When Reuben Runyan Springer died in Cincinnati, Ohio, Dec. 10, 1884, at the age of eighty-four years, he did not forget to give the Sisters of Charity $20,000 for a foundling asylum. His family were originally from Sweden. When a youth he was clerk on a steamboat from Cincinnati to New Orleans, and soon acquired an interest in the boat, and began his fortune. Later, he was partner in a grocery house. Mr. Springer gave to the Little Sisters of the Poor $35,000, Good Samaritan Hospital $30,000, St. Peter's Benevolent Society $50,000, besides many other gifts. To music and art he gave $420,000. To his two faithful domestics and friends, he gave $7,500 each, and to his coachman his horses, carriages, harness, and $5,000. His various charities amounted to a million dollars or more. Most cities have, or ought to have, a foundling asylum, though often it bears a different name. The Roman Catholics seem to be wiser in this respect, and more careful to save infant life, than we of the Protestant faith. HENRY SHAW AND HIS BOTANICAL GARDEN. It is rare that a poor boy comes to America from a foreign land, with almost no money in his pocket, and leaves to his adopted town and State a million four hundred thousand dollars to beautify a city, to elevate its taste, and to help educate its people. Henry Shaw of St. Louis, Mo., was born in Sheffield, England, July 24, 1800. He was the oldest of four children, having had a brother who died in infancy and two sisters. His father, Joseph Shaw, was a manufacturer of grates, fire-irons, etc., at Sheffield. The boy obtained his early education at Thorne, a village not far from his native town, and used to get his lessons in an arbor, half hidden by vines, and surrounded by trees and flowers. From childhood he had a passion for a garden, and worked with his two little sisters in planting anemones and buttercups. From the school at Thorne the lad was transferred to Mill Hill, about twenty miles from London, to a "Dissenting" school, the father being a Baptist. Here he studied for six years, Latin, French, and probably other languages, as he knew in later life German, Italian, and Spanish. He became especially fond of French literature, and in manhood read and wrote French as easily and correctly as English. He was for a long time regarded as the best mathematician in St. Louis. In 1818, when Henry was eighteen, he and the rest of the family came to Canada. The same year his father sent him to New Orleans to learn how to raise cotton; but the climate did not please him, and he removed to a small French trading-post, called St. Louis, May 3, 1819.