The public spirit of the Ames's finds one of its most marked illustrations in this model and typical New England village; and no small share of what has been achieved for it is due to the warm heart and open hand of Oliver Ames. He has ever shown himself an ardent friend of popular education, and justly holds that the New England common school lies at its foundation. For a period of twenty years he found time, amid a multiplicity of weighty business cares, to serve upon the School Committee of his town and to give the benefit of his experience, judgment, and personal supervision to the promotion of the efficiency of this one of the very fundamental of American institutions, the common school. Oakes Ames left a fund of $50,000, the income to be used for the benefit of the school children of North Easton village. Through the wise thoughtfulness of Oliver Ames many of the privileges arising from this fund have been extended to the other sections of the town; and it hardly need be said that the schools of Easton are among the objects of the fondest pride of its citizens. Mr. Ames, though absorbed in the cares pertaining to the management of gigantic business interests, yet finds time for the appreciative enjoyment of the amenities and refinements of life. He posesses a cultivated appreciation of music, literature and the drama, and his artistic taste is evinced by his valuable and choice collections of paintings and statuary. Architecture has been with him a special study, and his magnificent winter residence, recently completed on Commonwealth Avenue, in our city of Boston, is a monument of his own architectural taste. In Europe this residence would be called a palace, here it is simply the home of a representative American citizen. Peculiarly happy in his domestic relations his home is beautified and ennobled by the virtues of domestic life. A generous hospitality is dispensed within its portals, where on every hand are found the evidences of the cultured refinement of its occupants. A tour of a few months in the Old World not only gave Mr. Ames needed rest and relaxation from business cares, but also furnished him with opportunities for observation which were most judiciously improved. In his religious belief he is a Unitarian, and has for many years been an active member of the Unitarian Society of North Easton. In his native town he is unusually respected and beloved, and with the working-men in his factories he enjoys an unbounded popularity. This is but natural, since he is himself a skilled artisan, an inventive and ingenious mechanic, familiar through a personal experience with every detail of the work in which they are engaged. This, coupled with his native kindness of heart, and his unpretentious manners, makes him the model employer.