Show a 1 Some Odd Last Wills Chicago Record Although an old i wheelbarrow is not the most elegant or convenient vehicle in which to take ones rides abroad it does not logically follow that because a man or woman prefers that mode of locomotion he or she is mentally incapacitated Yet this very conclusion was asked of a Paris court the other day in the case of an old spinster Mademoiselle Bormche the daughter of an eccentric father This father had curious ideas and curou spent considerable sums of money to further his notions He had no objection ob-jection to the academic a tolerance hs daughter does not seem to have shared as she was in the habit of decorating her statues with vine leaves and when she could not get these she would drape them with cloth Mademoiselle Borniche left all her fortune for the founding of a maternity mater-nity hospital and her heirs are contesting con-testing the will trying to make out that the old lady was not quite sane The French law Is in favor of property going to the heirs of a person so the will is likely to be upset in favor of the contestants However records go to show that the most eccentric wills have been made by persons perfectly sane In every relation re-lation in life Few persons would question the lucidity of Ben Jensen for instance yet he commanded hs executors to bury him upright so thaft he might be in readiness at the day A of judgment Richard the Dauntless Duke of Normandy willed that hf should be buried under the porch of the church at Fecamp in order to be trodden upon by all those who entered the sacred building This wish was compiled with but a few years later an abbot had the body removed to the front of the altar Richards son not to be outdone in humility requested re-quested to be buried In the cemetery but under the gutterpipe of the church Ben Jonsons reasons for wishing to be burled upright were slightly different differ-ent from those of Sieur de Chatelet who made similar provisions saying 1 desire to be buried upright In one of the pillars of the church so that the scum may not march on my stomach The arrangements for their long rest of two famous Dutch painters breathe neither spirit of humility nor that of pride but simply the spirit of conviviality and love of life that distinguished dis-tinguished their fellow worthies of the brush Shortly before his death at Amsterdam in the beginning of the eighteenth century the celebrated seascape sea-scape painter Bakhuysen purchased several pipes of the best wine procurable pro-curable had it bottled and sealed and stocked it after which he placed in a purse 68 gold pieces When his will was opened the money was found to be left to his friends on the condition that they should give a dinner on his grave and drink the wine until thegx was not a drop left of it Martin Heemskerk the second Dutch painter left his fortune to be divided into so many parts each part to dower annually a maiden of his native village vil-lage on the condition that the wedding festivities should take place on his grave The testators it is well known were perfectly sane in body and mind when they made their wills which it will scarcely be gainsaid were eccentric eccen-tric why should Mademoiselle Bor niche not have made a sane will in her periods of eccentricity |