But will-making may have a sinister attraction, a suspicion of something hardly sane. Fragments of Chatterton’s will have already been quoted. Apprenticed to an attorney, he strove to get free, and as a last means to induce his master to dismiss him, he left in the office this strange document, dated April 14, 1770, in which his approaching suicide was announced. It had the effect desired. “All this wrote between 11 and 2 o’clock Saturday, in the utmost distress of mind. April 14, 1770. This is the last will and testament of me, Thomas Chatterton, of the city of Bristol; being sound in body, or it is the fault of my last surgeon, the soundness of my mind, the coroner and jury are to be judges of, desiring them to take notice that the most perfect masters of human nature in Bristol distinguish me by the title of the Mad Genius; therefore, if I do a mad action, it is conformable to every action of my life, which all savoured of insanity.” There follow directions for tomb and tablets, and bequests of satirical or bitter humour. “I leave also my religion to Dr. Cutts Barton, Dean of Bristol, hereby empowering the Sub Sacrist to strike him on the head when he goes to sleep in church.... I leave my moderation to the politicians on both sides of the question.... I give my abstinence to the company of the Sheriff’s annual feast in general, more particularly to the Aldermen.... I leave the young ladies all the letters they have had from me, assuring them that they need be under no apprehension from the appearance of my ghost, for I die for none of them.... I leave my mother and sister to the protection of my friends, if I have any. Executed in the presence of Omniscience this 14th day of April, 1770.” But probably of imaginative and fantastic wills the most remarkable is one said to be the work of a lunatic in America, more surprising for its beauty than are others for their satiric or malicious inventiveness.[2] “ ... I leave the children for the term of their childhood the flowers, fields, blossoms, and woods, with the right to play among them freely, warning them at the same time against thistles and thorns. I devise to the children the banks, the brooks, and the golden sands beneath waters thereof, and the white clouds that float high over the giant trees, and I leave to the children long long days to be merry in, and the night and the moon and the train of the Milky Way to wonder at. “I devise to the boys jointly all the useful fields, all the pleasant waters where one may swim, all the streams where one may fish or where, when grim winter comes, one may skate, to have and hold the same for the period of their boyhood.... I give to the said boys each his own place by the fireside at night, with all the pictures that may be seen in the burning wood, to enjoy without let or hindrance and without any encumbrance or care.