he may be able to transact the affairs of life or dispose suitably of his property.