DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
THE LIFE OF DR. D. K. 
 PEARSONS, FRIEND OF 
 THE SMALL COLLEGE 
 AND OF MISSIONS : : : : 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD F. WILLIAMS 
 
 THE PILGRIM PRESS 
 
 NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO 
 
Copyright, 1911 
 EDWARD F. WILLIAMS 
 
 THE RUMFORD PRESS 
 CONCORD N H U S A 
 
To 
 MRS. MARIETTA CHAPIN PEARSONS 
 
 WIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS, HELPER IN THE ACQUISITION OF HIS 
 FORTUNE, SYMPATHIZER WITH HIM IN ITS DISTRIBUTION, A LOVING 
 COMPANION AND A WISE COUNCILLOR FOR NEARLY SIXTY YEARS, THIS 
 ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE AND WORK OF HER HUSBAND IS DEDICATED 
 
 241305 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THIS book has been written to stimulate and 
 encourage those into whose hands wealth 
 has come, to make, while yet alive such dis- 
 tribution of it as they would wish others to make of 
 it after their decease. The story of what Dr. 
 Pearsons has done is full of stimulus and hope for 
 ambitious young men, even if born poor. It bears 
 testimony to the value of principle, earnest purpose, 
 and devotion to a single object while that object is 
 pursued. It shows what a change in public senti- 
 ment, gifts wisely made and scattered over a series 
 of years, can produce in reference to such institutions 
 of learning as our small colleges. If the State Uni- 
 versities and the marvellous work they have done, 
 owe their existence to the Morrill Act, the sugges- 
 tion of a Vermont man, the small colleges and the 
 thousands of young people who attend them owe 
 the work they are doing and the regard in which 
 they are held to the gifts of another Vermont man, 
 the man whose life and deeds it is the purpose of this 
 book to relate. 
 
 It should be said that the responsibility for the 
 appearance of the book rests wholly upon its author 
 and not all upon Dr. Pearsons, who has not even 
 suggested that any record of what he has done for 
 higher education be made public. 
 
 Vll 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. BIRTH, ANCESTRY, EDUCATION, EARLY 
 LIFE. PROFESSIONAL LIFE IN CHICOPEE, 
 
 MASS 3 
 
 II. PREPARATION FOR LIFE IN CHICAGO . . 15 
 
 III. CHICAGO IN 1860 AND AFTER .... 27 
 
 IV. BUSINESS LIFE IN CHICAGO .... 37 
 V. BUSINESS LIFE IN CHICAGO CONTINUED 49 
 
 VI. BEGINNING OF A GREAT BENEVOLENT 
 CAREER. GIFTS TO CHICAGO INSTITU- 
 TIONS. DECISION TO AID COLLEGES . 67 
 VII. CONDITION OF THE DENOMINATIONAL COL- 
 LEGES WHEN DR. PEARSONS MADE His 
 FIRST GIFTS TO THEM. PRINCIPLES 
 UPON WHICH THESE GIFTS HAVE BEEN 
 
 MADE 89 
 
 VIII. GIFTS TO ILLINOIS INSTITUTIONS . . . 101 
 IX. GIFTS FOR INSTITUTIONS EAST OF CHICAGO 115 
 X. GIFTS TO BELOIT COLLEGE .... 131 
 XI. GIFTS TO OTHER WESTERN COLLEGES THAN 
 
 BELOIT 145 
 
 XII. AID FOR BEREA COLLEGE 167 
 
 XIII. AID FOR OTHER SOUTHERN COLLEGES THAN 
 
 BEREA 183 
 
 XIV. AID FOR COLLEGES ON THE PACIFIC COAST 199 
 XV. GIFTS TO MISSIONS AND MISSIONARY COL- 
 LEGES 
 
 ix 
 
x CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XVI. APPRECIATIVE WORDS 239 
 
