I could not get the thought of this out of my mind.  My dear, dear friend, Mr. Richard Watson Gilder, had sent me the following true and beautiful poem, and I re-read it the morning after the accident, and resolved then to establish the Hero Fund.

    IN THE TIME OF PEACE

    ’Twas said:  “When roll of drum and battle’s roar
    Shall cease upon the earth, O, then no more

    The deed—­the race—­of heroes in the land.” 
    But scarce that word was breathed when one small hand

    Lifted victorious o’er a giant wrong
    That had its victims crushed through ages long;

    Some woman set her pale and quivering face
    Firm as a rock against a man’s disgrace;

    A little child suffered in silence lest
    His savage pain should wound a mother’s breast;

    Some quiet scholar flung his gauntlet down
    And risked, in Truth’s great name, the synod’s frown;

    A civic hero, in the calm realm of laws,
    Did that which suddenly drew a world’s applause;

    And one to the pest his lithe young body gave
    That he a thousand thousand lives might save.

Hence arose the five-million-dollar fund to reward heroes, or to support the families of heroes, who perish in the effort to serve or save their fellows, and to supplement what employers or others do in contributing to the support of the families of those left destitute through accidents.  This fund, established April 15, 1904, has proved from every point of view a decided success.  I cherish a fatherly regard for it since no one suggested it to me.  As far as I know, it never had been thought of; hence it is emphatically “my ain bairn.”  Later I extended it to my native land, Great Britain, with headquarters at Dunfermline—­the Trustees of the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust undertaking its administration, and splendidly have they succeeded.  In due time it was extended to France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and Denmark.

Regarding its workings in Germany, I received a letter from David Jayne Hill, our American Ambassador at Berlin, from which I quote: 

My main object in writing now is to tell you how pleased His Majesty is with the working of the German Hero Fund.  He is enthusiastic about it and spoke in most complimentary terms of your discernment, as well as your generosity in founding it.  He did not believe it would fill so important a place as it is doing.  He told me of several cases that are really touching, and which would otherwise have been wholly unprovided for.  One was that of a young man who saved a boy from drowning and just as they were about to lift him out of the water, after passing up the child into a boat, his heart failed, and he sank.  He left a lovely young wife and a little boy.  She has already been helped by the Hero Fund to establish a little business from which she can make a living,