stated in a sketch of her, in a late issue of the Puritan Magazine, she accepts her great wealth not alone for her own benefit but as a trust to be used in deeds of charity.

One can scarcely realize [says the writer] this soft-voiced, gentle Southern woman giving herself up to the management of her vast estate-running an office in San Francisco, visiting ranches, going down into mines in Montana, inspecting and understanding all the details, and by her personal supervision and thorough method lifting it out of a state of great indebtedness; and yet, with all this, finding time to visit the Phoebe Hearst Kindergarten, of San Francisco, and for the establishment of still another, together with a free library in Anaconda, Mont. Her home in Washington, where she usually spends the winter, reveals another side of this busy woman. has given the city three kindergartens, two for white children and one for colored. Believing that girls and women who are to be self-reliant should be thorough in whatever they undertake, Mrs. Hearst has made her ideas practical by a large donation for the erection and equipment of a girl's school.

DONATIONS AND POSTHUMOUS ENDOWMENTS.

She

The propriety of donations being put into operation while the donors are living rather than leave them to post-mortem execution is strongly presented in the following editorial article in the St. Louis GlobeDemocrat:

In his last will and testament Benjamin Franklin bequeathed to the cities of Boston and Philadelphia £1,000 each, to be invested for a period of a hundred years, and then to be used in helping deserving young men to start in business. He calculated that the reinvestment of the income from these sums would swell them in a century to over $1,000,000, thus providing a fund that would be a source of practical advantage to a large number of persons having good claims to such assistance. It was a scheme that did honor to the great philosopher and statesman, who had himself experienced the difficulty from which he thus sought to save others. But it has not turned out as he expected. At the end of the appointed time the fund amounts to only one-half as much as he anticipated, and now his descendants claim the money on the ground that the terms of the will have not been strictly complied with and the gifts are therefore void. The matter has already been presented to the proper courts, and a long course of litigation will follow. Several intricate and important questions are involved in the case. The will is written in plain terms, but the intervening century has affected its provisions to a considerable extent, and its validity becomes a question to be determined under conditions and according to tests of which Franklin took no account. Very likely the final result will be the defeat of the testator's object, and the money will go to those for whom it was never intended.

This only adds another to the long list of such miscarriages of benevolence. It is the rule rather than the exception that bequests made for philanthropic purposes, to take effect at some future time, are contested and declared void on some technical plea. The most skillful lawyer, it seems, can not frame a will so well that the courts shall be bound to respect and enforce it. Even Samuel J. Tilden was unable to do so in the case of his own property, and there are other instances in plenty to prove that there is always a vulnerable point in such documents. The lesson that these contests teach is one that men of wealth who have philanthropic impulses should carefully study. It is to the effect that gifts should be made while the giver is alive to see that they are properly applied. There is no reason why a man should withhold his benefactions until after his death. The intended good can just as well be done at an earlier date, thereby avoiding all danger of dispute or failure.

The following editorial from the San Antonio Express forcibly presents the same subject:

If the annulment of the will of Mr. Tilden, creating a trust fund and trustee administration for a great public library, is sustained by the court of appeals of New York, the public will be deprived of the benefits of a noble charity. The case teaches a lesson to those who lay up treasures on. earth under the impression that they are "laying up treasures in heaven" by founding a charity with funds which they can not take away with them. It would have been easy for Mr. Tilden, with his large fortune, to have founded such a library during his lifetime and to have put it into successful operation under proper management. Then he could have made bequests and the corporation have taken from others donations and bequests. Such an act would have been the fitting consummation of a life full of years and honor.

One of the longest and most costly litigations reported is that of Mr. John McDonogh, of New Orleans. He was reported to be a man of enormous wealth. He was abstemious, even penurious. He gave away nothing and formed no friendships. After his death it was ascertained by his will that during all of his years of self-denial and isolation from his fellow-men it had been the one purpose of his life to accumulate large wealth with which to establish schools for the education of children in Baltimore and New Orleans after his death. Much of the estate was frittered away in almost interminable law suits, under bad management. What was recovered by the public schools has dwindled away to a sum insignificant as compared with the original value of the bequest.

