Page:Poems of Nature and Life.djvu/221

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THE RANDALL FAMILY 21 3

had always been interested, she gave ^5,000 for library purposes. To Harvard College she gave many of his books, his magnificent collection of etchings and engrav- ings, and a special fund of $30,000 to provide for their careful preservation and custody. To the Children's Aid Society and to the Avon Home, she gave an additional $2,000 each. To the Art Museum she gave a portrait of Mrs. Samuel Adams, and a great china punch bowl, hold- ing a gallon and covered with Chinese decorations in pink and blue, together with a salver of different ware, both of which had been presented to Samuel Adams by the Mar- quis de la Fayette. To the Boston Public Latin School, at which her brother had been taught, she gave $200 through the Public School Art League, to decorate a room with Revolutionary pictures and portrait busts, a fac-simile of the Declaration of Independence, a small reproduction of French's Minute Man, and so forth, on condition that the room be called in her brother's memory the " Randall Room." To the town of Stow she sent, almost imme- diately after his death, a cheque for $55,000, of which she wished $25,000 to be applied to building and maintaining a public library, $10,000 to aid of the worthy poor, and $20,000 to general town purposes. To the officers of the bank with which her brother had chiefly dealt, from the president down to the colored porter who opened the door for him, she sent cheques in fit but very generous propor- tions. And to numerous private persons, relatives and non-relatives, needy or not needy, to whom she remem- bered or imagined he would wish to do a kindness, she did the same. To do kindnesses in ways that would have pleased him seemed now to be her sole aim in life. It was marvellous — it was beautiful to behold.

On February 22, 1894, a little more than two years after her brother's death. Miss Randall attended the dedi-

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