which it expressly points out. As personal friends who had been acquainted with his wise and generous purposes, and with his civic patriotism and gratitude, they believed that he would surely have wished his gift to supplement, in the most effective way, the existing and prospective library collections of Chicago, and to be of the greatest possible value to the whole city.

That wish has been gratified, and he has established in the heart of the city a great institution of education and enlightenment that will radiate ever-increasing light down through the ages.

It was Franklin MacVeagh who said of Mr. Crerar at the great memorial meeting in the Central Music Hall: "He has set us an example of the right use of wealth, the great uses of wealth, the permanent uses of wealth, and the final uses of wealth."

His will was the natural outcome and expression of his entire life. He was one of those men whose life and death glorify humanity and help us to understand something of the meaning of that word: "God created man in his own image."

MRS. MARY H. WILMARTH'

BY MARION TALBOT

Soon after the University of Chicago was opened in October, 1892, Mrs. Alice Freeman Palmer, with that breadth of sympathy and keenness of vision which many remember with admiration, recognized the need of an agency for giving financial aid to capable and promising students. In organizing the Students' Fund Society she found ready and generous support from citizens of Chicago who were interested in the new University. First and foremost was Mrs. Wilmarth who was the moving spirit from the beginning. I cannot tell the whole story. Under her direction sums varying from twenty-five dollars to several hundred dollars were loaned without interest. In every case recommended by the Faculty committee she had a personal interview with the candidate, and you can readily believe that the experience for the student was one of intellectual and spiritual enrichment even more than of material help. Her sagacity and penetration were marvelous. The records of the Society show how seldom her judgment was at fault. The funds loaned came back in a steady stream as life brought its successes to these young people.

Professor J. Laurence Laughlin, who, as the representative of the Faculty, gave generous and devoted service for a long term of years, writes as follows:

She was the mainstay of the Student Loan Fund, always generous, sympathetic, but in all her giving never unwise or undiscriminating. How many times I have gone down to the meetings at the end of a quarter with demands of five hundred to one thousand dollars beyond our cash on hand; and silently, unknown to others, she took care of every appealing case. She and Mrs. Judah were tireless in those early days, but she longest of all. In all emergencies she had a fine poise and business sense. Nothing was done without care and deliberation. Yet her tact and graciousness were pre-eminent.

In my Latter-Day Problems at the end of the chapter on "Women and Wealth" I had her in my mind when I said: "On the other hand, we also know the type-a rarer one of the woman to whom a husband had left large wealth, whose pleasure is not in self-indulgence, but whose wisdom and sympathy in giving is such that the power of her riches is multiplied an hundredfold and whose unselfish life is a benediction to every one who is privileged to know her."

'Remarks by Dean Talbot at the memorial meeting held under the auspices of the philosophy and science department of the Chicago Woman's Club, November 21, 1919.

The greatness of a university cannot be measured by the number of its students or its faculty, its endowments, or its material resources. Its friends are its greatest possessions, and the University of Chicago has been fortunate indeed in counting Mrs. Wilmarth among these. Her service to the Students' Fund Society was one of her many rich gifts. Words fail wholly to describe what she gave constantly, generously, sympathetically. Her presence, a written word of cheer or counsel, intelligent understanding of the University's problems, made an atmosphere of intellectual and spiritual values which was priceless. We miss it daily, but the effect of her influence in those early and formative years will last as long and as far as the University-I think even longer and farther.

THE JOHN BILLINGS FISKE PRIZE IN POETRY

The wide and growing interest now being taken in poetry in this country has suggested that universities might be a great influence in the production of that form of literature and so contribute something of pleasure and stimulus and beauty to our national life. With that thought in mind Mr. Horace Spencer Fiske, of the University of Chicago Press, has established at the University, in memory of his father, John Billings Fiske, an annual poetry prize of approximately fifty dollars, which shall be given in a competition open to all graduate and undergraduate students alike, the judges to be the Head of the Department of English, a leading American poet, and a leading American critic.

JOHN BILLINGS FISKE

John Billings Fiske, in whose memory this poetry prize has been given, was born at Waterford on the Hudson, the son of Horace and Mary Adams Fiske. The beauty of this region, at the junction of the Hudson and the Mohawk, seems to have had a deep influence on the heart and imagination of the boy and he remained through life an intense and unaffected lover of nature in all her moods and changes. At twenty years of age he was graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Arts from Union College, Schenectady, New York, under the presidency of the famous Dr. Eliphalet Nott. He was among the first seven in his class in scholarship, receiving the Phi Beta Kappa key, and among his classmates was President Chester A. Arthur.

Soon after graduation Mr. Fiske came under such religious influences that he determined to make the ministry his life-work. As his father had been a Presbyterian elder for thirty years, the son naturally took some of his theological training at Princeton, and his first pastorate was at Amherst, Massachusetts. But the West called with a voice not to be denied, and he later took up long pastorates in Michigan, Iowa, and Missouri. His sermons, carefully thought out, written down, and revised, contained frequent poetic allusions and illustrations, and not uncommonly a humorous phrase or incident that started a smile. In fact, his great liberality of view in the treatment of religious themes proved to some of his more orthodox listeners a stumbling-block and a rock of offense, and he voluntarily retired from one or two of his pastorates, against the