ell tells how the idea of Temple College was born
in his mind one wintry night.

"A woman, ragged, with an old shawl over her head, met me in an alley
in Philadelphia late one night. She saw the basket on my arm, and
looked in my face wistfully, as a dog looks up beside the dinner
table. She was hungry, and was coming in empty. I shook my head, and
with a peculiarly sad glance she turned down the dark passage. I
had found several families hungry, and yet I felt like a hypocrite,
standing there with an empty basket, and a woman, perhaps a mother, so
pale for lack of decent food.

"On the corner was a church, stately and architecturally beautiful by
day, but after midnight it looked like a glowering ogre, and looked so
like Newgate Prison, in London, that I felt its chilly shadow. Half
a million cost the cemented pile, and under its side arch lay two
newsboys or boot-blacks asleep on the step.

"What is the use? We cannot feed these people. Give all you have, and
an army of the poor will still have nothing; and those to whom you do
give bread and clothes to-day will be starving and naked to-morrow.
If you care for the few, the many will curse you for your partiality.
While I stood meditating, the police patrol drove along the street,
and I could see by the corner street lamp that there were two women,
one little girl and a drunken old man in the conveyance, going to
jail! I could do nothing for them.

"At my door I found a man dressed in costly fashion, who had waited for
me outside, as he had been told that I would come soon, and the family
had retired. He said his dying father had sent for me. So I left the
basket in a side yard and went with the messenger. The house was a
mansion on Spring Garden Street. The house was inelegantly overloaded
with luxurious furniture, money wasted by some inartistic purchasers.
The paintings were rare and rich. The owners were shoddy. The family
of seven or eight gathered by the bedside when I prayed for the dying
old man. They were grief-stricken and begged me to stay until his soul
departed. It was daylight before I left the bedside, and as the dying
still showed that the soul was delaying his journey, I went into the
spacious, handsome library. Seeing a rare book in costly binding among
the volumes on a lower shelf, I opened the door and took it out My
hands were black with dust. I glanced then along the rows and rows of
valuable books, and noticed the dust of months or years. The