"I would not put the exceptionally smart girl from a _very_ poor family into college, unless she is a genius; and a genius should wait some years to _prove_ her genius. "Endow the already established institution with money. Endow the woman who shows genius with _time_. "A case at Johns Hopkins University is an excellent one. A young woman goes into the institution who is already a scholar; she shows what she can do, and she takes a scholarship; she is not placed in a happy valley of do nothing,--she is put into a workshop, where she can work. "... We are all apt to say, 'Could we have had the opportunity in life that our neighbor had,'--and we leave the unfinished sentence to imply that we should have been geniuses. "No one ever says, 'If I had not had such golden opportunities thrust upon me, I might have developed by a struggle'! But why look back at all? Why turn your eyes to your shadow, when, by looking upward, you see your rainbow in the same direction? "But our want of opportunity was our opportunity--our privations were our privileges--our needs were stimulants; we are what we are because we had little and wanted much; and it is hard to tell which was the more powerful factor.... * * * * * "Small aids to individuals, large aid to masses. * * * * * "The Russian Czar determined to found an observatory, and the first thing he did was to take a million dollars from the government treasury. He sends to America to order a thirty-five inch telescope from Alvan Clark,--not to promote science, but to surpass other nations in the size of his glass. 'To him that hath shall be given.' Read it, 'To him that hath _should_ be given.' * * * * * "To give wisely is hard. I do not wonder that the millionaire founds a new college--why should he not? Millionaires are few, and he is a man by himself--he must have views, or he could not have earned a million. But let the man or woman of ordinary wealth seek out the best institution already started,--the best girl already in college,--and give the endowment. "I knew a rich woman who wished to give aid to some girls' school, and she travelled in order to find that institution which gave the most solid learning with the least show. She found it where few would expect it,--in Tennessee. It was worth while to travel. "The aid that comes need not be money; let it be a careful consideration of the object, and an evident interest in the cause. "When you aid a teacher, you improve the education of your children. It is a wonder that teachers work as well as they do. I never look at a group of them without using, mentally, the expression, 'The noble army of martyrs'! "The chemist should have had a laboratory, and the observatory should have had an astronomer; but we are too apt to bestow money where there is no man, and to find a man where there is no money. * * * * *