ve been so near heaven as to catch the beams of holy
light.

* * * * *

SKETCH OF MR. HAND'S LIFE.

Daniel Hand was born in Madison, Conn., July 16, 1801, and was
therefore in the eighty-eighth year of his age when he made his gift
for the education of the colored people at the South. His ancestors
have resided in that town for several generations and were always
landholders, industrious, quiet and respectable. To this ancestry Mr.
Hand is probably indebted under God for his physical vigor, long life,
strength of character and success in business. He was the fourth son of
seven, and was on the farm under his father's direction until he was
sixteen years of age, when he was put in charge of his second brother,
Augustus F. Hand, who was then a merchant at Augusta, Ga., and whom he
succeeded in business. In 1854 Mr. Hand went to New York in connection
with his Southern business, and remained there in that capacity until
the beginning of the war in 1861. He resided in some portion of the
Southern Confederacy during the entire war, and was never treated with
violence in any way, and no Confederate officer ever offered him
indignity or even an unkind word.

Mr. G.W. Williams, a native Georgian, was, at about the age of sixteen,
employed by Mr. Hand as a clerk in Augusta, and in a few years was
taken in as partner. Mr. Williams suggested a branch of the business in
Charleston, and conducted it successfully. When the war came on Mr.
Hand's capital was largely employed in the Charleston business, which
Mr. Williams as a Southern man continued, having the use of Mr. Hand's
capital, which the Confederate Government vainly endeavored to
confiscate by legal proceedings against Mr. Hand, as a Northern man of
pronounced anti-slavery sentiments. After the war Mr. Hand came North
and left it to his old partner, Mr. Williams, to adjust the business
and make up the accounts, allowing him almost unlimited time for so
doing. When this was accomplished, Mr. Williams came North and paid
over to Mr. Hand his portion of the long-invested capital and its
accumulations, as an honest and honorable merchant and trusted partner
should do.

Many years ago Mr. Hand was bereaved of wife and children, and he has
since remained unmarried. This fact, together with his benevolent
impulses, led him to form plans to use his property for the benefit of
mankind. He thought at first of devoting a part of it to some Northern