“These, then, are our additional letters:--) = d, 7 = m, β = s, 9 = i, λ = o. _To remind me i.i. ee. m. death ni.h_; for _m. death_, I read _my death_, and _i.i. ee._, I guess to be, _if I feel_. So it stands thus:--‘Note.--This is to remind me, if I feel my death nigh, that I had better----’” I worked on now in silence; Fletcher, leaning his chin on his hands, sat opposite, staring into my face with breathless anxiety. Presently I exclaimed: “Halves, Mat! I think you said halves!” “I--I--I--I--my very dear fellow, I----” “A very excellent man was your uncle; a most exemplary----” “All right, I know that,” said Fletcher, cutting me short. “Do read the paper; I have a spade and pick on my library table, all ready for work the moment I know where to begin.” “But, really, he was a man in a thousand, a man of such discretion, such foresight, so much----” Down came Fletcher’s hand on the desk. “Do go on!” he cried; and I could see that he was swearing internally; he would have sworn _ore rotundo_, only that it would have been uncivil, and decidedly improper. “Very well; you are prepared to hear all?” “All! by Jove! by Jingo! prepared for everything.” “Then this is what I read,” said I, taking up my own transcript:-- “_Note.--This is to remind me, if I feel my death nigh, that I had better move to Birmingham, as burials are done cheaper there than here, where the terms of the Necropolis Company are exorbitant._” Fletcher bounded from his seat. “The old skinflint! miser! screw!” “A very estimable and thrifty man, your great-uncle.” “Confounded old stingy--,” and he slammed the door upon himself and the substantive which designated his uncle. And now, the very best advice I can give to my readers, is to set to work at once on the simple cypher given near the commencement of this paper, and to find it out. STRANGE WILLS Of course we ought to begin with Adam’s will, the father of all wills; and if we could produce that patriarchal document, we should undoubtedly find in it the germs of all the merits, faults, and eccentricities of wills to come. But, unfortunately, though a testament of Adam does exist, it is a forgery; and nothing will convince us to the contrary,--not even the Mussulman tradition, which asserts that on the occasion of our great forefather beginning to make his bequests, seventy legions of angels brought him sheets of paper and quill pens, nicely nibbed, all the way from Paradise; and that the Archangel Gabriel set-to his seal as witness. What! four hundred and twenty thousand sheets of paper!--surely a needless consumption of material, when there was nothing to be bequeathed but a view over the hedge of an impracticable garden. If we pass to Noah’s testament, we are again among the apocrypha. In it, Noah portions his landed property, the globe, into three shares, one for each son: America is not included in the division for obvious reasons. It was left for “manners” sake, and manners has never got it.