KS80.] di.J |McKean. 



libraries in the same city. There were five persons in the 

 library at the time looking at the books. We passed out of 

 that and went into the basement, and there we found an 

 orchestra playing some very fine scientific music, and in 

 front was an audience hardly more numerous than the 

 orchestra itself. There were perhaps forty persons there, 

 mainly ladies, and from their appearance belonging to 

 wealthy families living in the neighborhood of that build- 

 ing, every one of whom could have paid for that sort of 

 luxury. There was the result of an endowment of half a 

 million of dollars ! A stated and expensive building — a 

 library that was not better than other libraries in that town, 

 and an orchestra playing scientific music to people every 

 one of whom could pay for it themselves and for their 

 families! Certainly that was a very meagre result for that 

 much money. 



Well, gentlemen, similar results may be seen in other 

 parts of this country. There are a great many magnificent 

 structures put up from these grand endowments. The first 

 thing the trustees appear to have in their minds is to em- 

 ploy an architect to put up a monumental structure which 

 drains the fund nearly to the bottom, and after that comes 

 what? Poverty. Poverty in the administration, nil as to 

 the results in the way of promoting and diffusing useful 

 knowledge among men. I won't go over them, you know 

 where these buildings are and what the results are. 



Let me now return to President Gilman's mention of 

 Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford), a Massachusetts man, 

 who left this country about the beginning of the Revolution 

 because his neighbors disputed his loyalty. He was a man of 

 the Franklin type— an inquiring man, an investigating man. 

 Nothing passed before him that he did- not want to know 