It would have been better for them and for posterity if Tilden and McDonogh could have had before them the examples of Mr. Vanderbilt, who endowed the Vanderbilt University at Nashville, and Mr. Tulane, who endowed the Tulane University at New Orleans. During their lives, while they were able to organize and direct, they laid the foundations of two permanent charities which will be lasting monuments to their philanthropy, and which they saw arise upon a sure basis with the approbation of men. Such monuments are more grandly commemorative than tombstones or epitaphs, or than the posthumous donations which represent the wealth that the owners gave only when they could not carry it away and left to all the chances of litigation.

CONTESTED TEXAS CASE.

As a Texas case in point, the Rice will contest may be cited. Mrs. Elizabeth Rice having bequeathed some $1,500,000 to relatives and friends and various institutions, including $250,000 for a home for indigent gentlewomen in the North, her husband, William M. Rice, estimated to be worth fully $3,000,000, including over 1,000,000 acres of Texas lands and thousands of lots in Texas cities and towns, contested his wife's will on the grounds that the property involved was his sole estate, alleging that she was without means except a few tracts of unimproved and unproductive lands of but little value, and that during his residence in New York he ceased to be a resident of Texas, but accumulated a large amount of property in the latter State, while his wife did not accumulate anything more than the land she had at her marriage. Thus not only is Mrs. Rice's bequest for the women's home brought into question, but it is possible that the William M. Rice Institute of Art, Literature, and Science, which Mr. Rice had

already founded at Houston, Tex., may be somehow incidentally involved in the litigation and fail of endowment should that particular property happen to be part of the estate of Mrs. Rice and her will be sustained. The contestant claims that, being a citizen of New York, the marital rights of himself and wife should be governed by the laws of the State in which they resided at the time the property was acquired, and not by the laws of Texas. It is not often that so much is involved in equity between man and wife, and the suit consequently promises to be one of the most remarkable on record in the history of the two States.

THE LESSONS OF VANDERBILT, TULANE, AND COOPER.

Commodore Vanderbilt's $1,000,000 endowment of the university at Nashville which bears his name and commemorates his memory more enduringly than marble, is an apt illustration of the wisdom of donations inter vivos in enabling the donors to direct, and, if necessary, to perfect by adding, as he did, to plans which otherwise might not be consummated.

The facts connected with Commodore Vanderbilt's action in the matter as presented in the university records are particularly suggestive. Attempts of the several conferences of the Southern Methodist Church to endow a university under the auspices of that denomination having failed, largely doubtless on account of the war, and the commodore having married a Southern lady, a cousin of the wife of Bishop McTyeire, became interested in the scheme of the church as divulged to him by the bishop, and of his own motion made the proposition for endowing the university to which the institution really owes its endowment. At first, on the 27th of March, 1873, the commodore made a donation of $500,000, to which he subsequently added several large sums, making $1,000,000, to carry out his purposes, as he said, and complete his plans. The church convention had previously met in 1872 at Memphis and decided to procure a charter of incorporation for an institution under the title of the "Central University of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South," to be "an institution of learning of the highest order and upon the surest basis, where the youth of the church and the country may prosecute theological studies to an extent as great and in a manner as thorough as their wants demand." The judgment of the convention was expressed by resolution, declaring that $1,000,000 was necessary to perfect their plans and realize fully their aims; and so important was it in their estimation to avoid an abortive effort that they refused to authorize steps toward the selection of a site and the opening of any department of the university until the public showed itself to be in sympathy with the movement by a valid subscription of $500,000. It was at the crisis of threatened

disappointment in their efforts that Commodore Vanderbilt, in his sympathy for the people in their failing enterprise, stepped forward, and by his princely gift gave form and substance to the plan, and the board of trust, as an expression of gratitude, decided to change the name of the projected institution to "Vanderbilt University.”

In the memorial exercises at the university Bishop McTycire alluded to the character of the great millionaire as follows:

Some of his charities were too large to be hid; the magnitude of the gift, not the vanity of the giver, disclosed them. He gave us half a million with more delicacy and quietness than often accompanies the falling of a dollar in the collection box. Of course, he was pleased at the grateful appreciation of his deed, but if any noise was made over it he did not make it. Nor by any condition on his part, or the the remotest suggestion from him, was his name conferred upon the university he founded. The manner of his giving, when completing our endowment, may be taken as a specimen. In June last I visited New York for a few days on some business connected with the university and to pay my respects to him in his affliction and to his family. On my taking leave to come home he remarked that it would likely be our last interview in this world. He had hoped, he said, to visit us here at the university, but that must be given up now. He sent his regards to the trustees and faculty and the students, wished that the institution might prosper and do good, and, still holding my hand, paused and asked, "Could you not put off leaving for one day?" I replied that no urgent matter required me to keep my appointment in leaving just then if his wish were otherwise. "My purpose," he said, "has been to add $300,000, making out the million. I have perfect confidence in my son. I know he will carry out my wishes, but there is no telling what may happen from outside to delay and hinder; so you had better take it along with you. If you will defer your trip till to-morrow, we can have the papers fixed." That was the only time the subject of money was mentioned during a visit of days.

