Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1906-04-15

ready ceased discussing the will of the late Marshall Field, it still has Wide general interest as an indica- tion of the passing of the individual trustee as the person to carry out the provisions of such document. Mir. Field divided his vast estate into several bequests and placed them in the charge of trust companies acting in cooperation with individual trus. tees. By doing so he emphasized the truth of the saying of a British jurist that the true index of a mans character is contained in his last will and testament In this case the doc ument was an index of the seeing business acumen of the testator who thus gave post moltem approval to the system that Is nowadays rapid l., replacing the old-fashioned trustee ship of individuals by the modern trusteeship of organized institutions acting iu an impersonal business ca racity.
 Tn fact, it is becoming more and more difficult to persuade the ordinarv well-informed mortal to be a trustee Men who act as trustees, however well intentioned they may be. often get into serious difficulties. Not long ago two trustees in England, neither of them a wealthy man. were com pelled by the beneficiary under the will to pay back to him out of their own pockets s30.000 which had been lost through an investment contrary to the terms of the document but made in compliance with the bene ficiary's most ardent wishes.
 In legal phrase trustee is q. per son entrusted with property for the benefit of another. In more home ly language such person is one who has all the worries and responsi- bilities of wealth without any of it's enjovments. Then, too, there are men who betray the trust reposed in them and dissipate property whose rightful owners have no means of re- covering it. For these reasons the day of the individual trustee is pass ing The modern trust company is taking his place. One New York con- panv alone, the Trust Company of America. is trustee for more than s1 ,00o, GOO worth of estates and pri- vate bequests.
 Without some means 10 corr it's provisions there would be little rse in the ordinary 1aea' phraseology Or in the style adopted bv the joEial spirit who began:
 T, William Hickineton,
 Poet of Pocklineton.
 Do give and bequeath,
 As free as I breathe
 and continued throughout in logger el. or like that of the gentleman With 2 prejudice against mustaches who carefully provided that none of his heirs should ever be anything but smooth-shaven.
 It is a curious fact that some of the crudest and quaintest wills have stood legal tests while others drawn up by skilled lawyers have been SIC cessfully broken. One of the most re markable wills on record in England was scratched on plank of wood by a shipWrecked naval officer; an other will, admitted to probate in Kew York, was written on the back of the frontispiece in German story bcok In Rhode Island may be seen what is probably the shortest will en record It contains only six words: @Mfs. -, leave her all Yet was quite as effective as the pro hxity and salemnity With which Will liam Shakespeare began 3 similar document.
 Tn the name of God, Amen wrote the great dramatist T, William Shakespeare of stratford-upon=Avon, in the County of Warwick, Gent, in perfect health and memory God be nraisedD do make and ordain this mg last will and testament in the manner and form following: that is r. say, and then after yet more in- tro5uction comes the long list of be, aaasts and instructions to his execlf- tors
 Trustees and executors come face te faee win some very curious re- quests, sometimes. indeed, requests faat common sease insists upon dis sr1ina 0He of the most rsnaflz- able conditions ever presented 10 an a1aaz q eXemor. for example, was the command af New Fng1and gcntle- 4aaa f}#t his skin be made into two