This sank into
my heart, and I resolved to begin at once my first web. True enough,
the gods sent thread in the proper form. Dr. J.S. Billings, of the New
York Public Libraries, came as their agent, and of dollars, five and a
quarter millions went at one stroke for sixty-eight branch libraries,
promised for New York City. Twenty more libraries for Brooklyn
followed.

My father, as I have stated, had been one of the five pioneers in
Dunfermline who combined and gave access to their few books to their
less fortunate neighbors. I had followed in his footsteps by giving my
native town a library--its foundation stone laid by my mother--so that
this public library was really my first gift. It was followed by
giving a public library and hall to Allegheny City--our first home in
America. President Harrison kindly accompanied me from Washington and
opened these buildings. Soon after this, Pittsburgh asked for a
library, which was given. This developed, in due course, into a group
of buildings embracing a museum, a picture gallery, technical schools,
and the Margaret Morrison School for Young Women. This group of
buildings I opened to the public November 5, 1895. In Pittsburgh I had
made my fortune and in the twenty-four millions already spent on this
group,[46] she gets back only a small part of what she gave, and to
which she is richly entitled.

[Footnote 46: The total gifts to the Carnegie Institute at Pittsburgh
amounted to about twenty-eight million dollars.]

The second large gift was to found the Carnegie Institution of
Washington. The 28th of January, 1902, I gave ten million dollars in
five per cent bonds, to which there has been added sufficient to make
the total cash value twenty-five millions of dollars, the additions
being made upon record of results obtained. I naturally wished to
consult President Roosevelt upon the matter, and if possible to induce
the Secretary of State, Mr. John Hay, to serve as chairman, which he
readily agreed to do. With him were associated as directors my old
friend Abram S. Hewitt, Dr. Billings, William E. Dodge, Elihu Root,
Colonel Higginson, D.O. Mills, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, and others.

When I showed President Roosevelt the list of the distinguished men
who had agreed to serve, he remarked: "You could not duplicate it." He
strongly favored the foundation, which was incorporated by an act of
Congress April 28, 1904, as follows:

To encourage in the broadest and most liberal m