Part 17

Dr. Albert Shaw tells this interesting incident. "President Jordan had once met the young Stanford boy on the seashore, and won the lad's gratitude by telling him of shells and submarine life. It was a singular coincidence that the parents afterwards heard Dr. Jordan make allusions in a public address which gave them the knowledge that this was the interesting stranger who had taught their son so much, and had so enkindled the boy's enthusiasm. His choice as president was an eminently wise one."

Mr. Stanford wished ten acres to be set aside "as a place of burial and of last rest on earth for the bodies of the grantors and of their son, Leland Stanford, Jr., and, as the board may direct, for the bodies of such other persons who may have been connected with the University."

Mr. Stanford lived to see his University opened and doing successful work. The plan of its buildings, suggested by the old Spanish Missions of California, was originally that of Richardson, the noted architect of Boston; but as he died before it was completed, the work was done by his successors, Shepley, Rutan, & Coolidge.

The plan contemplates a number of quadrangles in the midst of 8,400 acres. "The central group of buildings will constitute two quadrangles, one entirely surrounding the other," says the _University Register_ for 1894--1895. "Of these the inner quadrangle, with the exception of the chapel, is now completed. Its twelve one-story buildings are connected by a continuous open arcade, facing a paved court 586 feet long by 246 feet wide, or three and a quarter acres. The buildings are of a buff sandstone, somewhat varied in color. The stone-work is of broken ashlar, with rough rock face, and the roofs are covered with red tile." Within the quadrangle are several circular beds of semi-tropical trees and plants.

Miss Milicent W. Shinn, in the _Overland Monthly_ for October, 1891, says, "I should think it hard to say too much of the simple dignity, the calm influence on mind and mood, of the great, bright court, the deep arcade with its long vista of columns and arches, the heavy walls, the unchanging stone surfaces. They seemed to me like the rock walls of nature; they drew me back, and made me homesick for them when I had gone away."

Behind the central quadrangle are the shops, foundry, and boiler-house. On the east side is Encina Hall, a dormitory for 315 men, provided with electric lights, steam heat, and bathrooms on each floor. It is four stories high, and, like the quadrangle, of buff Almaden sandstone.

On the west side of the quadrangle is Roble Hall, for one hundred young women, and is built of concrete. There are two gymnasiums, called Encina and Roble gymnasiums.

Perhaps the most interesting of all the buildings, the especial gift of Mrs. Stanford, is the Leland Stanford Junior Museum, of concrete, in Greek style of architecture, 313 by 156 feet, including wings, situated a quarter of a mile from the quadrangle, and between the University and the Stanford residence. The collection made by young Leland is placed here, and his own arrangement reproduced. The collection includes Egyptian bronzes, Greek and Roman glass and statues. The Cesnola collection contains five thousand pieces of Greek and Roman pottery and glass. The Egyptian collection, made by Brugsch Bey, Curator of the Gizeh Museum, for Mrs. Stanford, comprises casts of statuary, mummies, scarabees, etc. Mr. Timothy Hopkins of San Francisco, one of the trustees, has given for the Egyptian collection embroideries dating from the sixth to the twenty-first dynasty. He has also given a collection of ancient and modern coins and costumes, household goods, etc., from Corea. There are stone implements from Copenhagen, Denmark, and relics from the mounds of America. Mrs. Stanford is making the collection of fine arts, and a very large number of copies of great paintings is intended. Much attention will be given to local history, Indian antiquities, and Spanish settlements of early California.

The library has 23,000 volumes and 6,000 pamphlets. Mr. Hopkins has given a valuable collection of railway books, unusually rich in the early history of railways in Europe and America, with generous provision for its increase. Mr. Hopkins has also founded the Hopkins Seaside Laboratory at Pacific Grove, two miles west of Monterey, to provide for investigations in marine biology, as a branch of the biological work of the University.

Students are not received into the University under sixteen years of age, and if special students, not under twenty, and must present certificates of good moral character. If from other colleges they must bring letters of honorable dismissal. They are offered a choice of twenty-two subjects for entrance examination, and must pass in twelve subjects. _Tuition in all departments is free._

"The degree of Bachelor of Arts is granted to students who have satisfactorily completed the equivalent of four years' work of 15 hours of lecture or recitation weekly, or a total of 120 hours, and who have also satisfied the requirements in major and minor subjects."

President Jordan says, in the _Educational Review_ for June, 1892: "In the arrangement of the courses of study two ideas are prominent: first, that every student who shall complete a course in the University must be thoroughly trained in some line of work. His education must have as its central axis an accurate and full knowledge of something. The second is that the degree to be received is wholly a subordinate matter, and that no student should be compelled to turn out of his way in order to secure it. The elective system is subjected to a single check. In order to prevent undue scattering, the student is required to select the work in general of some one professor as major subject or specialty, and to pursue this subject or line of subjects as far as the professor in charge may deem it wise or expedient. In order that all courses and all departments may be placed on exactly the same level, the degree of Bachelor of Arts is given in all alike for the equivalent of the four years' course. Should his major subject, for instance, be Greek, then the title is given that of Bachelor of Arts in Greek; should the major subject be chemistry, Bachelor of Arts in chemistry, and so on."

