McKenn.] 010 [March 15, 



listen to the Sages of the Society, and, after referring to the 

 Bubject assigned him as being far too large for the ten- 

 niinute rule sagaciously adopted by the Committee, contin- 

 ued as follows: 



Mr. President and Gentlemen: — With your permission, 

 I will change the subject. When I found that I was ac- 

 tually booked to speak, I gave very close attention to what 

 was being said, in the expectation that some one of the 

 speakers, by a chance word, would furnish me with a theme. 

 President Oilman supplied the topic in his mention of the 

 name of Benjamin Thompson, more widely known as Count 

 Rumford, the American founder of the Royal Institution of 

 England. A great deal has come to the world from that 

 institution, though Count Rumford had not much money 

 of his own to conduct it with, and did not succeed in ob- 

 taining much from others, but it is worth while to consider 

 what the world has gained by the simple endowment of a 

 chair for original research in that institution as compared 

 with the outcome from institutions with princely endow- 

 ments in this and other countries, where the money has 

 been largely expended in stately architectural structures. 



Let me illustrate. It happened once to me to make a visit 

 to a neighboring city (I won't say what city) with a very 

 dear friend of mine, who had endowed a university. Not 

 far from our hotel on that occasion, was an institution that 

 had also been endowed very largely by an eminent Ameri- 

 can. If I mistake not the amount of money that was put 

 into the building and its equipment was about half a million 

 of dollars. I went into it with the son of the gentleman 

 whom I speak of, and found there a library, rather choice, 

 but not very large. But in looking around its shelves I 

 saw but few books that were not upon the shelves of other 



