awwic. 
THE GRAPHIC. 
THE MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDENS. 
_HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE. 
On the western outskirts of the eity of St. Louis lies 
glorious monument to the life-work of one of her 
* rat loyal-hearted citizens—the Missouri Botanical 
® _the outgrowth of a private pleasure that has 
become a great public good. It is the lasting and 
living memorial of the labors and nobly-conceived pur- 
noses of Henry Shaw, and the memory of his never- 
failing interest in this work of the best years of his life 
is perpetuated by the name, “Shaw’s Garden,” in spite 
(OcroBta a», im 
is will these trustees were appointed—The Mayor 
i St Louts, the Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of 
tt had been too crowded for the indol- 
limitless n 
three hundred 
earth. Here, along these paths he strode, had been the 
i Conqueror, and William Cavendish, 
had watched the growth of the work with the great¬ 
est interest, and had done much to aid It, was made an 
honorary trustee, as was also Prof. Spenser F. 
Smithsonian Institute. To the able body 
nearly half his lif< 
spects did—- r -- 
he had anticipated, and in th< 
same year he reached St. 
and started out in business with 
a small stock of cutlery furnished- 
Inborn bnslness ability and frugal habits 
foundation of success, and as the years roL. 
became a prosperous merchant, loved and respected by 
his fellow-citizens, hut at no time aspiring to more than 
a quiet and unassuming position among them. Each 
year profit and capital increased, and finally, in 1839, 
when account was taken of the annual gains they were 
found to exceed $25,000—“more,” said Shaw, in after- 
telling the story, 
circumstances should make in a single year. ' rum 
with a consistency as remarkable as the view he took of 
his good fortune, he retired from business life, purpos¬ 
ing to be a free and satisfied man for the rest of his 
days, though he was scarce two-score. A quarter of a 
million seems now hut moderate wealth, in these days 
when millionaires are far from rarities, bnt in the for- 
ties such a sum was worth full four times as much; and 
so, with no one hut himself to care for, he might well 
feel that, carefully Invested, two hundred and fifty 
thousand made him thoroughly independent. And to 
show how well he knew just where to best place this 
fortune, it la only necessary to recall that the assessed 
valuation of the real estate he bequeathed the Botanical 
Garden now aggregates over a million and a quarter. 
It was natnral that after his retirement he should 
wish again to visit his home in England, and, accord¬ 
ingly, during the next five years he twice crossed the 
waters and made extended journeys through conti¬ 
nental Europe. Well, too, was he fitted to be an all¬ 
observant traveler, and he found In all he saw and 
heard an education which broadened and elevated his 
ideas and conceptions and exercised a marked influence 
over his after-life, yet gladly he returned to the country 
of his choice and to the city in which he had spent 
twenty years of active and happy pursuits, and only 
once more did he see his fatherland. 
It was on this journey and in an historic spot that the 
spirit of the man more truly far than cm 
m 1^1859^00 petition of Henry Shaw, the MissonriGen- 
erXmbiyWl» act enabling ^toesteNisha 
permanent board of trustees to whom to bequeath the 
Botanical Garden and the endowment thereof, and by 
be held the children of Nature, to whom his fife-work 
was devoted. It is a bequest of two hundred dollars a 
year to the Episcopal Bishop of Missouri, to be paid by 
him to such minister of the Gospel as h *"* 
be preached In on 
St. Louis’ 
