Some time before his death Banneker gave to one of his sisters the feather bed on which he usually slept, and this she preserved as her only keepsake of him. Years after wards she had occasion to open the bed and, feeling something hard among the feathers, she discovered that it was a purse of money. This circumstance shows that Banneker was not "in the evening of his life overshadowed by extreme poverty."[184] In an excellent paper read on April 18, 1916, before the Columbia Historical Society of Washington, by Mr. P. Lee Phillips, of the Library of Congress, _Banneker's Almanac_ was compared with Benjamin Franklin's _Poor Richard's_ Almanac. Mr. Phillips also referred to his efforts in behalf of peace and to the friendship that existed between Banneker and such distinguished men of his time as Washington and Jefferson. He closed his article on Banneker with the broad-minded declaration that "Maryland should in some manner honor the memory of this distinguished citizen, who, notwithstanding the race prejudice of the time, rose to eminence in scientific attainments, the study of which at that early date was almost unknown."[185] The recognition of Douglass in Rochester and Boston, Pushkin in Petrograd and Moscow and Dumas in Paris, affords splendid suggestions of what we hope to see of Banneker in Baltimore. It is a sad reflection on the people of this country that practically nothing has been done to honor this distinguished man. HENRY E. BAKER ASSISTANT EXAMINER, UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE. FOOTNOTES: [144] _The Leisure Hour_, 1853, II, p. 54. [145] Tyson, _Banneker, The Afric-American Astronomer_, p. 10. [146] _The Atlantic Monthly_, XI, p. 80