Brewster's Millions — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Brewster's Millions
John Stuart Mill · en
The instrument went into detail in respect to this supreme condition.
It set forth that Montgomery Brewster was to have no other worldly
possession than the clothes which covered him on the September day
named. He was to begin that day without a penny to his name, without a
single article of jewelry, furniture or finance that he could call his
own or could thereafter reclaim. At nine o'clock, New York time, on the
morning of September 23d, the executor, under the provisions of the
will, was to make over and transfer to Montgomery Brewster all of the
moneys, lands, bonds, and interests mentioned in the inventory which
accompanied the will. In the event that Montgomery Brewster had not, in
every particular, complied with the requirements of the will, to the
full satisfaction of the said executor, Swearengen Jones, the estate
was to be distributed among certain institutions of charity designated
in the instrument. Underlying this imperative injunction of James
Sedgwick was plainly discernible the motive that prompted it. In almost
so many words he declared that his heir should not receive the fortune
if he possessed a single penny that had come to him, in any shape or
form, from the man he hated, Edwin Peter Brewster. While Sedgwick could
not have known at the time of his death that the banker had bequeathed
one million dollars to his grandson, it was more than apparent that he
expected the young man to be enriched liberally by his enemy. It was to
preclude any possible chance of the mingling of his fortune with the
smallest portion of Edwin P. Brewster's that James Sedgwick, on his
deathbed, put his hand to this astonishing instrument.
There was also a clause in which he undertook to dictate the conduct of
Montgomery Brewster during the year leading up to his twenty-sixth
anniversary. He required that the young man should give satisfactory
evidence to the executor that he was capable of managing his affairs
shrewdly and wisely,--that he possessed the ability to add to the
fortune through his own enterprise; that he should come to his
twenty-sixth anniversary with a fair name and a record free from
anything worse than mild forms of dissipation; that his habits be
temperate; that he possess nothing at the end of the year which might
be regarded as a "visible or invisible asset"; that he make no
endowments; that he give sparingly to charity; that he neither loan nor
give away money, for fear that it might be restored to him later; that
he live on the principle which inspires a man to "get his money's
worth," be the expenditure great or small. As these conditions were
prescribed for but a single year in the life of the heir, it was
evident that Mr. Sedgwick did not intend to impose any restrictions
after the property had gone into his hands.
"How do you like it?" asked Mr. Grant, as he passed the will to
Brewster.
The latter took the paper and glanced over it with the air of one who
had heard but had not fully grasped its meaning.