One of the most strange and beautiful wills in the pages of romance is that of Cornelius Van Baerle, hero of “The Black Tulip.” There wants barely an hour before he is to be led to execution, and Rosa, the jailer’s daughter, is with him in the cell. “On this day, the 23rd of August, 1672, being about to render, although innocent, my soul to God on the scaffold, I bequeath to Rosa Gryphus the only worldly goods which have remained to me of all that I have possessed in this world, the rest having been confiscated; I bequeath, I say, to Rosa Gryphus three bulbs, which I am convinced must produce, in the next May, the Grand Black Tulip, for which a prize of a hundred thousand guilders has been offered by the Haarlem Society, requesting that she may be paid the same sum in my stead, as my sole heiress, under the only condition of her marrying a respectable young man of about my age, who loves her, and whom she loves, and of her giving the grand black tulip, which will constitute a new species, the name of Rosa Barlœensis, that is to say, her name and mine combined. “So may God grant me mercy; and to her health and long life.” But lovers of romance remember how the prisoner lived to fulfil the conditions of his own will, and himself to marry his well-loved legatee. Wills are frequently made before an operation. A Birmingham doctor recently opened his will thus: “This is the last will and testament of me Alexander Bottle ... being about to undergo a surgical operation.” Miss Ellen Morrison, who died in 1910, seventy-five years of age, had made no will when illness seized her and an operation became imperative. All through the night before the operation the disposal of three millions of money was her care. But we are trespassing on a subject which has already been illustrated. The will of Dirk Jager, written in German, adduces in addition to the prospect of a journey some general considerations. It is dated March 2, 1769. “In the Name of the most holy and glorious Trinity, Amen. Whereas daily experience sufficiently sheweth that all men are subject to temporal death, and thus also I who was born a mortal man in this world being of nothing more certain than the expectation of death of which the hour is not revealed to any, but every man ought to be continually mindful of the time when Almighty God should call him out of the world, I therefore, intending to travel from this place St. Petersburg considering the various accidents that may happen and reflecting seriously that all men are as nothing, being in health and of sound mind, of my own free will without any compulsion and deliberately and to avoid all disputes after my death, which is in the hands of the Almighty, have made this my present testament of my last will for the disposing of the worldly goods which God has graciously granted to me.”