y he
had. To Washington and Lee University, also in Lexington, he gave
$20,000 besides the library purchased from the widow of Nathaniel
Howard, thus, it helped in the getting as well as in the giving.

His portrait hangs in the little chapel in Lexington where lies the body
of his friend, Robert Edward Lee. To the University of Virginia he gave
$100,000 which endowed two chairs, also giving $5,000 to resuscitate the
library which had suffered during the war and the period following, from
being unable to procure any new books.

He was one of the first people to subscribe to the fund being raised by
certain ladies to purchase Mount Vernon, after the Washington family
found themselves unable to keep it up and offered it to the United
States Government, which refused to buy and preserve it.

The Episcopal Church of the Ascension on the corner of 12th Street and
Massachusetts Avenue was built almost entirely with his money. William
Pinckney, its rector when it was begun, was very devoted to Mr.
Corcoran. He afterwards became Bishop of Maryland. It worried him
exceedingly that Mr. Corcoran had never become a confirmed member and
communicant of the church. Many are the long and eloquent letters he
wrote to him on the subject. Finally, in his old age, the old gentleman
did come forward and be confirmed. The friendship between these two
seems to have been very sweet. The Bishop was a simple soul, a great
lover of flowers and birds. He was always sending gifts of grapes to his
wealthy friend, from Bladensburg. He now rests not far from his friend
in Oak Hill. The inscription on his stone, which is surmounted by his
statue reads thus:

WILLIAM PINCKNEY, D. D., L L. D.

APRIL 17, 1820
JULY 4, 1883

Guileless and fearless.

All through his life Mr. Corcoran was a very sociable person. He always
loved to play whist and in the last years of his life his nephews and
nieces and great-nephews and great-nieces used to go often to play with
him and pass the long evenings. A friend of mine remembers being taken
as a little girl, with her grandmother, to call on him. She was
fascinated by the room where he sat, which had medallions of children's
heads, set at intervals into the paneling of the walls. She said he told
her they were his grandchildren. She loved looking at them and was
distressed when told to go out in the garden to play.

That garden to the house where he lived for many years and where he
died, stoo