 XVII. RETROSPECT 255 
 
 INDEX 273 
 
 APPENDICES 
 
 I. An Address by Dr. Pearsons at Battle Creek 
 
 or a Lesson in Practical Philanthropy . 281 
 
 II. Address to the Public on the Ninety-first 
 
 Anniversary of his Birth, announcing the 
 end of his career as a Philanthropist . 294 
 III. Minute written by Dr. Simeon Gilbert, for- 
 mer editor of The Advance, and adopted 
 by the Congregational Club in recogni- 
 tion of the Ninety-first Birthday of Dr. 
 Pearsons 304 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FACING 
 PAGE 
 
 DR. D. K. PEARSONS .... Frontispiece 
 
 THE HOME AT HINSDALE 56 
 
 MRS. D. K. PEARSONS 193 
 
 DR. D. K. PEARSONS AT NINETY 262 
 
 XI 
 
BIRTH, ANCESTRY, EDUCATION, EARLY LIFE 
 PROFESSIONAL LIFE IN CHICOPEE, MASS. 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 BIRTH, ANCESTRY, EDUCATION, EARLY LIFE 
 PROFESSIONAL LIFE IN CHICOPEE, MASS. 
 
 DANIEL K3MBALL PEARSONS was born 
 April 14, 1820, on a farm two and one half 
 miles distant from the center of the town of 
 Bradford, Vermont. There were seven children in 
 the family, six sons and one daughter. Two of the 
 sons, Charles and Arthur, died in infancy. The 
 daughter, Elizabeth, the youngest of the family, 
 married Dr. A. M. Gushing of Springfield, Massa- 
 chusetts, where she died June 17, 1880, leaving two 
 sons, one of whom is a lawyer in New York City, 
 and the other principal of the New Haven (Conn.) 
 High School. John Alonzo, the eldest son, was the 
 first settler in Evanston, Illinois. In 1854, the year 
 of his arrival at Evanston, there was but one house 
 on the more than three hundred acres of land which 
 the newly organized university had purchased. 
 This house Mr. Pearsons and his wife occupied. For 
 several years he ran an express wagon between the 
 suburban village and the city of Chicago; later he 
 engaged in the lumber business. His house was 
 
 3 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 headquarters for Methodist ministers and for every- 
 thing that pertained to the interests of Methodism 
 in Evanston. Throughout life he and Mrs. Pearsons 
 took a deep interest in the welfare of their Church 
 and University. One of the Ladies' Halls is known 
 as the Mrs. John A. Pearsons Hall. Mr. Pearsons 
 died January 25, 1902, honored and loved by all 
 who knew him. William Baron Chapin, the third 
 son, was born at Fairlee, Vermont, in 1814. He died 
 at Holyoke, Massachusetts, in 1897. He was edu- 
 cated in the common schools and academies of his 
 native state, but studied law in the Harvard Law 
 School, graduating in 1849. He settled very soon 
 thereafter in Holyoke, Massachusetts, making, as 
 he used to say, the thirteenth lawyer seeking a living 
 in that then rather small village. His reputation 
 for honesty and ability, his urbanity and public 
 spirit led to his appointment by the Governor of 
 the State, as Judge in the Police Court, a position he 
 filled to the satisfaction of the public and retained 
 until his death. He was an ardent lover of music, 
 and through his efforts made it possible for the citi- 
 zens of Holyoke to listen frequently to the best 
 music of the times. He served the city three times 
 as its mayor and never failed on any occasion to do 
 whatever he could to advance its interests. After 
 the death of his father, and until the mother had a 
 house of her own built for her by her second son, 
 she lived in his family. She died in 1885 at the age 
 of ninety-one years and four months. George, the 
 fourth son, who became a business man at an early 
 
 4 
 
BIRTH, ANCESTRY AND EDUCATION 
 
 age, made his home in Fort Dodge, Iowa. Here he 
 acquired a competent fortune, and was recognized 
 as a man of sterling integrity and a leader in public 
 affairs. He was interested in the building of rail- 
 roads, the draining of swamps, and in whatever 
 concerned the welfare of the state. He was three 
 times chosen mayor of his adopted city, and from 
 1885 to 1888 was Indian Inspector, to the great 
 advantage of his wards. He died in July, 1904, aged 
 74, leaving three sons and a daughter, who became 
 the wife of the late Senator Dolliver of Iowa. Mr. 
 Pearsons began his business life in connection with the 
 Vermont Central Railroad. In 1868 he moved to Fort 
 Dodge, Iowa, where he spent the remainder of his 
 days. The brothers differed from each other in 
 temperament and personal appearance, but were 
 alike in their high standards of duty and in their 
 genuine patriotism. Above the ordinary size, wher- 
 ever they went, they impressed people by their mag- 
 nificent physique and their courtly manners. 
 