In 1895 there were 1,100 students in the University, of whom 728 were men, and 372 women. Several of the students are from the New England States.

Mr. Stanford spent over a million dollars in the University buildings, and gave as an endowment over 89,000 acres of land valued at more than five million dollars. The Palo Alto estate has 8,400 acres; the Vina estate, 59,000 acres, with over 4,000 acres planted to grapes which are made into wine--those of us who are total abstainers regret such use; and the Gridley estate 22,000 acres, one of California's great wheat farms. In years to come it is hoped that these properties, which are never to be sold, will so increase in value that they will be worth several times five millions.

Mr. and Mrs. Stanford made their wills, giving to the University "additional property," that the endowment, as Mr. Stanford said, "will be ample to establish and maintain a university of the highest grade." It has been stated, frequently, that the "full endowment" in land and money will be $20,000,000 or more.

Senator Stanford's death came suddenly at the last, at Palo Alto, Tuesday, June 20-21, 1893. He had not been well for some time; but Tuesday he had driven about the estate, with his usual interest and good cheer. He retired to rest about ten o'clock; and at midnight his wife, who occupied an adjoining apartment, heard a movement as if Mr. Stanford were making an effort to rise. She spoke to him, but received no answer. His breathing was unnatural; and in a few minutes he passed away, apparently without pain.

Mr. Stanford was buried at Palo Alto, Saturday, June 24. The body lay in the library of his home, in a black cloth-covered casket, with these words on the silver plate:--

LELAND STANFORD.

BORN TO MORTALITY MARCH 9, 1824. PASSED TO IMMORTALITY, JUNE 21, 1893. AGED 69 YRS., 3 MOS., 12 DAYS.

Flowers filled every part of the library. The Union League Club sent a floral piece representing the Stars and Stripes worked in red and white in "everlasting," with star lilies on a ground of violets. There was a triple arch of white and pink flowers representing the central arch of the main University building. There were wreaths and crosses and a broken wheel of carnations, hollyhocks, violets, white peas, and ferns.

At half-past one, after all the employees had taken their last look of the man who had always been their friend,--one, seventy-six years old, who had worked with Mr. Stanford in the mine, broke down completely,--the body was borne to the quadrangle of the University by eight of the oldest engineers in point of service on the Southern Pacific Railroad. The funeral _cortège_ passed through a double line of the two hundred or more employees at Palo Alto, several Chinese laborers being at the end of the line. Senator Stanford was always opposed to any legislation against the Chinese.

The body was placed on a platform at one end of the quadrangle, the remaining space being filled with several thousand persons. About sixteen hundred chairs were provided, but these could accommodate only a small portion of those present. The platform was decorated with ferns, smilax, white sweet peas, and thousands of St. Joseph's lilies. The temporary chancel was flanked by two remarkable flower pieces: on the left, a _fac-simile_ of the first locomotive ever purchased and operated on the Central Pacific Railroad, the "Governor Stanford," sent by the employees of the company. The boiler and smoke-stack were of mauve-colored sweet peas; the headlight and bell were of yellow pansies; the cab of white sweet peas bordered by yellow pansies; the tender of white sweet peas edged by pansies and lined with ivy; on the side of the cab, in heliotrope, the name Governor Stanford. On the right of the bier was the gift of the employees of the Palo Alto stock-farm, a representation in sweet peas of the senator's favorite bay horse.

After the burial service of the Episcopal Church, a solo, "O sweet and blessed country," and address by Dr. Horatio Stebbins of the First Unitarian Church of San Francisco, the choir sang "Lead Kindly Light," and the body of Senator Stanford was conveyed through the cypress avenue to the mausoleum in the ten acres adjoining the residence grounds. The tomb is in the form of a Greek temple lined with white marble, guarded by a sphinx on either side of the entrance.

Here beside the open doors stood another beautiful floral tribute, a shield eight feet high, of roses, lilies, and other flowers sent by the employees of the Sacramento Railroad shops. Worked in violets were the words "The Laborers' Tribute to the Laborers' Friend." The choir sang, "Abide with Me," the body was laid in the tomb, and the bronze doors were closed. A few days later the body of Leland Stanford, Junior, the boy whose death, as Dr. Stebbins said at the senator's funeral, "drew the sunbeams out of the day," was laid beside that of his father. Some time the mother will sleep here with her precious dead.

