“What have you to say to this, Mr. Bruff?” he inquired. “All the claimants for the estate will doubtless agree with the position taken by the attorney for the public administrator. They are joined in interest in overturning the will. You alone defend the beneficent purposes of the dead man. What have you to say?” “What can I say, your Honor?” said Bruff, bitterly. “It is another instance of a man conceited and obstinate enough to attempt making his own will. If my old friend French had called me in, I would have told him that courts and juries in California seldom allow a man to dispose of his own estate, if it be a large one, and he must give his savings away in his lifetime if he wishes to prevent his sixth cousins from rioting on them. I would have had Lorin French convey his vast property to trustees to carry out his plans, and have affected the transfer completely while he was yet alive. But he, great and simple soul, supposed, naturally enough, that he had a right to do as he pleased with his own, and that, being without near kindred, and no person having any claim upon him, he could help the poor with the money it had taken him half a century to accumulate. He was originally educated to the law, and, although he had been out of practice for thirty years, he knew how to formulate a will. But he was not aware of the ravages committed by a California Legislature among the time-honored principles of the common law. Mark the result of legislative folly and individual inadvertence. Twenty millions of dollars, which their owner proposed to devote to a grand and comprehensive experiment for adjusting the vexed relations of labor and capital, will now be consumed in court costs and witness fees, divided among a horde of attorneys, and finally scattered in selfish enjoyment, and in ways unuseful to man, all over the world from Australia to Elko. It’s the law, I suppose, and neither your Honor nor I can help it, but it’s an accursed shame, nevertheless.” And Mr. Bruff, pale with excitement, resumed his seat.