Waterbury Democrat., 1901-06-07
FREAKS OF WILL MAKERS.
A Case in Which Authenticity Was
 Curiously Proved.


 It is probable that whole volume, and q very interesting one at that, might be composed of the freaks of legal evidesee in will cases. The evil dence is often purely documentary; hence the paradoxes which arise from time to time in it's interpretation. If ever such volume comes to be pub- ushed, ait will surely be incomplete if the following case, told lyy8J John CorWin of the firm of IIarriS Gorwin & Gum nison, is left out:
 '"The testntrix,' said Mir. Corwin, "died in Brooklyn some years ago, and it devoIved upon me, as her lawyer, tol find and probate her will. Tn a trunk found an envelope containing q mum Der of very small pieces of paper. OF both sides of which was writing. In side the flap of that envelope was writ ten, This will is all here,' in the hand writing and with the signature of the testatrix.
 s'You must remember that these scraps of paper were very small in- deed The paradox is this-that the
 extreme smal1ness of the scraps was
 the evidence that this torn paper was
 the Hast will and testament of the de-
 ceased The law recognizes tearing as
 one method by which q testator may
 revoke g will, and the intention to re- woke is presumed in testator who so
 tears one. But if contrary intention
 can be proved by another act done at
 the same time then the tearing of the
 will 5oes not revoke it. Now, In this
 case the words This will is all here
 clearly showed that the testatrix meant
 those scraps of paper to be regarded
 as her will. It remained to prove that she so meant at the time when she tore
 the paper. If she had torn the paper
 at one moment, intending by that act to revoke the will, and had subsequent
 iy written those words without wit nesses or other legal formality, mean ing to revive the force of the revoked
 will, then the latter act was legally in
 valid and the will could not be pro- bated. Surrogate Abbott took this view.
 My contention was that the writing : on the flap of the envelope was in tech- nical language part of the same res gesta as the tearing of the will. I arr gued that If the testatrix had torn that paper at one time and put it in that envelope at another some of the pieces, small as they were, must sure ly have become lost in the interval. The extreme minuteness of the pieces, coupled with the fact that not one piece was missing, was my evidence that the tearing and the putting into that envelope were one res gesta.
 T had quite clearly demonstrated the presence of every piece by taking a sheet of glass covered with white of egg and carefully reconstructing the whole sheet of paper upon 1t, leaving each piece with the same side to the glass as it's fellows. In this wayI was able to present the will in legible shape. It's physical completeness es- tablished my point to the surrogate's satisfaction, for the presumption that the placing of the pieces in the envel- ope and the writing on the flap were one res gesta was in my favor. And so I succeeded in probating that will.
 To the lay mind the mystery of the tearing of the will remains no less in- teresting than the curious legal evi- dence of it's validity. People who make wills notoriously indulge in strange fancies at times, and it may be that this woman resorted to the ex- pedient of tearing up her will precisely because that was one of the last things which any one who wished to preserve will would be likely to do with 1t, and consequently no one who wished to steal the will would be likely to look for it in an envelope containing only minute scraps of paper: change.