Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust."
"For as we brought nothing into the world, so it is certain that we can carry nothing out." We wonder what were the feelings of Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt when on Waterloo Day three years ago he signed the will of which an abstract has just been made public by Senator-elect Chauncey Depew. "The value of the property disposed of by it is seventy million dollars or fourteen million. pounds sterling, and may possibly amount to ten million dollars or two millions sterling more: all, and more too, coming originally from the ferry-boat of a waterman who used to row. people before the days of steam from New York to Staten Island.
As most of us live and move and have our being on the flat diversiifed by what are unimportant inequalities, our attention is inevitably arrested by those who rise above us, even if they are only made prominent by their accumulations of portable property. We are not ashamed then of taking interest in a Vanderbilt and rich men so often display in their last wills and testaments a sardonic humour with whose possession no one credited them while they were alive, that there must be interest in the will of one of the few very rich men of the world. If the fear of the dead, a fear which is in some countries disguised as worship, were not universally felt, the will of a man would dic with him, and the law as representing the whole people to whom it properly belongs would distribute the property in which the dead man had a controlling interest while he was alive to exercise it. Having not yet, however, outgrown our inherited fear of the dead that has become an instinct, we still allow the evil that men do to live after them.
Mr. Vanderbilt did a kind thing to begin with. He did not burden his widow with the care and disposition of his enormous property. He left her for her life his house which occupies the width of one block on Fifth Avenue, and the stable, "also, all the household furniture, pictures, silver, musical instruments, works of art and all other articles in his residence in New York, with the power to her to change or dispose of them during her lifetime. From this bequest are excepted, however, an-castral portraits and busts and portraits of himself and certain pieces of jewellery, which are distributed among his children, Alfred G., Reginald C., Gertrude, and Gladys. To keep up the house Mrs. Vanderbilt is left a sum of two million dollars, £400,000, in securities or money as she may prefer, and an income of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, or £50,000, a year.
As to a sum of five million dollars held in trust under his father's will Mr. Vanderbilt directs that one-tenth, or $500,000, be paid to his son Cornelius, and the remaining nine-tenths divided among his other four children, who thus get one and an-eighth million' dollars each. Mr. Vanderbilt's son Cornelius is also to have during his life the income from a sum of one million dollars, which the other four children are to have each the income from a sum of five million dollars, or one million sterling. According to Mr. Vander-hilt's will, Cornelius was to have only half a million dollars in cash and the income for life of one million dollars, while Gertrude, Alfred, Reginald, and Gladys are to have each $1,125,000 in cash, and the income for life of five million dollars. In addition te this provision Alfred is residuary legatee, receiving the net income of the residue until he
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.