mattresses, it makes me think of
the hearty response of our modern philanthropist in time of trouble and
disaster, whether individual, municipal, or national. The snow of his
white locks has melted from our sight, and the benediction of his genial
face has come to its long amen. But his influence halted not a
half-second for his obsequies to finish, but goes right on without
change, save that of augmentation, for in the great sum of a useful life
death is a multiplication instead of subtraction, and the tombstone,
instead of being the goal of the race, is only the starting point. What
means this rising up of all good men, with hats off, in reverence to one
who never wielded a sword or delivered masterly oration or stood in
senatorial place? Neither general, nor lord, nor governor, nor
President. The LL. D., which a university bestowed, did not stick to
him. The word mister, as a prefix, or the word esquire, as a suffix,
seemed a superfluity. He was, in all Christendom, plain Peter Cooper.
Why, then, all the flags at half-mast, and the resolutions of common
council, and the eulogium of legislatures, and the deep sighs from
multitudes who have no adequate way to express their bereavement?

First, he was in some respects the father of American philanthropies.
There have been far larger sums donated to the public since this man
founded Cooper Institute, but I think that hundreds of the charities
were born of his example. Sometimes a father will have a large family of
children who grow up to be larger than himself. When that six-storied
temple of instruction was built on Fourth Avenue and Seventh Street by
Mr. Cooper, at an expense of $630,000, and endowed by him with $150,000,
you must remember $100,000 was worth as much as $500,000 now, and that
millionaires, who are so common now that you hardly stop to look at
them, were a rare spectacle. Stephen Girard and John Jacob Astor, of the
olden time, would in our day almost excite the sympathy of some of our
railroad magnates. The nearly $800,000, which built and endowed Cooper
Institute, was as much as $3,000,000 or $5,000,000 now. But there are
institutions in our day that have cost many times more dollars in
building and endowment which have not accomplished more than a fraction
of the good done by this munificence of 1857. This gift brooded
charities all over the land. This mothered educational institutions.
This gave glorious suggestion to many whose large fortune was hithe