Let us pause for a few moments and examine the attitudes and countenances of those who are perusing the wills. See how that woman's hand shakes as she turns over the leaves; look at the working of the muscles of that young man's face; behold the play of light over the wrinkled features of that old lady; see how she clasps her hands together and is looking upward; and you may tell what each has discovered as clearly as if you knew them, had stood beside them, and had read every line which they have been reading. That low sound, falling on the ear like the faint dropping of the summer rain on the leaves, is caused by the tears shed by that pale young lady in deep mourning; they fall quicker and quicker on the pages, and she rests her head on her hand, for she can no longer see to read through those blinding tears. The old objects of a once happy home are floating before the eye of her imagination; it may be that they are all there enumerated; that she has in fancy been passing from room to room, looking into the mirror that threw back her image in happy childhood, leaning from the window where stood the box of mignonette which she watered in the dewy morning, while her shadow fell upon the sunshine which slept on the chamber-floor. Old faces and old voices have again been before and around her; and she weeps not at finding that she is forgotten, but because those she so fondly loved are either no more or far away, and refuse to countenance her for marrying the object of her love, a man rejected by all her family only [Illustration: PREROGATIVE COURT, DOCTORS COMMONS.] because he was poor. In that great mustering-ground beyond the grave, who would not rather occupy the place of that sufferer than stand ranged amid the ranks of those who have thus neglected her? Contrast her deportment with that of the young man at the end of the desk; his fists are clenched, the nails of his fingers are embedded in the palms of his hands, his teeth set, his eyebrows knit; he strikes his hat as he places it on his head, closes the door with a loud slam, and curses the memory of a dead man, because he has left a reckless spendthrift just enough to live on all his life without working, yet so bequeathed it that he can but draw a given sum monthly. He is savage because he cannot have the whole legacy at once in his possession. If he could, he would be likely enough to squander it all away in a single night at some notorious gambling-house.