hout
one?--the gift being conditioned upon its proper maintenance by the
community in its corporate capacity. If hospital accommodation already
exists, no better method for using surplus wealth can be found than in
making additions to it. The late Mr. Vanderbilt's gift of half a million
of dollars to the medical department of Columbia College for a chemical
laboratory was one of the wisest possible uses of wealth. It strikes at
the prevention of disease by penetrating into its causes. Several others
have established such laboratories, but the need for them is still
great.

If there be a millionaire in the land who is at a loss what to do with
the surplus that has been committed to him as trustee, let him
investigate the good that is flowing from these chemical laboratories.
No medical college is complete without its laboratory. As with
universities, so with medical colleges; it is not new institutions that
are required, but additional means for the more thorough equipment of
those that exist. The forms that benefactions to these may wisely take
are numerous, but probably none is more useful than that adopted by Mr.
Osborne when he built a school for training female nurses at Bellevue
College. If from all gifts there flows one-half of the good that comes
from this wise use of a millionaire's surplus, the most exacting may
well be satisfied. Only those who have passed through a lingering and
dangerous illness can rate at their true value the care, skill, and
attendance of trained female nurses. Their employment as nurses has
enlarged the sphere and influence of woman. It is not to be wondered at
that a Senator of the United States and a physician distinguished in
this country for having received the highest distinctions abroad should
find their wives from this class.

_Fourth_--In the very front rank of benefactions public parks should be
placed, always provided that the community undertakes to maintain,
beautify, and preserve inviolate the parks given to it. No more useful
or more beautiful monument can be left by any man than a park for the
city in which he was born or in which he has long lived, nor can the
community pay a more graceful tribute to the citizen who presents it
than to give his name to the gift. If a park be already provided, there
is still room for many judicious gifts in connection with it. Mr.
Phipps, of Allegheny, has given conservatories to the park there, which
are visited by many every day of the