ee 
16 Life and Character of Nathaniel Bowditch. 
accepting the office he removed to Boston, at the age of fi 
and there spent the last fifteen years of his life. On his leavi 
Salem, a public dinner was given him by his fellow citizens 
a testimony of their respect. No man ever left that place m 
regretted. 
It scarcely aide to te stated at he discharged the duties of : 
his high trust with the greatest fidelity and skill, and. to the em-— ; 
tire satisfaction of the Company. The capital was five hundred 
thousand dollars. But, at his suggestion, the Company applied — 
to the Legislature for additional power to hold in. trust and loan — 
out the property of individuals. This power was granted; and . 
upwards of five millions of dollars, nine tenths of which belong — 
to females and orphans, have been thus received and invested. 
The institution has, in this way, been of incalculable service, it 
being in fact nothing more nor less than a Savings Bank on @_ 
large scale. ‘ Providence’”—I use his own language, in his part-_ 
ing letter to the Directors—* has ‘seen fit to bless our efforts to . 
make it an institution deserving of public regard.” It deserves 
to be mentioned, that Dr. Bovriliteh was never willing to receive — 
and tie up any investment, without himself seeing or hearing in — 
writing from the person in whose behalf the investment was: to 
be made, and ascertaining that it- was done with his.or her full 
and free consent, and that the individual. perfectly understood the — 
mode and conditions of the investment, — it was = ‘intl 3 
the dead hand of the institution. | 
I may here also notice the fact, that i dming the late unexame 
pled commercial embarrassments and financial difficulties, when — 
almost all our moneyed institutions have sustained heavy losses 
from the bankruptcies of their debtors, “and,” to use his own — 
words in the same letter, ‘by having dealt with corporations, i 
whose affairs have been managed with a recklessness which has — 
never before been witnessed in this country,” yet so carefully ‘ 
and skillfully have the affairs of The Life Office been» managéed, — 
that, although the largest moneyed institution in New England, ; 
waving a capital equal to ten common banks, and with a loamout : 
of six millions, its loss has not been greater than that sustained 5 
ay some of the smallest banks. 
vil was a hard. struggle for Dr. Bowditch to break away from 
the ple ‘Scenes and associations of his native ie There — 
_were his arliest friends, and there g But he felt 
Sa ie. s 
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