Mr. Stanford's heart was bound up in his University. He said, after his son died, "The children of California shall be our children." Mr. Sibley of Pennsylvania tells how, three years after Leland Junior died, he and Mr. Stanford "went together to the tomb of the boy, and the father told amid tears and sobs how, since the death of his son, he had adopted and taken to his heart and love every friendless boy and girl in all the land, and that, so far as his means afforded, they should go to make the path of every such an one smoother and brighter."

Mr. Stanford told Dr. Stebbins, in speaking of the University: "We feel [he always used the plural, thus including that womanly heart from whose fountains his life had ever been refreshed] that we have good ground for hope. We are very happy in our work. We do not feel that we are making great sacrifices. We feel that we are working with and for the Almighty Providence."

By the will of Mr. Stanford the University receives two and a half million dollars, but this bequest is not yet available. He always felt, and rightly, that his wife owned all their large fortune equally with himself; therefore he placed no restrictions upon her disposal of it. Inasmuch as she is a co-founder of the University, she will doubtless add largely to its endowment. Should she do this, the power of Leland Stanford Junior University for good will be almost unlimited.

Even granite mausoleums crumble away; but great deeds last forever, and make their doers immortal.

CAPTAIN THOMAS CORAM

AND HIS FOUNDLING ASYLUM.

One of the best of England's charities is the Foundling Asylum in London, founded in 1739 by Captain Thomas Coram. He was not a man of family or means, but he had a warm heart and great perseverance. For seventeen years he labored against indifference and prejudice, till finally his home for little waifs and outcasts became a visible fact, and for more than a century has been doing its noble work.

Captain Coram was born at Lyme Regis, in Dorsetshire, in 1668, a seaport town which carried on some trade with Newfoundland. It is probable that his father was a seafaring man, as the lad early followed that occupation. When he was twenty-six years old we hear of him in the New World at Taunton, Mass., earning his living as a shipwright.

[Illustration: CAPTAIN THOMAS CORAM]

He did not wait to become rich--as indeed he never was--before he began to plan good works. He had saved some money by the year 1703, when he was thirty-five; for we see by the early records that he conveyed to the governor and other authorities in Taunton, fifty-nine acres to be used whenever the people so desired, for an Episcopal church or a schoolhouse. This gift, the deed alleges, was made "in consideration of the love and respect which the donor had and did bear unto the said church, as also for divers other good causes and considerations him especially at that present moving."

Later he gave to Taunton a quite valuable library, a portion of which remains at present. A Book of Common Prayer is now in the church, on whose title-page it is stated that it was the gift "by the Right Honorable Arthur Onslow, Speaker of the Honourable House of Commons of Great Britain, one of His Majesty's most Honourable Privy Council, and Treasurer of His Majesty's Navy, etc., to Thomas Coram, of London, Gentleman, for the use of a church, lately built at Taunton, in New England."

About this time, 1703, Mr. Coram moved to Boston, and became the master of a ship. He was deeply interested in the colonies of the mother country, and though in a comparatively humble station, began to project plans for their increase in commerce, and growth in wealth. In 1704 he helped to procure an Act of Parliament for encouraging the making of tar in the northern colonies of British America by a bounty to be paid on the importation. Before this all the tar was brought from Sweden. The colonies were thereby saved five million dollars.

In 1719, when on board the ship Sea Flower for Hamburgh, that he might obtain supplies of timber and other naval stores for the royal navy, Captain Coram was stranded off Cuxhaven and his cargo plundered.

Some years later, in 1732, having become much interested in the settlement of Georgia, Captain Coram was appointed one of the trustees by a charter from George II.

Three years after this, in 1735, the energetic Captain Coram addressed a memorial to George II., about the settlement of Nova Scotia, as he had found there "the best cod-fishing of any in the known parts of the world, and the land is well adapted for raising hemp and other naval stores." One hundred laboring men signed this memorial, asking for free passage thither, and protection after reaching Nova Scotia.

Captain Coram was so interested in the project that he appeared on several occasions before the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, and was, says Horace Walpole, "the most knowing person about the plantations I ever talked with." For several years nothing was done about his memorial, but before his death England took action about her now valuable colony.

About 1720 Captain Coram lived in Rotherhithe, and going often to London early in the morning and returning late at night, became troubled about the infants whom he saw exposed or deserted in the public streets, sometimes dead, or dying, or perhaps murdered to avoid publicity. Sometimes these foundlings, if not deserted, were placed in poor families to whom a small sum was paid for their board; and often they were blinded or maimed as they grew older, and sent on the streets to beg.

The young mother, usually homeless and friendless, was almost as helpless as her child if she tried to keep it and earn a living. People scorned her, or arrested her and threw her into prison: the shipmaster tried to find a remedy for the evil.

