thousand to the State of Pennsylvania for her canals; and a portion of
his valuable estates in Louisiana to the Corporation of New Orleans, for
the improvement of that city.

The remainder of his property, worth then about six millions of dollars,
he left to trustees for the erection and endowment of the noble College
for Orphans, in Philadelphia, which bears his name.

Thus it will be seen that this man, who seemed steeled to resist appeals
for private charity in life, in death devoted all the results of his
unusual genius in his calling to the noblest of purposes, and to
enterprises of the most benignant character, which will gratefully hand
his name down to the remotest ages of posterity.




CHAPTER II.

JOHN JACOB ASTOR.


Those who imagine that the mercantile profession is incapable of
developing the element of greatness in the mind of man, find a perfect
refutation in the career of the subject of this memoir, who won his
immense fortune by the same traits which would have raised him to
eminence as a statesman. It may be thought by some that he has no claim
to a place in the list of famous Americans, since he was not only German
by birth, but German in character to his latest day; but it must be
borne in mind that America was the theater of his exploits, and that he