"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.'
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"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.
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"If every girl who is aided were a very high order of scholar, scholarship would undoubtedly conquer poverty; but a large part of the aided students are ordinary. They lack, at least, executive power, as their ancestors probably did. Poverty is a misfortune; misfortunes are often the result of blamable indiscretion, extravagance, etc.
"It is one of the many blessings of poverty that one is not obliged to 'give wisely.'"