The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-05-23
THE SORROWS OF INTEsTAoY.

IhE OOhhOWO Of L.
From the NJ Y. World
The addition to the sum of human misery, |
and much more to the general stock of |
human malice and all uncharitableness, |
which has been effected under color of those
devices by which the law attempts to secure |
to man the right to the disposition of the
worldly goods which the Scripture and our
senses assure us he cannot carry away with
him, has been so grievous as to some minds
to appear to be much more of nuisance
than a benefit, and to cause sundry cynics to
wish for remission of society in this respect
to q state of nature; or, in other words
'eThe simple plan,
That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can"
That pleasing Celtic tenure which left pro-
perty to be ostensibly scrambled for, at the
expiration of its possessors earthly incum-
bency of it, by all his immediate and remote
kindred indiscriminately, and which has had
the effect to propagate that countless horde
of the heirs-male of ancient kings whom we
encounter in our twilight rambles through
the murmurous groves of the Sixth ward or
other Celtic settlements of this metropolis,
has seemed to such observers more consonant
to reason and to justice than the modern
system of devisal which, while it does not
diminish the frequency or the scandal of
such scrambles, necessitates such scram-
bles to be pursued under the forms of
law, and substitutes spitefulness of spirit
and uncleanness of conscience for the
broken heads of an earlier and SIM
pier administration. 1t is not a pleasing
spectacle to see the members of mans own
household attempting to prove him of unsound
mind, for no better reason than that his
opinion of their relative their absolute
deserts does not coincide with their own, by
adducing evidence that he took excessive
amounts of sugar in his tea, or was given to
objurgation when his dinner was cold. By
these and such as these devices it is attempted,
whenever the parties to family quarrel have
sufficient cause of grievance or an INSULT
cient sense of shame, to upset testator's
own disposition of his own property, and to
reduce the freedom of the will in practice to
the nullity to which the newest sect of
philosophers have sought to abridge it in
theory.
That man by no means escapes these
posthumous outrages, however, by abstaining
from making any will at all, is made plain by
the investigation now in progress into the
pecuniary affairs of the late Captain Alex
ander. That lamented person derived his
title from nautical career, in the course of
which he had accumulated much money, and
acquired an eccentricity Of temper which in
duced him, among other things, to insist
upon carrying the evidences of his posses
sions slung about his neck in ''two bags"
the adoption of a maritime life is itself a
supremely insane performance, will not
wonder at any lesser and corollary eccen-
tricities which it may entail. The late Com
modore Meade was adjudGed insane for ad-
dressing to his family upon shore those i'm
passioned imprecations which are con-
sidered essential to the proper navigation of
a vessel at sea. One of Mr.. Charles Reades
nautical heroes went mad from parting
with one bag of bank notes which he
guarded in the manner which Captain
Alexander adopted to preserve his two. And
! it is no special marvel that the habits of the
sea induced the latter person to continue them
on shore, and to practise the precautions
which he had found effectual against the
perils of the sea as security against the
| perils of the boarding house in Harlem in
which his later lines were cast. In this re-
mote and tranquil spot he passed his declin-
ing years, and finally expired. Just before
| this latter event. it is admitted that his land
lady cut away bag from his chest containing
a few thousands of dollars, which she asserts,
and the altogether disinterested members of
her family join her in asserting, was all the
money found upon him, and which they all,
with equal positiveness and equal disinter-
estedness, assert it had long been his inten-
tion to bestow upon them as token, it is to
be supposed, of his gratitude for having been
| allowed to receive and remunerate food and
| lodging for SO many years.
The daughter of the late Mr.. Alexander
interposes at this point with proof that, within
| a short time of his death, her father had been
in possession of an amount five or six times
CRATER than the amount his late landlady ad-
mits to have taken from him, which it was
his habit to carry in two receptacles, instead
of the one she admits having taken from him:
and that, being notified soon after his death
| that his daughter was a claimant for his
estate, his late landlady refused to deposit
with any responsible third person the amount
then in her hands, pending decisien upon
her right to it.
Against this evidence the happy family of
admittedly aggrandized GARDENERS have only
to swear, which they all consentiently do,
that the eccentric and intestate Alexander
had declared his intention of "making them
comfortable;" and that when, in the article
of his death, Mrs Gardiner ''looked and cut
away the bag" which held his money, he ''fell
| back with a most heavenly smile, as if he was
fully satisfied that it had gone where he
wanted it to 60.
1t may be observed upon this that, grant
ing the GARDENERS to be the most sit and
desartless" persons to judge and testify of
the meaning to be attached to this smile,
man who was capable in his last moments, of
expressing so elaborate sentiment IN SO un-
mistakable a way by 80 simple contortion,
was an irreparabls loss to the comic stage.
One would think that ''heavenly smile" was
not the exact expression with which dying
man would greet person who refused to
wait for his death to despoil him. This par