Again, Peter Cooper showed what a wise thing it is for a man to be his own executor. How much better is ante-mortem charity than post-mortem beneficence. Many people keep all their property for themselves till death, and then make good institutions their legatees. They give up the money only because they have to. They would take it all with them if they only had three or four stout pockets in their shroud. Better late than never, but the reward shall not be as great as the reward of those who make charitable contribution while yet they have power to keep their money. Charity, in last will and testament, seems sometimes to be only an attempt to bribe Charon, the ferryman, to land the boat in celestial rather than infernal regions. Mean as sin when they disembark from the banks of this world, they hope to be greeted as benefactors when they come up the beach on the other side. Skinflints when they die, they hope to have the reception of a George Peabody. Besides that, how often donations by will and testament fail of their final destination. The surrogate's courts are filled with legal quarrels. If a philanthropist has any pride of intellect, and desires to help Christian institutions, he had better bestow the gift before death, for the trouble is, if he leaves any large amount to Christian institutions, the courts will be appealed to to prove he was crazy. They will bring witnesses to prove that for a long time he has been becoming imbecile, and as almost every one of positive nature has idiosyncrasies, these idiosyncrasies will be brought out on the trial, and ventilated and enlarged and caricatured, and the man who had mind enough to make $1,000,000, and heart enough to remember needy institutions, will be proved a fool. If he have a second wife, the children of the first wife will charge him with being unduly influenced. Many a man who, when he made his will, had more brain than all his household put together, has been pronounced a fit subject for a lunatic asylum. Be your own executor. Do not let the benevolent institutions of the country get their chief advantage from your last sickness and death. How much better, like Peter Cooper, to walk through the halls you have built for others and see the young men being educated by your beneficence, and to get the sublime satisfaction of your own charities! I do not wonder that Barzillai, the wealthy Gileadite, lived to be eighty, for he stood in the perpetual sunshine of his beneficence. I do not wonder that Peter Cooper, the modern Barzillai, lived to be ninety-two years of age, for he felt the healthful reaction of helping others. Doing good was one of the strongest reasons of his longevity. There is many a man with large estate behind him who calls up his past dollars as a pack of hounds to go out and hunt up one more dollar before he dies. Away away the hunter and his hounds for that last dollar! Hotter and hotter the chase. Closer on the track and closer. Whip up and