18 MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN. 



enough, and intended to enjoy it. He always owned his 

 money; his money never owned him. His tastes and 

 habits were simple and sensible; he lived well but not ex- 

 travagantly, and with not the slightest attempt at ostenta- 

 tion. Up to the very last years of his life he drove himself 

 the one-horse barouche which was his solo equipage, and 

 not until friends warned him of the dangers incident to 

 growing infirmity did he indulge in a carriage and coach- 

 man. 



Mr. Shaw was not generous, in the ordinary acceptation 

 of the word; that is, he did not respond to many of the in- 

 numerable appeals made to his benevolence, and had no 

 hesitation in declining. In this, as in other things, he knew 

 how to say " No " — and said it very often. He was not 

 uncharitable, but the object of charity had to be unequivo- 

 cally deserving to obtain assistance from him. He chose 



and certainly had the right of choice — to be generous in 

 the large rather than in the small. He reserved his con- 

 tributions for the benefit of the many, instead of bestowino- 

 them upon the few ; for the many not merely of his own 

 day, but of all the days to come. From the moment he re- 

 solved to make this Garden and this Park for public uses 

 forever, they became the central purpose and motive power 

 of his life. They were wife and children to him. For 

 them he watched and worked, and to them and their present 

 and future interests he consecrated all the energies of body 

 and mind until he could watch and work no more. The 

 Garden and the Park could not be what they are now, could 

 not be what they surely will be hereafter, if the man who 

 planned and perpetuated them had scattered his compara- 

 tively limited means among the multitude of applicants. 

 He refused to be generous to some so that he might be more 

 than generous to all. 



The following anecdote may be related here : Some years 

 ago Mr. Shaw was escorting a lady visitor through the Gar- 

 den, and pointing out to her the various rare plants and 

 flowers he knew so well and watched so fondly. She said 



