Other American university libraries showed equally modest beginnings. In a letter from President Manning to Dr. Llewellyn, 1752, is found the following reference to the early efforts made on behalf of the library of Brown University: "At present we have but about 250 volumes and these not well chosen, being such as our friends could best spare," a statement which was equally true of many other college libraries of that period. The vicissitudes of American university libraries in their early years would seem to have been enough to discourage any but the stoutest hearted librarian. Thus the King's College buildings in New York having been required by the British for a military hospital, the books were deposited in the City Hall or elsewhere. Three years later some 600 or 700 volumes were found in a room in St. Paul's Chapel. How they got there is a mystery, but they were all that remained of the nucleus of what is today the Columbia University Library. Mr. John Pintard, the founder of the New York Historical Society used to say that he remembered seeing the British soldiers carry away the books from the college library in their knapsacks and barter them for grog. Horace Walpole in his Memoirs sneers at the Prince of Wales, afterwards George III, for presenting a collection of books to an American college during the Revolutionary War, and says that, instead of books, his Royal Highness ought to have sent arms and ammunition. In his report as secretary of the Smithsonian Institution for 1850, Prof. C. C. Jewett wrote: "Our colleges are mostly eleemosynary institutions. Their libraries are frequently the chance aggregation of the gifts of charity; too many of them discarded, as well-nigh worthless, from the shelves of donors. (But) among them are some very important collections, chosen with care and competent learning, purchased with economy and guarded with prudence." In 1850 Marshall College at Mercersburg, Pa., reported that "the college library is distributed among the professors--each professor having charge of those books pertaining to his department." Until comparatively recent years the periodicals subscribed to by one of our western state universities were sent direct to the homes of the professors interested and whether they were brought to the library later for binding depended upon the whim of the professor.