How often a dying man may have fallen a prey to the designs of friends or foes one could not hazard a guess: it is remarkable, on the other hand, what powers of resistance a man in his last sickness may show. Two instances have just been given, but still more interesting is the final will of Henry Akerman, a victim of the plague. What perturbation of mind for a dying man to suffer! “Memorandum that at or upon the VIth day of August A.D. 1603, and between five and six of the clock in the afternoon of the same day, or thereabouts, Henry Akerman, of the parish of St. Giles Without Cripplegate, London, being weak in body and visited with the sickness, but of perfect mind and memory, did, with an intent absolutely to revoke all former wills before by him made, make and declare his last will and testament nuncupative in manner and form and by the words following, or the like in effect, viz.: ‘Whereas this day I did unadvisedly make a will in writing by the procurement of some of my friends, and named therein John Dardes and Jarvice Pitt to be my executors, I do now upon better consideration clean revoke that will, for that I distrust and find that I had done my children wrong thereby. And therefore now I make Mary my well beloved wife my executrix. And I give will and bequeath my goods and chattels, and whatsoever else hath pleased God to bless me withal, to be equally divided betwixt my said wife and my children according to the custom of the City of London’: and these or the like words in effect he spake in the hearing of divers credible witnesses.” The temptation to postpone a will, to refuse to look death in the face, must have been great when a few dying words were valid. To some how hard is the Horatian theme: _divitiis potietur heres_! “I’m growing old, and hence ere long shall fare, How I should love to be my only heir,” a Hebrew epigrammatist makes a miser say. Pope depicts the miser clinging at the last moment to his lands and his cash, only with his latest breath, reluctantly, making some disposition of his goods. “‘I give and I devise’ (old Euclio said, And sighed), ‘my lands and tenements to Ned.’ ‘Your money, sir?’ ‘My money, sir, what, all? Why,—if I must’—(then wept) ‘I give it Paul.’ ‘The manor, sir?’—‘The manor! hold,’ he cried, ‘Not that,—I cannot part with that’—and died.”