"There is something I admire even more than the university, and that is the quiet, unpretending man by whom it was founded. We have had such men in old times, and there are men in England who make great fortunes and who make claim to great munificence; but who manifest their greatness in buying great estates and building castles for the founding of peerages to be handed down from father to son. Mr. Cornell has sought for immortality, and the perpetuity of his name among the people of a free nation. There stands his great university, built upon a rock, to endure while the American nation endures." The next great benefaction we have to record is, in some respects, unique. John Fox Slater was born in Slatersville, Rhode Island, in 1815. He was the son of Samuel Slater, proprietor of the greatest cotton-mills in New England, and he naturally succeeded to the business upon his father's death. The business prospered, receiving a great impetus from the invention of the cotton-gin, and Slater's wealth increased rapidly. He had, on more than one occasion, visited the south and seen the negroes at work in the cotton fields. As time went on, the idea grew in his mind that he should do something for these poor laborers to whom, indirectly, his own fortune was due, and in 1882, he set aside the sum of one million dollars for the purpose of "uplifting the lately emancipated population of the Southern States, and their posterity." For this gift he received the thanks of Congress. No part of the gift is spent for grounds or buildings, but the whole income is spent in assisting negroes in industrial education and in preparing them to be the teachers of their own race. By the extraordinary ability of the fund's treasurer, it has been increased to a million and a half, although half a million has been expended along the lines contemplated by the donor. This, with the Peabody fund, comprises a powerful agency in working out the difficult problem of negro education. * * * * * The fortunes of such men as Peabody and Cornell and Hopkins and Peter Cooper seem small enough to-day when compared with the gigantic aggregations of money which a few men have succeeded in piling up. Not all of them, by any means, devote their wealth to philanthropy. Here, as in England, there are men concerned only with the idea of building up a family and a great estate; but there are a few who have labored as faithfully to use their wealth wisely as they did to accumulate it.