 The parents were of Puritan stock and trained 
 their children carefully in the principles of their 
 faith. Of John Pearsons, the father, his son, the 
 Doctor, says, "He was the honestest man I ever 
 knew." A Vermont farmer, a descendant of a fam- 
 ily which, though with Scotch blood in its veins, had 
 resided in the state about one hundred years, by 
 strict economy he obtained a good living from 
 his land, and at his death left his children an 
 honored name and a character in which they could 
 not detect a flaw. The mother, Hannah Putnam, a 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 distant relative of the famous Israel Putnam, was 
 distinguished for her mental gifts and her personal 
 beauty. Her sparkling black eyes and her keen 
 wit have descended to her second son, who resem- 
 bles her more than any of her other children. John 
 Pearsons and his wife were members of the Metho- 
 dist Church of Bradford, and in> it the children 
 acquired their church-going habit. Dr. Pearsons 
 has often referred to the long walks he took with 
 his mother Sunday mornings to attend Sunday 
 school. The grandparents on the father's side were 
 Congregationalists. To each of these churches the 
 Doctor has given a fund of five thousand dol- 
 lars on condition that the Methodists care for 
 the graves of the father and mother, and the Congre- 
 gationalists for the graves of the grandparents. 
 He has also provided a library for his native town. 
 In the winter the children attended the district 
 school, and in the summer worked on the farm. 
 Early in his life Daniel determined to get an educa- 
 tion and make a place for himself in the world. His 
 mother encouraged him and his father was ready to 
 assist him as far as his means allowed. He studied 
 in the Bradford Academy and in the Montpelier 
 Conference (then Newbury) Seminary, where he 
 prepared for Dartmouth College, and where he was 
 converted. To this seminary he has given fifty 
 thousand dollars, as part of its endowment. Lack 
 of money compelled him to leave college at the end 
 of the first year. He had lived on less than a dollar 
 a week, had boarded himself, and like many another 
 
 6 
 
BIRTH, ANCESTRY AND EDUCATION 
 
 young man eager for an education, he taught school 
 for several winters in Vermont and Massachusetts. 
 Although he began to teach when only sixteen he 
 was very successful. During these formative years 
 an incident occurred which illustrates what he has 
 always called the care of "a kind providence." 
 When about eighteen or nineteen he decided to go 
 to Boston, find a place in a store and become a mer- 
 chant. For days he walked the streets unsuccess- 
 fully. No one wanted him. With his money nearly 
 gone, he went down to the market, near Faneuil 
 Hall, met a man with a truck wagon, who hired him 
 at once and took him out on the wagon to his home 
 in Brookline where he had a dairy and a small farm. 
 At the end of the season his employer, an earnest 
 Baptist, advised him to attend the Manual Labor 
 School which his denomination had established at 
 Worcester, Massachusetts, where he could earn his 
 way without interfering with his studies. He took 
 the advice and at the close of the term a committee 
 from a school in the suburbs came to the Academy 
 for a teacher, and after interviewing several of the 
 young men who had been recommended, insisted 
 on seeing "that young man from Vermont, who 
 had paid his way by his work," and the only one 
 in the school who had done so. A brief consul- 
 tation with him led to his employment as the teacher 
 of a school in which his experiences have been cher- 
 ished in memory as among the pleasantest of his 
 life. With the money saved from his Brookline 
 engagement and from his winter's service he was 
 
 7 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 able to continue his preparation for college. In his 
 later years Dr. Pearsons spoke very often of the 
 pleasure he had in teaching, especially in helping 
 earnest students to overcome what to them seemed 
 at times insurmountable difficulties. In one of his 
 five schools he had an encounter with a bully, larger 
 than himself, whom he had whipped thoroughly to 
 the great joy of the school and of the entire neigh- 
 borhood. In the lawsuit which followed he was 
 triumphantly acquitted. The expense of this suit 
 was met by the people, and in the dismissal of the 
 case, which was for assault and battery, the judge 
 said that evidently the "young man had made the 
 assault and the teacher had applied the battery." 
 
