FullReads

I assured him that some people might be glad to get that–that a lot of people might, in fact, and that I could write that into his will without any trouble at all.

“Ah!” said Remington Solander. “But that is already in my will. What I want you to write for my will, is another clause. I mean to build, in your cemetery, a high-class and imperishable granite tomb for myself. I mean to place it on that knoll–that high knoll–the highest spot in your cemetery. What I want you to write into my will is a clause providing for the perpetual care and maintenance of my tomb. I want to set aside five hundred thousand dollars for that purpose.”

“Well,” I said to the sheep-faced millionaire, “I can do that, too.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “And I want to give my family and relations the remaining million and a half dollars, provided,” he said, accenting the ‘provided,’ “they carry out faithfully the provisions of the clause providing for the perpetual care and maintenance of my tomb. If they don’t care and maintain,” he said, giving me a hard look, “that million and a half is to go to the Home for Flea-Bitten Dogs.”

“They’ll care and maintain, all right!” I laughed.

“I think so,” said Remington Solander gravely. “I do think so, indeed! And now, sir, we come to the important part. You, as I know, are a trustee of the cemetery.”

“Yes,” I said, “I am.”

“For drawing this clause of my will, if you can draw it,” said Remington Solander, looking me full in the eye with both his own, which were like the eyes of a salt mackerel, “I shall pay you five thousand dollars.”

Well, I almost gasped. It was a big lot of money for drawing one clause of a will, and I began to smell a rat right there. But, I may say, the proposition Remington Solander made to me was one I was able, after quite a little talk with my fellow trustees of the cemetery, to carry out. What Remington Solander wanted was to be permitted to put a radio loud-speaking outfit in his granite tomb–a radio loud-speaking outfit permanently set at 327 meters wave-length, which was to be the wave-length of his endowed broadcasting station. I don’t know how Remington Solander first got his remarkable idea, but just about that time an undertaker in New York had rigged up a hearse with a phonograph so that the hearse would loud-speak suitable hymns on the way to the cemetery, and that may have suggested the loud-speaking tomb to Remington Solander, but it is not important where he got the idea. He had it, and he was set on having it carried out.

* * * * *

“Think,” he said, “of the uplifting effect of it! On the highest spot in the cemetery will stand my noble tomb, loud-speaking in all directions the solemn and holy words and music I have collected in my fourteen volumes. All who enter the cemetery will hear; all will be ennobled and uplifted.”

That was so, too. I saw that at once. I said so. So Remington Solander went on to explain that the income from the five hundred thousand dollars would be set aside to keep “A” batteries and “B” batteries supplied, to keep the outfit in repair, and so on. So I tackled the job rather enthusiastically. I don’t say that the five-thousand-dollar fee did not interest me, but I did think Remington Solander had a grand idea. It would make our cemetery stand out. People would come from everywhere to see and listen. The lots in the new addition would sell like hot cakes.

But I did have a little trouble with the other trustees. They balked when I explained that Remington Solander wanted the sole radio loud-speaking rights of our cemetery, but some one finally suggested that if Remington Solander put up a new and artistic iron fence around the whole cemetery it might be all right. They made him submit his fourteen volumes so they could see what sort of matter he meant to broadcast from his high-class station, and they agreed it was solemn enough; it was all solemn and sad and gloomy, just the stuff for a cemetery. So when Remington Solander agreed to build the new iron fence they made a formal contract with him, and I drew up the clause for the will, and he bought six lots on top of the high knoll and began erecting his marble mausoleum.