“And now having, I hope, made a proper disposition of my lands and money, those pearls of great price in the present esteem of men, let me take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude to the grand original proprietor; and here I must direct my praises to that benign Being who through all the stages of my life hath encompassed me with a profusion of favours, and who by a wonderful and gracious Providence hath converted my very misfortunes and disappointments into blessings; nor let me omit, what the business just finished seems more particularly to require of me, to return Him my unfeigned thanks, who, to all the comforts and conveniences of life, hath superadded this also of being useful even in death, by thus enabling me to dispose of a double portion, namely, out of love to the poor, and another of gratitude to my friends.
“All my faults and follies, almost infinite as they have been, I leave behind me with wishes, that as here they had their birth and origin, they may here be buried in everlasting oblivion. My infant graces and little embryo virtues are, I trust, gone before me into heaven, and will, I hope, prove successful messengers to prepare my way. Thither, O Lord, let them mount up with unremitting constancy, while my soul in the meantime feasts itself with ecstatic reflections on that ravishing change when, from the nonsense and folly of an impertinent, vain, and wicked world, it shall be summoned to meet its kindred spirits, and admitted into the blissful society of angels and men made perfect; when, instead of sickness, gloominess, and sorrow (the melancholy retinue of sin and house of clay), glory and immortal youth shall be its attendants, and its habitation the palace of the King of Kings: this will be a life worth dying for indeed! thus to exist, tho’ but in prospect, is at present joy, gladness, transport, ecstacy! Fired with the view of this transcendent happiness and triumphant in hope, these noble privileges of a Christian, how is it possible to forbear crying out O Death, why art thou so long in coming? why tarry the wheels of thy chariot?
“To that Supreme Being, whose treasures and goodness are thus infinite and inexhaustible, be all honour and glory for ever. Amen.”
CHAPTER V
TESTAMENTARY AND KINDRED MISCELLANY
“Let the world slide, let the world go,
A fig for care, and a fig for woe!
If I can’t pay, why I can owe,
And death makes equal the high and low.”
Testamentary Capacity
The following was copied a short time ago from a legal journal: a stranger on horseback was passing through a country village; a church was being moved, and he asked a resident the reason; the latter answered:
“Well, stranger, I’m mayor of these here diggin’s, an’ I’m fer law enforcement. We’ve got an ordenance what says no saloon shall be nearer than three hundred feet to a church. I give ’em jest three days to move the church.”
I mean no disrespect in linking this decision of the Mayor with that of the Supreme Court of one of our great Western States.
That Supreme Court recently handed down a decision on testamentary capacity. It would seem that extreme mental obliquity is not a bar to will-making: here is the syllabus in the case: