is shadow, the boy soon developed unusual qualities,
graduated from Oxford, with high honors in chemistry and mineralogy, and
added greatly to his reputation by a series of scientific papers of
great importance. A large portion of his life was passed in Europe,
where he associated with the greatest scientists of the day, honored by
all of them. He died at Genoa at the age of sixty-four, and, when his
will was opened, it was seen how the circumstances of his birth had
weighed upon him. For, "in order that his name might live in the memory
of man when the titles of the Northumberlands are extinct and
forgotten," he bequeathed his whole fortune "to the United States of
America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian
Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of
knowledge among men." After a suit in chancery, the bequest was paid
over to the United States government, amounting to over half a million
dollars. In 1846, the Smithsonian Institution was formally established,
its first secretary being Joseph Henry, of whose great work there we
have already spoken. It has increased in scope and usefulness year by
year, and stands to-day without a counterpart in any country.

Peter Cooper also left a portion of his wealth for "the diffusion of
knowledge among men," but a different sort of knowledge--the knowledge
that would help a man or woman to earn a living. His own career had
shown him how necessary such knowledge is. His father was a hatter by
trade, and the boy's earliest recollection was of his being employed to
pull hair out of rabbit-skins, his head just reaching above the table.
But the hat business was unprofitable, and the elder Cooper tried a
number of businesses, brewing, brick-making, what not, the boy being
required to take part in each of them, so that he had no time for
schooling, and had to pick up such odds and ends of knowledge as he
could. Finally, in 1808, at the age of seventeen, he was apprenticed to
a carriage-maker, and remained with him until he was of age.

After that, the young man himself tried various occupations without
great success, until the establishment of a glue factory began to bring
him large returns. By the beginning of 1828, he was able to purchase
three thousand acres of land within the city of Baltimore and to
establish the Canton iron-works, which was the first of his great
enterprises tending toward the development of the iron industry in the
Unite