Thomas Guy has slept for over a century in the midst of the great work which his fortune began and still carries forward. Who shall estimate the good done every year to six thousand suffering persons, mostly poor, who need the care and skill of a great hospital, and to seventy thousand, or two hundred daily, who come for medical treatment? The fact that Thomas Guy became rich through industry, economy, and business sagacity will be forgotten; the fact that he was a member of Parliament for thirteen years is of little moment; but the fact that he gave his wealth to bless the world will be remembered as long as England lasts, or humanity suffers.
SOPHIA SMITH AND HER COLLEGE FOR WOMEN.
Miss Sophia Smith, the founder of Smith College, came from a family of savers as well as givers. Self-indulgent persons rarely give.
She was the niece of Oliver Smith, whose unique charities have been a blessing to many towns. Mr. Smith, who died at Hatfield, Mass., Dec. 22, 1845, left to the towns of Northampton, Hadley, Hatfield, Amherst, and Williamsburg, in the county of Hampshire, and Deerfield, Greenfield, and Whately, in the county of Franklin, about a million dollars to a Board of Trustees, to be used as follows:—
To be set aside for sixty years from the time of his death, so as to double and treble itself, for an Agricultural School at Northampton, $30,000. In 1894, forty-nine years after Mr. Smith died, this fund had become $190,801.15, so rapidly does interest accumulate. This will be used to purchase two farms, one a Pattern Farm, to become a model to all farmers; the other an Experimental Farm, to aid the Pattern Farm in the art and science of husbandry and agriculture. Buildings are to be erected on the grounds suitable for mechanics, and workshops for the manufacture of implements of husbandry of the most approved models. If the income will warrant it, tools for other trades may be manufactured.
There is also to be a School of Industry on the farms for the benefit of the poor. The boys to be aided must be from the poorest in the town, are to receive a good common education, and be taught in agriculture or in some mechanic art in the shops on the premises. When twenty-one years of age they are to be loaned $200 each, and after paying interest for five years at five per cent are to receive the $200 as a gift, if they have proved themselves worthy. Three years before they are twenty-one, each is to have a portion of his time to earn for himself.
After a bequest of $10,000 to the American Colonization Society, Mr. Smith's will provided that his property should go to poor boys and girls, poor young women and widows. The boy, not under twelve, of good moral character, should be bound out to some respectable family, and receive at twenty-one, if he had been a faithful apprentice, a loan of $500, and after five years the gift in full to help him make a start in the world.