e for gentlewomen, the only requirements being enough money to
furnish their own clothes and their burial expenses, even lots in Oak
Hill were reserved for them after the Louise Home failed to suffice. It
was very natural that for a long time its clientele was largely made up
of Southerners, as there were very, very many more of them impoverished
at that time, and also Mr. Corcoran was himself in sympathy with the
Confederates. It is said he saved his house from confiscation by renting
it to the French Minister.

Many, very many, were the letters he received thanking him for the help
he had sent to widows and orphans of soldiers of the South. He founded
homes of that kind in Charleston, South Carolina, and in other places,
besides rendering assistance most tactfully in many private cases. Many
of these letters are very touching in their gratitude.

His friendship for James Mason, of the Mason and Slidell affair, was
close, as was his very real association with General Robert E. Lee,
witnessed by letters from General Lee during his life in Lexington,
Virginia, after the war, and from Dr. William Pendleton, General Lee's
rector there, and from Mrs. Lee in regard to General Lee's death.

He and General Lee spent several summers at the "Old White," as the
Greenbriar White Sulphur Springs was then affectionately known. As the
years rolled on, Anthony Hyde, a Georgetown man, was kept busy
administering the benefactions of his employer. He has told how during a
trip through the South after the war, with Mr. Corcoran (he was his
secretary), he had difficulty in keeping Mr. Corcoran's gifts within
bounds. I was told not long ago by a man in the employ of Oak Hill, how
an old street-car conductor had described to him the sight of Mr.
Corcoran going to his office, and on the sidewalk in front of it each
morning was a line to which he always dispensed "green money," as the
old man called it.

The business of his life then was judiciously giving away his money.
Here are some of the ways he did it: colleges had always appealed to
him, and he was for many years Rector of Columbian University in
Washington, now renamed George Washington, and gave freely to it. His
name is now borne by one of their largest and best buildings, Corcoran
Hall. He gave to the Maryland Agricultural College, to the College of
William and Mary in Virginia, loaned money to the Virginia Military
Institute and when the bonds came due, tore them up--a little wa