Brewsters Millions | Page 8

of the death of Robert Brewster and of Mrs.
Brewster. He also was aware of the fact that old Edwin Peter Brewster
intended to bequeath a large fortune to you--and thereby hangs a tale.
Sedgwick was proud. When he lived in New York, he was regarded as
the kind of man who never forgave the person who touched roughly
upon his pride. You know, of course, that your father married Miss
Sedgwick in the face of the most bitter opposition on the part of Edwin
Brewster. The latter refused to recognize her as his daughter,
practically disowned his son, and heaped the harshest kind of calumny
upon the Sedgwicks. It was commonly believed about town that Jim
Sedgwick left the country three or four years after this marriage for the
sole reason that he and Edwin Brewster could not live in the same place.
So deep was his hatred of the old man that he fled to escape killing him.
It was known that upon one occasion he visited the office of his sister's
enemy for the purpose of slaying him, but something prevented. He
carried that hatred to the grave, as you will see."
Montgomery Brewster was trying to gather himself together from
within the fog which made himself and the world unreal.
"I believe I'd like to have you read this extraor--the will, Mr. Grant," he
said, with an effort to hold his nerves in leash.
Mr. Grant cleared his throat and began in his still voice. Once he
looked up to find his listener eager, and again to find him grown
indifferent. He wondered dimly if this were a pose.
In brief, the last will of James T. Sedgwick bequeathed everything, real
and personal, of which he died possessed, to his only nephew,
Montgomery Brewster of New York, son of Robert and Louise
Sedgwick Brewster. Supplementing this all-important clause there was
a set of conditions governing the final disposition of the estate. The

most extraordinary of these conditions was the one which required the
heir to be absolutely penniless upon the twenty-sixth anniversary of his
birth, September 23d.
The instrument went into detail in respect to this supreme condition. It
set forth that Montgomery Brewster was to have no other worldly
possession than the clothes which covered him on the September day
named. He was to begin that day without a penny to his name, without
a single article of jewelry, furniture or finance that he could call his
own or could thereafter reclaim. At nine o'clock, New York time, on
the morning of September 23d, the executor, under the provisions of
the will, was to make over and transfer to Montgomery Brewster all of
the moneys, lands, bonds, and interests mentioned in the inventory
which accompanied the will. In the event that Montgomery Brewster
had not, in every particular, complied with the requirements of the will,
to the full satisfaction of the said executor, Swearengen Jones, the
estate was to be distributed among certain institutions of charity
designated in the instrument. Underlying this imperative injunction of
James Sedgwick was plainly discernible the motive that prompted it. In
almost so many words he declared that his heir should not receive the
fortune if he possessed a single penny that had come to him, in any
shape or form, from the man he hated, Edwin Peter Brewster. While
Sedgwick could not have known at the time of his death that the banker
had bequeathed one million dollars to his grandson, it was more than
apparent that he expected the young man to be enriched liberally by his
enemy. It was to preclude any possible chance of the mingling of his
fortune with the smallest portion of Edwin P. Brewster's that James
Sedgwick, on his deathbed, put his hand to this astonishing instrument.
There was also a clause in which he undertook to dictate the conduct of
Montgomery Brewster during the year leading up to his twenty-sixth
anniversary. He required that the young man should give satisfactory
evidence to the executor that he was capable of managing his affairs
shrewdly and wisely,--that he possessed the ability to add to the fortune
through his own enterprise; that he should come to his twenty-sixth
anniversary with a fair name and a record free from anything worse
than mild forms of dissipation; that his habits be temperate; that he

possess nothing at the end of the year which might be regarded as a
"visible or invisible asset"; that he make no endowments; that he give
sparingly to charity; that he neither loan nor give away money, for fear
that it might be restored to him later; that he live on the principle which
inspires a man to "get his money's worth," be the expenditure great or
small. As these conditions were prescribed for but