asylums, and endows libraries—­and sends broad streams of charity through places parched by destitution and suffering.  Others are like pools at the base of a hill—­they receive the inflow of every descending streamlet or shower, and stagnate into selfishness.  Wealth is a tremendous trust; it becomes a dangerous one when it owns its owner.  Our Brooklyn philanthropist, the late Mr. Charles Pratt, once said to me:  “There is no greater humbug than the idea that the mere possession of wealth makes any man happy.  I never got any happiness out of mine until I began to do good with it.”

To the faithful steward there is a perpetual reward of good stewardship.  No investments yield a more covetable dividend than those made in gifts of public beneficence.  When Mr. Morris K. Jesup drives through New York his eyes are gladdened in one street by the “Dewitt Memorial Chapel” that he erected; in another by the Five Points House of Industry, of which he is the president, and in still others by the Young Men’s Christian Association and kindred institutions, of which he is a liberal supporter.

Mr. John D. Rockefeller is reputed to have an annual income equal to that of three or four foreign sovereigns; but his inalienable assets are in the universities he has endowed, the churches he has helped to build, the useful societies he has aided, and in the gold mines of public gratitude which he has opened up.

Many of our most munificent millionaires have been the architects of their own fortunes.  It is most commonly (with some happy exceptions) the earned wealth, and not the inherited wealth that is bestowed most freely for the public benefit.  The Hon. William E. Dodge once stated in a popular lecture that he began his career as a boy on a salary of fifty dollars a year, and his board—­part of his duty being to sweep out the store in which he was employed.  He lived to distribute a thousand dollars a day to Christian missions, and otherwise objects of benevolence.

There are old men in Pittsburg (or were, not long ago), who remember the bright Scotch lad, Andrew Carnegie, to whom they used to give a dime for bringing telegraph messages from the office in which he was employed.  The benefits which he then derived from the use of a free library in that city, have added to his good impulse, to create such a vast number of libraries in many lands that his honored name throws into the shade the names of Bodley and Radcliffe in England, and that of Astor in America.  The mention of this latter name tempts me to narrate an amusing story of old John Jacob Astor, the founder of the fortune of that family, and a man who was more noted for acquiring money than for giving it away for any purpose.  Mr. Astor came to New York a poor young man.  His wealth consisted mainly in real estate, which he purchased at an early day.  When the New York and Erie Railroad was projected (it was the first one ever coming directly into New York), my friend,