His son William H. bequeathed $200,000 to the university and had given it besides about $300,000; and the grandsons, Cornelius, William K., and Frederick Vanderbilt, have all made sundry donations, aggregrating several hundred thousand dollars in value.

In a recent address to the students of the university Hon. C. M. Depew very interestingly and, as a lesson in patriotism as well as liberality, instructively described the manner and occasion and remarkable results of Commodore Vanderbilt's important gift of one of his splendid ships to the General Government. Though not directly relative to the general subject of the chapter, no excuse is needed for appending the speaker's statement of so critical an incident in the history of the country. Indeed, the recital is not inappropriate here, in connection with what has already been said of the commodore's characteristic acts, and as an exhibition of the value of well-directed energies and liberality for any great purpose-whether in direct aid. of the Government or to such objects of government and aids to good citizenship as State universities. Mr. Depew said:

The Merrimac and the Monitor revolutionized naval architecture. When this first ironclad, sailing into Hampton Roads, crushed and sunk the Federal frigates, one after another, there was a panic in New York. A company of merchants, bankers,

and capitalists from New York appeared the next morning at the White House and were at once given audience by the President. "Within a week," said their spokesman, "the Confederate ram will be in our harbor and burn or levy tribute upon our city. We have taken the bonds of the Government and done everything in our power to aid in its defense. We represent in the men here present $300,000,000, and demand, as we think we have the right to, the fullest protection against this peril." Mr. Lincoln hesitated a moment, and then said, with a shug of his awkward shoulders, "We have no funds in the Treasury, not much credit, and no war ship that I know of now which can stand against the Merrimac, but if I had as much money as you possess and was as 'skeered' as you seem to be, I would go back home and find means of taking care of my property." There was one rich man, whose fortune was peculiarly in danger, who did not go to Washington nor appeal for help. He owned the largest and fastest ship on the ocean. He braced her bows with great timbers and then gave her to the Government on condition that she should be hurled at full speed against the Merrimac. It was a novel application of the ram in naval battle in modern warfare, and the result would have been the destruction of both vessels. The arrival of the Monitor and her signal victory prevented this drastic experiment. The commodore confirmed his gift of the Vanderbilt to the nation, which greatly needed her, and a grateful Congress voted him the thanks of the country and a commemorative medal for his patriotism.

In the case of the Tulane and Vanderbilt endowments, of which the writer is more especially advised, their history is particularly instructive and interesting on account of peculiar similarity in their conception and the business-like terms in which they are expressed. The donors were both Northern men with special reasons for gentle consideration of the Southern people-the Commodore, the leading financier of the great Northern metropolis, being at the head of the railroad system of America and the largest shipowner in the world, having visited with his ships the Southern ports and married a prominent Southern lady, and Mr. Tulane having for many years conducted a very extensive and successful mercantile business in New Orleans, where he acquired a large share of his great wealth. Their grand douceurs came through distinguished channels-Bishop H. N. McTyeire, of the Southern Methodist Church, and Gen. Randall L. Gibson, United States Senator from Louisiana. Both gave largely at firstVanderbilt $500,000, and Tulane property in New Orleans valued at $363,000-and both added freely to their grants as additional needs required, till they aggregated each $1,000,000. Both of them lived to direct their plans and realize the fruition of their purposes. Vanderbilt, according to statements of Bishop McTyeire, contemplated and consulted with him as to a like benefit for female education in an institution to be located on Staten Island, New York; and Tulane, as President Johnston, of Tulane University, states, was "quite willing that whenever his fund could be made available without detriment to its main purposes, women might share in its benefits." He stated to Colonel Johnston that from the close of the war, in 1865, to the time of endowing Tulane University, in 1882, his gifts for the education of young men and women averaged $15,000 per annum. Vanderbilt's