Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/165

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

LITTERATEUR AND BOOK-HUNTER

while in French and found him polite but very much like other people who are met at dinners.

When I came to the bar my dear good mother said that she had only two ambitions for me which she would like to have gratified. She would like me at some time to reach the bench and she would like to see me a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania. No doubt, in her early married life, my father coming recently from the medical school, had impressed her with the dignity and importance of the board of trustees who in their formal visits to the college seemed to him to be both grave and august. When John Welsh, who had been at the head of the Centennial Exposition, and had been Minister from the United States to England, died, in 1886, I was elected to take his place on the board of trustees. Generally these places are filled by selections from among people of large means and of social consequence, but somehow it happened. It has been a satisfaction to me, as I have gone through life, to know that all of the institutions with which I have been associated and many of the persons with whom I have been upon friendly terms have secured advantages from the association to a greater extent than could have been reasonably anticipated. The University is no exception, and even in the way of financial aid, it has received more through my efforts than from many others of very large resources. One day on going down Sixth Street I met a lawyer who told me he had come from an argument before an auditor claiming a fund which had been the assets of a defunct hospital. I hastened to the auditor, claimed the fund for the University of Pennsylvania, and, although the testimony had been closed, succeeded in getting a hearing. The auditor awarded the fund to me, and on exceptions and argument his report was confirmed by the court of common pleas. Although through too much earnestness I gained the antipathy of Lawrence Lewis, Jr., who had expected to get the sum for an institution which he repre-

151