The Hero Fund will prove chiefly a pension fund.  Already it has many pensioners, heroes or the widows or children of heroes.  A strange misconception arose at first about it.  Many thought that its purpose was to stimulate heroic action, that heroes were to be induced to play their parts for the sake of reward.  This never entered my mind.  It is absurd.  True heroes think not of reward.  They are inspired and think only of their fellows endangered; never of themselves.  The fund is intended to pension or provide in the most suitable manner for the hero should he be disabled, or for those dependent upon him should he perish in his attempt to save others.  It has made a fine start and will grow in popularity year after year as its aims and services are better understood.  To-day we have in America 1430 hero pensioners or their families on our list.

I found the president for the Hero Fund in a Carnegie veteran, one of the original boys, Charlie Taylor.  No salary for Charlie—­not a cent would he ever take.  He loves the work so much that I believe he would pay highly for permission to live with it.  He is the right man in the right place.  He has charge also, with Mr. Wilmot’s able assistance, of the pensions for Carnegie workmen (Carnegie Relief Fund[47]); also the pensions for railway employees of my old division.  Three relief funds and all of them benefiting others.

[Footnote 47:  This fund is now managed separately.]

I got my revenge one day upon Charlie, who was always urging me to do for others.  He is a graduate of Lehigh University and one of her most loyal sons.  Lehigh wished a building and Charlie was her chief advocate.  I said nothing, but wrote President Drinker offering the funds for the building conditioned upon my naming it.  He agreed, and I called it “Taylor Hall.”  When Charlie discovered this, he came and protested that it would make him ridiculous, that he had only been a modest graduate, and was not entitled to have his name publicly honored, and so on.  I enjoyed his plight immensely, waiting until he had finished, and then said that it would probably make him somewhat ridiculous if I insisted upon “Taylor Hall,” but he ought to be willing to sacrifice himself somewhat for Lehigh.  If he wasn’t consumed with vanity he would not care much how his name was used if it helped his Alma Mater.  Taylor was not much of a name anyhow.  It was his insufferable vanity that made such a fuss.  He should conquer it.  He could make his decision.  He could sacrifice the name of Taylor or sacrifice Lehigh, just as he liked, but:  “No Taylor, no Hall.”  I had him!  Visitors who may look upon that structure in after days and wonder who Taylor was may rest assured that he was a loyal son of Lehigh, a working, not merely a preaching, apostle of the gospel of service to his fellow-men, and one of the best men that ever lived.  Such is our Lord High Commissioner of Pensions.

CHAPTER XX