is specialty he was lost. One realizes the herculean
task of dying poor which confronts Mr. Carnegie, when you think that he
is worth, say, five hundred million dollars. This is invested so that it
brings an income of five per cent, or twenty-five million dollars a
year.

So far, Mr. Carnegie has been barely able to give away his income, to
say nothing of the principal. His total benefactions up to the present
time amount to about two hundred millions. He has nearly worked the
territory with libraries. You can't give two libraries to a town, except
in the big cities--people protest and will not have them. There is a
limit to pipe-organs.

Heroes are so plentiful that it is more or less absurd to distinguish
them with medals. Dunfermline is almost done for by a liberality that
would damn any American town.

To give faster than people grow is to run the grave risk of arresting
development. A benefaction must bestow a benefit. Give to most people
and they will quit work and get a job with George Arliss, for the devil
still finds mischief for idle hands to do.

To relieve the average man from work would simply increase the trade in
cigarettes, cocaine, bromide and strong drink, and supply candidates for
Sing Sing. To make a vast fortune and then lose the tailboard out of
your hearse and dump your wealth on a lazy world merely causes the
growler to circulate rapidly. And so we sympathize with Andrew Carnegie
in his endeavor to live up to his dictum to die poor, and yet not
pauperize the world by his wealth. But let us not despond. The man is
only seventy-eight. His eyes are bright; his teeth are firm; his form is
erect; his limbs are agile; and his brain is at its best. Most hopeful
sign of all, he can laugh. He can even laugh at himself. If this counts
for anything at all, it means sanity and length of days.

GEORGE PEABODY

The great deeds for human betterment must be done by
individuals--they can never be done by the many.

--_George Peabody_

[Illustration: GEORGE PEABODY]

George Peabody was a noted American merchant and banker. He was born in
the village of Danvers, Massachusetts, in Seventeen Hundred Ninety-five.
He died in London in Eighteen Hundred Sixty-nine.

In childhood, poverty was his portion. But he succeeded, for he had the
persistent corpuscle, and he had charm of manner--two things which will
make any man a winner in the game o