rto
under the iron grasp of selfishness. If the ancestral line of many an
asylum or infirmary or college or university were traced back far
enough, you would learn that Peter Cooper was the illustrious
progenitor. Who can estimate the effect of such an institution, standing
for twenty-six years, saying to all the millions of people passing up
and down the great thoroughfares: "I am here to bless and educate,
without money and without price, all the struggling ones who come under
my wings?" That institution has for twenty-six years been crying shame
on miserliness and cupidity. That free reading-room has been the
inspiration of five hundred free reading-rooms. Great reservoir of
American beneficence!

Again, Peter Cooper showed what a wise thing it is for a man to be his
own executor. How much better is ante-mortem charity than post-mortem
beneficence. Many people keep all their property for themselves till
death, and then make good institutions their legatees. They give up the
money only because they have to. They would take it all with them if
they only had three or four stout pockets in their shroud. Better late
than never, but the reward shall not be as great as the reward of those
who make charitable contribution while yet they have power to keep their
money. Charity, in last will and testament, seems sometimes to be only
an attempt to bribe Charon, the ferryman, to land the boat in celestial
rather than infernal regions. Mean as sin when they disembark from the
banks of this world, they hope to be greeted as benefactors when they
come up the beach on the other side. Skinflints when they die, they hope
to have the reception of a George Peabody. Besides that, how often
donations by will and testament fail of their final destination. The
surrogate's courts are filled with legal quarrels. If a philanthropist
has any pride of intellect, and desires to help Christian institutions,
he had better bestow the gift before death, for the trouble is, if he
leaves any large amount to Christian institutions, the courts will be
appealed to to prove he was crazy. They will bring witnesses to prove
that for a long time he has been becoming imbecile, and as almost every
one of positive nature has idiosyncrasies, these idiosyncrasies will be
brought out on the trial, and ventilated and enlarged and caricatured,
and the man who had mind enough to make $1,000,000, and heart enough to
remember needy institutions, will be proved a fool. I