ed
illustrations in this model and typical New England village; and no
small share of what has been achieved for it is due to the warm heart
and open hand of Oliver Ames. He has ever shown himself an ardent friend
of popular education, and justly holds that the New England common
school lies at its foundation. For a period of twenty years he found
time, amid a multiplicity of weighty business cares, to serve upon the
School Committee of his town and to give the benefit of his experience,
judgment, and personal supervision to the promotion of the efficiency of
this one of the very fundamental of American institutions, the common
school. Oakes Ames left a fund of $50,000, the income to be used for the
benefit of the school children of North Easton village. Through the wise
thoughtfulness of Oliver Ames many of the privileges arising from this
fund have been extended to the other sections of the town; and it hardly
need be said that the schools of Easton are among the objects of the
fondest pride of its citizens.

Mr. Ames, though absorbed in the cares pertaining to the management of
gigantic business interests, yet finds time for the appreciative
enjoyment of the amenities and refinements of life. He posesses a
cultivated appreciation of music, literature and the drama, and his
artistic taste is evinced by his valuable and choice collections of
paintings and statuary. Architecture has been with him a special study,
and his magnificent winter residence, recently completed on Commonwealth
Avenue, in our city of Boston, is a monument of his own architectural
taste. In Europe this residence would be called a palace, here it is
simply the home of a representative American citizen. Peculiarly happy
in his domestic relations his home is beautified and ennobled by the
virtues of domestic life. A generous hospitality is dispensed within its
portals, where on every hand are found the evidences of the cultured
refinement of its occupants. A tour of a few months in the Old World not
only gave Mr. Ames needed rest and relaxation from business cares, but
also furnished him with opportunities for observation which were most
judiciously improved. In his religious belief he is a Unitarian, and has
for many years been an active member of the Unitarian Society of North
Easton.

In his native town he is unusually respected and beloved, and with the
working-men in his factories he enjoys an unbounded popularity. This is
but natural, since h