money (which
often is done to very little purpose) but he devoted his time and
thoughts very much to the same object; doing good was the great
business of his life, and may more properly be said to have been his
occupation, than even his mercantile engagements, which were uniformly
considered as subservient to that nobler design.

"To form and execute plans of usefulness; to superintend, arrange, and
improve upon those plans; to lay aside such as did not answer, and to
substitute others; to form acquaintance, and collect intelligence for
this purpose; to select proper agents, and to carry on correspondence,
in order to ascertain that his bounties were well applied: These and
similar concerns were the hourly occupations of his life, and the ends
of living, which he proposed to himself; nor did he think that any
part of his time was spent either happily or innocently, if it were
not some way instrumental, directly or indirectly, to the furtherance
of useful designs."

"Abiel Chandler was a native of Concord, N. H. In his childhood his
parents removed to Fryeburg, Maine, where he labored on a farm till he
was twenty-one years of age. He was graduated at Harvard College in
1806, and spent the next eleven years in teaching at Salem and
Newburyport, Mass. To the good reputation which he had previously
gained as a student, he added that of an excellent preceptor. A
little later he commenced a mercantile life at Boston. He was of the
house of Chandler and Howard, and afterwards Chandler, Howard, and
Company, for more than a quarter of a century, when he retired with a
fortune. To numerous relatives he made liberal bequests, with great
delicacy and judgment. After his legacy to the college, the residue of
his property was bequeathed to the New Hampshire Asylum for the
Insane.

"The origin of Mr. Chandler's endowment of the Scientific School is
referable to an incident that occurred to him when a young man at
Fryeburg. He fell in company with some students of Dartmouth College,
and he was impressed by their superiority to himself. He conceived the
purpose of being himself a scholar, and he fulfilled it. When, after a
few years of honorable industry as a teacher he became a merchant, he
saw himself, though now a scholar, ignorant, to a great extent, of the
principles and methods of mercantile life. Whereupon he set himself to
a new variety of learning. He gained it, and with it gained a fortune.
But he saw other men around hi