dollars.  To each of the captains who had made two voyages in his service, and who should bring his ship safely into port, he gave fifteen hundred dollars; and to each of his apprentices, five hundred.  To his old servants, he left annuities of three hundred and five hundred dollars each.  A portion of his valuable estates in Louisiana he bequeathed to the corporation of New Orleans, for the improvement of that city.  Half a million he left for certain improvements in the city of Philadelphia; and to Pennsylvania, three hundred thousand dollars for her canals.  The whole of the residue of his property, worth then about six millions of dollars, he devoted to the construction and endowment of a College for Orphans.

Accustomed all his life to give minute directions to those whom he selected to execute his designs, he followed the same system in that part of his will which related to the College.  The whole will was written out three times, and some parts of it more than three.  He strove most earnestly, and so did Mr. Duane, to make every paragraph so clear that no one could misunderstand it.  No candid person, sincerely desirous to understand his intentions, has ever found it difficult to do so.  He directed that the buildings should be constructed of the most durable materials, “avoiding useless ornament, attending chiefly to the strength, convenience, and neatness of the whole.” That, at least, is plain.  He then proceeded to direct precisely what materials should be used, and how they should be used; prescribing the number of buildings, their size, the number and size of the apartments in each, the thickness of each wall, giving every detail of construction, as he would have given it to a builder.  He then gave briefer directions as to the management of the institution.  The orphans were to be plainly but wholesomely fed, clothed, and lodged; instructed in the English branches, in geometry, natural philosophy, the French and Spanish languages, and whatever else might be deemed suitable and beneficial to them.  “I would have them,” says the will, “taught facts and things, rather than words or signs.”  At the conclusion of the course, the pupils were to be apprenticed to “suitable occupations, as those of agriculture, navigation, arts, mechanical trades, and manufactures.”

The most remarkable passage of the will is the following.  The Italics are those of the original document.

“I enjoin and require that no ecclesiastic, missionary, or minister of any sect whatsoever, shall ever hold or exercise any station or duty whatever in the said College; nor shall any such person ever be admitted for any purpose, or as a visitor, within the premises appropriated to the purposes of the said College.  In making this restriction, I do not mean to cast any reflection upon any sect or person whatsoever; but as there is such a multitude of sects, and such a diversity of opinion amongst them, I desire to keep the tender minds of the orphans, who