Famous Givers and Their GiftsBolton, Sarah Knowles
History
Famous Givers and Their Gifts
Bolton, Sarah Knowles
Philanthropists
After the burial service of the Episcopal Church, a solo, "O sweet and
blessed country," and address by Dr. Horatio Stebbins of the First
Unitarian Church of San Francisco, the choir sang "Lead Kindly Light,"
and the body of Senator Stanford was conveyed through the cypress avenue
to the mausoleum in the ten acres adjoining the residence grounds. The
tomb is in the form of a Greek temple lined with white marble, guarded
by a sphinx on either side of the entrance.
Here beside the open doors stood another beautiful floral tribute, a
shield eight feet high, of roses, lilies, and other flowers sent by the
employees of the Sacramento Railroad shops. Worked in violets were the
words "The Laborers' Tribute to the Laborers' Friend." The choir sang,
"Abide with Me," the body was laid in the tomb, and the bronze doors
were closed. A few days later the body of Leland Stanford, Junior, the
boy whose death, as Dr. Stebbins said at the senator's funeral, "drew
the sunbeams out of the day," was laid beside that of his father. Some
time the mother will sleep here with her precious dead.
Mr. Stanford's heart was bound up in his University. He said, after his
son died, "The children of California shall be our children." Mr. Sibley
of Pennsylvania tells how, three years after Leland Junior died, he and
Mr. Stanford "went together to the tomb of the boy, and the father told
amid tears and sobs how, since the death of his son, he had adopted and
taken to his heart and love every friendless boy and girl in all the
land, and that, so far as his means afforded, they should go to make the
path of every such an one smoother and brighter."
Mr. Stanford told Dr. Stebbins, in speaking of the University: "We feel
[he always used the plural, thus including that womanly heart from whose
fountains his life had ever been refreshed] that we have good ground for
hope. We are very happy in our work. We do not feel that we are making
great sacrifices. We feel that we are working with and for the Almighty
Providence."
By the will of Mr. Stanford the University receives two and a half
million dollars, but this bequest is not yet available. He always felt,
and rightly, that his wife owned all their large fortune equally with
himself; therefore he placed no restrictions upon her disposal of it.
Inasmuch as she is a co-founder of the University, she will doubtless
add largely to its endowment. Should she do this, the power of Leland
Stanford Junior University for good will be almost unlimited.
Even granite mausoleums crumble away; but great deeds last forever, and
make their doers immortal.
CAPTAIN THOMAS CORAM
AND HIS FOUNDLING ASYLUM.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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