Mr. and Mrs. Stanford were much beloved in Washington for their cordiality and generosity. They gave an annual dinner to the Senate pages, with a gift for each boy of a gold scarf-pin, or something attractive, and at Christmas a five-dollar gold-piece to each. Also a luncheon each winter, and gifts of money, gloves, etc., to the telegraph and messenger boys. Every orphan asylum and charity hospital in Washington was remembered at Christmas. Mr. Sibley, representative for Pennsylvania, relates this incident showing Mr. Stanford's habit of giving. "My partner and myself had purchased a young colt of him, for which we paid him $12,500. He took out his check-book, drew two checks of $6,250 each, and sent them to two different city homes for friendless children; and with a twinkle in his eye, and broadly beaming benevolence in his features, said, 'Electric Bell ought to make a great horse; he starts in making so many people happy in the very beginning of his life.'" Mr. Daniels of Virginia tells how Mr. Stanford was observed one day by a friend to give $2,000 to an inventor who was trying to apply an electric motor to the sewing-machine. Mr. Stanford remarked, "This is the thirtieth man to whom I have given a like sum to develop that idea." After Mr. Stanford had been in the Senate two years, on May 14, 1887, he and Mrs. Stanford laid the corner-stone of their University at Palo Alto, on the 19th anniversary of the birthday of Leland Stanford, Jr. In less than four years, on October 1, 1891, the doors of the University were opened to receive five hundred students, young men and women; for Mr. Stanford had written in his grant of endowment "to afford equal facilities and give equal advantages in the University to both sexes." In his address to the trustees he said, "The rights of one sex, political or otherwise, are the same as those of the other sex, and this equality of rights ought to be fully recognized." Mrs. Stanford said to Mrs. White as they sat in her library at Palo Alto, "Whatever the boys have, the girls have as well. We mean that the girls of our country shall have a fair chance. There shall be no dividing line in the studies. If a girl desires to become an electrician, she shall have the opportunity, and that opportunity shall be the same as the young men's. If she wishes to study mechanics, she may do it." Mr. Stanford said in his address on the day of opening, "I speak for Mrs. Stanford as well as for myself, for she has been my active and sympathetic coadjutor, and is co-grantor with me in the endowment and establishment of this University."