Famous Givers and Their Gifts. Bolton Sarah Knowles

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СКАЧАТЬ the purpose of promoting Industrial Art in the United States, was established, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology assumed the responsibility of conducting it. The Lowell Institute bears the expenses of the school, and tuition is free to all pupils.

      There is a drawing-room and a weaving-room, though applicants must be able to draw from nature before they enter. In the weaving-room are two fancy chain-looms for dress-goods, three fancy chain-looms for woollen cassimeres, one gingham loom, and one Jacquard loom. Samples of brocaded silk, ribbons, alpacas, and fancy woollen goods are constantly provided for the school from Paris and elsewhere.

      The course of study requires three years; and students are taught the art of designing, and making patterns from prints, ginghams, delaines, silks, laces, paper-hangings, carpets, oilcloths, etc. They can also weave their designs into actual fabrics of commercial sizes of every variety of material. The school has proved a most helpful and beneficent institution. It is an inspiration to visit it, and see the happy and earnest faces of the young workers, fitting themselves for useful positions in life.

      The Lowell Institute has been fortunate in its management. Mr. John Amory Lowell was the able trustee for more than forty years; and the present trustee, Mr. Augustus Lowell, like his father, has the great work much at heart. Dr. Benjamin E. Cotting, the curator from the formation of the Institute, a period of more than half a century, has won universal esteem for his ability, as also for his extreme courtesy and kindness.

      John Lowell, Jr., humanly speaking, died before his lifework was scarcely begun. The studious, modest boy, the thorough, conscientious man, planning a journey to Africa and India, not for pleasure merely, but for helpfulness to science and humanity, died just as he entered the long sought-for land. A man of warm affections, he went out from a broken home to die among strangers.

      He was so careful of his moments that, says Mr. Everett, "he spared no time for the frivolous pleasures of youth; less, perhaps, than his health required for its innocent relaxations, and for exercise." Whether or not he realized that the time was short, he accomplished more in his brief thirty-seven years than many men in fourscore and ten. It would have been easy to spend two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in houses and lands, in fine equipage and social festivities; but Mr. Lowell had a higher purpose in life.

      After five weeks of illness, thousands of miles from all who were dear to him, on the ruins of Thebes, in an Arab village built on the remains of an ancient palace, Mr. Lowell penned these words: "As the most certain and the most important part of true philosophy appears to me to be that which shows the connection between God's revelations and the knowledge of good and evil implanted by him in our nature, I wish a course of lectures to be given on natural religion, showing its conformity to that of our Saviour.

      "For the more perfect demonstration of the truth of those moral and religious precepts, by which alone, as I believe, men can be secure of happiness in this world and that to come, I wish a course of lectures to be delivered on the historical and internal evidences in favor of Christianity. I wish all disputed points of faith and ceremony to be avoided, and the attention of the lecturers to be directed to the moral doctrines of the Gospel, stating their opinion, if they will, but not engaging in controversy, even on the subject of the penalty for disobedience. As the prosperity of my native land, New England, which is sterile and unproductive, must depend hereafter, as it has heretofore depended, first on the moral qualities, and second on the intelligence and information of its inhabitants, I am desirous of trying to contribute towards this second object also."

      The friend of the people, Mr. Lowell desired that they should learn from the greatest minds of the age without expense to themselves. It should be an absolutely free gift.

      The words from the Theban ruins have had their ever broadening influence through half a century. What shall be the result for good many centuries from now? Tens of thousands of fortunes have been and will be spent for self, and the names of the owners will be forgotten. John Lowell, Jr., did not live for himself, and his name will be remembered.

      Others in this country have adopted somewhat Mr. Lowell's plan of giving. The Hon. Oakes Ames, the great shovel manufacturer, member of Congress for ten years, and builder of the Union Pacific Railroad, left at his death, May 8, 1873, a fund of fifty thousand dollars "for the benefit of the school children of North Easton, Mass." The income is thirty-five hundred dollars a year, part of which is used in furnishing magazines to children – each family having children in the schools is supplied with some magazine; part for an industrial school where they are taught the use of tools; and part for free lectures yearly to the school children, adults also having the benefit of them. Thirty or more lectures are given each winter upon interesting and profitable subjects by able lecturers.

      Some of the subjects already discussed are as follows: The Great Yellowstone Park, A Journey among the Planets, The Chemistry of a Match, Paris, its Gardens and Palaces, A Basket of Charcoal, Tobacco and Liquors, Battle of Gettysburg, The Story of the Jeannette, Palestine, Electricity, Picturesque Mexico, The Sponge and Starfish, Sweden, Physiology, History of a Steam-Engine, Heroes and Historic Places of the Revolution, The Four Napoleons, The World's Fair, The Civil War, and others.

      What better way to spend an evening than in listening to such lectures? What better way to use one's money than in laying the foundation of intelligent and good citizenship in childhood and youth?

      The press of North Easton says, "The influence and educational power of such a series of lectures and course of instruction in a community cannot be measured or properly gauged. From these lectures a stream of knowledge has gone out which, we believe, will bear fruit in the future for the good of the community. Of the many good things which have come from the liberality of Mr. Ames, this, we believe, has been the most potent for good of any."

      Judge White of Lawrence, Mass., left at his death a tract of land in the hands of three trustees, which they were to sell, and use the income to provide a course of not less than six lectures yearly, especially to the industrial classes. The subjects were to be along the line of good morals, industry, economy, the fruits of sin and of virtue. The White fund amounts to about one hundred thousand dollars.

      Mrs. Mary Hemenway of Boston, who died March 6, 1894, will always be remembered for her good works, not the least of which are the yearly courses of free lectures for young people at the Old South Church. When the meeting-house where Benjamin Franklin was baptized, where the town meeting was held after the Boston Massacre in 1770, and just before the tea was thrown overboard in 1773, and which the British troops used for a riding-school in 1775, – when this historic place was in danger of being torn down because business interests seemed to demand the location, Mrs. Hemenway, with other Boston women, came forward in 1876 to save it. She once said to Mr. Larkin Dunton, head master of the Boston Normal School, "I have just given a hundred thousand dollars to save the Old South; yet I care nothing for the church on the corner lot. But, if I live, such teaching shall be done in that old building, and such an influence shall go out from it, as shall make the children of future generations love their country so tenderly that there can never be another civil war in this country."

      Mrs. Hemenway was patriotic. When asked why she gave one hundred thousand dollars to Tileston Normal School in Wilmington, N.C., – her maiden name was Tileston, – and thus provide for schools in the South, she replied, "When my country called for her sons to defend the flag, I had none to give. Mine was but a lad of twelve. I gave my money as a thank-offering that I was not called to suffer as other mothers who gave their sons and lost them. I gave it that the children of this generation might be taught to love the flag their fathers tore down."

      In December, 1878, Miss C. Alice Baker began at the Old South Church a series of talks to children on New England history, between eleven and twelve o'clock on Saturdays, which she called, "The Children's Hour." From the relics on the floor and in the gallery, telling of Colonial times, she riveted their attention, thus showing to the historical societies of this country how easily they might interest and profit the children of our public schools, if these СКАЧАТЬ