MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN BULLETIN 117 
—and ‘‘his word’’ was ever ‘‘as good as his bond.’’ He 
was a merchant of the old school, and his ideas of business 
honesty and honor belonged to the past rather than to the 
present; nor did he ever, under any circumstances, change 
them in practice to suit present conditions. 
Mr. Shaw knew the value of money, as all men do who 
have labored for it as he did; but he did not, as many men 
do, love money for its own sake—for the power it gives or the 
luxuries it buys. He had none of that feverish greed of gold 
of which we see and feel so much. He retired from active 
business when in the very prime of life, content with what 
now looks like the quite moderate fortune of $250,000. 
There is every reason to believe that, with his exceptional 
qualifications for success in this department, he might easily 
have increased the $250,000 to $2,500,000 long before he 
had reached the age of sixty. He retired, not because he 
was afraid of losing what he had made, or thought he could 
not make any more; but because he felt he had 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 extravagantly, and with 
not the slightest attempt at ostentation. Up to the very last 
years of his life he drove himself the one-horse barouche 
which was his sole equipage, and not until friends warned 
him of the dangers incident to growing infirmity did he 
indulge in a carriage and coachman. 
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- 
eally 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 bestowing 
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 
