“An old man is twice a child: the dying man becomes the property of his family. He has no choice left, and his voluntary power is merged in old saws and prescriptive usages. The property we have derived from our kindred reverts tacitly to them: and not to let it take its course, is a sort of violence done to nature as well as custom. The idea of property, of something in common, does not mix cordially with friendship, but is inseparable from near relationship. We owe a return in kind, where we feel no obligation for a favour; and consign our possessions to our next of kin as mechanically as we lean our heads on the pillow, and go out of the world in the same state of stupid amazement that we came into it!... Cetera desunt.” Human nature is ever the same: William Hazlitt wrote the above lines one hundred years ago, and yet as we read them, there appears an emphasized truth in the sentiment contained in a verse from “Mortality,” a composition by William Knox, which was the favorite poem of Abraham Lincoln: “For we are the same our fathers have been, We see the same sights that our fathers have seen; We drink the same stream, and view the same sun, And run the same course our fathers have run.” It is said of Hazlitt that his domestic life was infelicitous; that he had a temperament which was erratic and self-tormenting and estranged him from his friends, even for a time from Charles Lamb. He died on September 18, 1830, with Lamb at his bedside, and though disappointed and harassed by anxiety and suffering as he had been, yet his last words were: “I’ve had a happy life.” How many of us would have said as much! WILLS OF THE NOVELIST The _Green Bag_ says: “Where would the novelist of the period be without the disinheriting will, the manipulated will, the secreted will, and all kinds of wills in every style of obliteration and in every stage of destruction? Why, he would be nearly as bereft of staple stock in trade as if he had lost the lovelorn maiden, the tender-hearted soldier, or the grand old hall of our ancestors. Even writers of a higher grade find it convenient to make use of such machinery to help make the story go.” OLD NOIRTIER’S WILL Romancers and writers of fiction have taken much interest in, and considerable liberty with, wills; for instance, old Noirtier, a character in the “Count of Monte Cristo,” the great novel by Dumas, wrote his will. He was paralyzed, and his only means of communication was by the eye: to shut the eye, meant “yes”: to wink the eye, meant “no.” His granddaughter had no trouble when the notaries appeared in convincing them that her grandparent knew exactly what he was doing; so, in spite of opposition and in the presence of seven witnesses, the will was executed; and as no signature was required under the French law, the act was legally accomplished. DR. JEKYLL’S WILL