 In 1841 Dr. Pearsons began his professional 
 studies at Woodstock, Vermont, at that time one 
 of the best medical schools in New England. Its 
 professors were men of distinction in their profession 
 and did not fail to arouse the ambition of their 
 students. When Dr. Alonzo Clark, one of these 
 professors, and a physician of large practise in the 
 city of New York, learned that Mr. Pearsons had 
 decided to defer graduation a year in order that he 
 might earn money for his necessary expenses, he 
 offered to loan the hundred dollars needed, provided 
 he would remain and take his diploma. He con- 
 sented, and not long after graduation settled in 
 Chicopee, Massachusetts, where as partner with a 
 successful doctor, he earned the first year about 
 eighteen hundred dollars, paid off his indebtedness 
 and laid something by for future use. This partner- 
 
 8 
 
BIRTH, ANCESTRY AND EDUCATION 
 
 ship continued for three years, when he bought a 
 house, married Miss Marietta Chapin, daughter of 
 Deacon Giles Chapin of Chicopee, and began prac- 
 tise by himself. This practise became large and 
 profitable. With a wife of unusual beauty of per- 
 son and singular charm of manner, a member of one 
 of the old families of the state, educated in Miss 
 Willard's Seminary at Troy, New York, and inter- 
 ested in everything that interested her husband or 
 promoted the welfare of the community or the 
 world, the young physician could hardly fail to 
 become a leading figure in the growing manufactur- 
 ing town. He was appointed health officer, made 
 superintendent of schools, and as a leading citizen 
 arranged a course of lectures under the auspices of 
 the Cabot Institute in which such men as Dr. J. B. 
 C. Smith of Boston, Dr. E. H. Chapin of New York, 
 Horace Greeley, Elihu Burritt, Theodore Parker 
 and President Hitchcock of Amherst College took 
 part. The fee paid was ten dollars a night and 
 expenses. The profits from these lecture courses, 
 which continued until the lecturers began to demand 
 larger pay, were turned over to a Library Associ- 
 ation and laid the foundation of the Chicopee Pub- 
 lic Library, one of the best of its kind in the state. 
 It was during the late thirties and the early forties 
 that Mary Lyon was trying to establish a school for 
 girls at South Hadley. One of the homes in which 
 she was a welcome visitor, and where she received 
 sympathy and aid, was that of Deacon Chapin. 
 Dr. Pearsons was deeply interested in her efforts, 
 
 9 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 in the woman herself, in the character and aim of 
 her school, which he frequently visited, and decided 
 that if he were ever able he would do what he could to 
 aid such schools as hers. Neither he nor Miss Lyon 
 at that time dreamed of the great institution which 
 has grown up in that little country village, or that 
 the country physician would put hundreds of thou- 
 sands of dollars into its buildings and its endow- 
 ment. In the early and middle forties "Pa Hawks,*' 
 as he was called, a retired minister, a unique per- 
 sonality, drove from town to town in an old wagon 
 drawn by a slow-moving horse, begging bedding, 
 dishes, corn, potatoes, almost anything for the girls 
 in the new school. It was the sacrifice, the heroism, 
 and the enthusiasm of the founders of what is now 
 Mount Holyoke College that deepened and made 
 permanent Dr. Pearsons' interest in the educa- 
 tion of poor boys and girls. 
 
 In love with his profession, satisfied with the posi- 
 tion he held in the community, at home in the best 
 social circles, it was with genuine surprise, as he has 
 told the story, that one day he listened to his wife's 
 question, "Why don't we sell out and go West?" 
 