He talked with his friends and acquaintances, but no one seemed to care. He besought those high in authority, but few seemed to think that foundlings were worth saving. The poor and the disgraced should bear their sorrows alone. Some from all ranks thought the charity a noble one, and wondered that it had been so long neglected; but none gave a penny, or put forth any effort.

"His arguments," wrote Coram's most intimate friend, Dr. Brocklesby, "moved some, the natural humanity of their own temper more, his firm but generous example most of all; and even people of rank began to be ashamed to see a man's hair become gray in the course of a solicitation by which he was to get nothing. Those who did not enter far enough into the case to compassionate the unhappy infants for whom he was a suitor, could not help pitying him."

Captain Coram finally turned to woman for aid, and obtained the names of "twenty-one ladies of quality and distinction" who were willing to help in his project of a foundling asylum. Not all "ladies of quality" were willing to help, however; for in the Foundling Hospital may be seen this note, attached to a memorial addressed to "H.R.H., the Princess Amelia."

"On Innocents' Day, the 28th December, 1737, I went to St. James' Palace to present this petition, having been advised first to address the lady of the bedchamber in waiting to introduce it. But the Lady Isabella Finch, who was the lady in waiting, gave me rough words, and bid me gone with my petition, which I did, without opportunity of presenting it."

Finally Captain Coram's incessant labors bore fruit. On Tuesday, Nov. 20, 1739, at Somerset House, London, a meeting of the nobility and gentry was held, appointed by his Majesty's royal charter to be governors and guardians of the hospital. Captain Coram, now seventy-one years of age, addressed the president, the Duke of Bedford, with great feeling. "My Lord," he said, "although my declining years will not permit me to hope seeing the full accomplishment of my wishes, yet I can now rest satisfied; and it is what I esteem an ample reward of more than seventeen years' expensive labor and steady application, that I see your Grace at the head of this charitable trust, assisted by so many noble and honorable governors."

The house for the foundlings was opened in Hatton Garden in 1741, no child being received over two months old. No questions as to parentage were to be asked; and when no more infants could be taken in, the sign, "The house is full," was hung over the door. Sometimes one hundred women would be at the door with babies in their arms; and when only twenty could be received, the poor creatures would fight to be first at the door, that their child might find a home. Finally the infants were admitted by ballot, by means of balls drawn by the mothers out of a bag. If they drew a white ball, the child was received; if a black ball, it was turned away.

The present Foundling Hospital was begun in 1740, and the western wing finished and occupied in 1745, on the north side of Guilford Street, London, the governors having bought the land, fifty-five acres, from the Earl of Salisbury.

Hogarth, the painter, was deeply interested in Captain Coram's benevolent object. He painted for the hospital some of his finest pictures, and influenced his brother artists to do the same. Hogarth's "March to Finchley" was intended to be dedicated to George II. A proof print was accordingly presented to the king for his approval. The picture gives "a view of a military march, and the humors and disorders consequent thereon."

The king was indignant, and exclaimed, "Does the fellow mean to laugh at my guards?"

"The picture, please your Majesty," said one of the bystanders, "must be considered as a burlesque."

"What! a painter burlesque a soldier? He deserves to be picketed for his insolence," replied the king.

The picture was returned to the mortified artist, who dedicated it to "the king of Prussia, an encourager of the arts."

So many fine paintings were presented to the hospital,--one of Raphael's cartoons, a picture by Benjamin West, and others,--and such a crowd of people came daily to see them in splendid carriages and gilt sedan chairs, that the institution "became the most fashionable morning lounge in the reign of George II."

This exhibition of pictures of the united artists was the precursor of the Royal Academy, founded in 1768. Before this time the artists had their annual reunion and dinner together at the Foundling Hospital, the children entertaining them with music.

Hogarth, notwithstanding his busy life, requested that several of the infants should be sent to Chiswick, where he resided; and he and Mrs. Hogarth looked carefully after their welfare. It was the custom to send the babies into the country to be nursed by some mother, as soon as they were received at the hospital.

Handel, as well as Hogarth, was interested in the foundlings. The chapel had been erected by subscription in 1847. George II subscribed £2,000 towards its erection, and £1,000 towards supplying a preacher. Handel offered a performance in vocal and instrumental music to raise money in building the chapel. The most distinguished persons in the realm came to hear the music. Over a thousand were present, the tickets being half a guinea each.

Each year, as long as Handel was able to do so, he superintended the performance of his great Oratorio of the Messiah in the chapel, which netted the treasury £7,000. When he died he made the following bequest: "I give a fair copy of the Score, and all the parts of my Oratorio called the Messiah, to the Foundling Hospital."

A singular gift to the hospital was from Omychund, a black merchant of Calcutta, who bequeathed to that and the Magdalen Hospital 37,500 current rupees, to be equally divided between them.