 "What?" said I. "Give up this fine practise 
 and begin again ?" "Yes," said she. "I have heard 
 you talk with that man from Oregon" (his name was 
 Thurston, he represented Oregon in Congress, and 
 used to spend some of his vacations in and about 
 Chicopee), "and I have made up my mind that you 
 were made for a business man." "Whatever I am, 
 I owe to my wife," asserts the doctor. "She inter- 
 
 10 
 
BIRTH, ANCESTRY AND EDUCATION 
 
 ested me in everything good. To her belongs the 
 credit for all that I have done. I trusted her judg- 
 ment, I never knew it to fail. I always told her 
 everything and always followed her advice. Within 
 three days a man came along and wanted to buy 
 my practise. I sold it to him as quickly as you can 
 snap your thumb. My wife's friends were greatly 
 disturbed. They thought it was a foolish move. 
 But my wife was firm. We broke up housekeeping. 
 I sold our house and we spent six months in visiting 
 Europe. It was our first trip abroad. My wife 
 loved travel. This trip did both of us a great deal 
 of good. In 1851 we made our first visit to the 
 West. We went as far as Janesville, where an uncle 
 and aunt lived. The Railway stopped at Elgin. 
 The rest of the way we went by stage. The roads 
 were poor and muddy and sometimes we forded the 
 rivers. One of our fellow-passengers from Beloit 
 to Janesville was a loud-talking swearing sort of 
 a man, who found fault with everybody and every- 
 thing. At Beloit I saw a building on the hill above 
 the river and I asked what that building was. 'Oh,' 
 said he, ' that is a college which some cranks from the 
 East are trying to build.' All the way to Janesville 
 he kept talking against the colleges and I defended 
 them. When we reached our destination I went up 
 to him, shook my fist in his face, and said I am coming 
 out West, and am going to become a very rich man and 
 give money to just such colleges as this." And Dr. 
 Pearsons always adds, "I have kept my promise." 
 It is not surprising that one of his first gifts to 
 
 11 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 colleges should have been to Beloit. It is surprising 
 that it should have been one hundred thousand 
 dollars, that it should have been made without 
 solicitation and without the knowledge of any one 
 connected with the institution. At that time the 
 college was small, hardly able to meet its bills, with 
 no prospect of the rapid expansion which has brought 
 it into a leading position among the colleges of the 
 country. If the offer of one hundred thousand dol- 
 lars by an unknown man from Chicago, came as an 
 overwhelming surprise to the friends of Beloit, there 
 was hardly less surprise that the gift was made on 
 condition that its trustees and friends raise another 
 hundred thousand dollars in about seven weeks to 
 match it. Impossible as it seemed to many to meet 
 those conditions, they were met, and the college 
 placed on a fair financial foundation. There was 
 only one man on the Board of Trustees who at that 
 time had any personal acquaintance with Dr. 
 Pearsons, and to enquirers who wondered if the 
 generous stranger would be able to make good his 
 promises, he was permitted to give assurances which 
 removed every doubt. From that day to this the 
 relations between Dr. Pearsons and Beloit have 
 been of the most intimate character, and his gifts 
 to the college instead of stopping with one hundred 
 thousand dollars in buildings and endowments have 
 nearly or quite reached the sum of six hundred thou- 
 sand dollars. Thus has his promise to give money 
 to the college which Eastern cranks were building 
 on the hill been redeemed. 
 
 12 
 
n 
 
 PREPARATION FOR LIFE IN CHICAGO 
 
n 
 
 PREPARATION FOR LIFE IN CHICAGO 
 
 IN THE period between the sale of his practise in 
 Chicopee and his settlement in Chicago, from 
 1851 to 1860, Dr. Pearsons was preparing 
 himself, consciously or unconsciously, for his busi- 
 ness career in the city on Lake Michigan. These 
 preparatory years, as Dr. Pearsons always calls 
 them, were business years also, and strenuous years 
 as well. They were years spent in travel, in lectur- 
 ing, in the purchase and sale of wood, timber and 
 land, and in study not only of the special subjects 
 upon which he addressed the people, but of condi- 
 tions, moral, educational and financial, prevailing 
 in different sections of the country. 
 
 On his return from Europe, a trip at that time 
 not often made by persons in his circumstances, 
 Dr. Calvin Cutter of Boston, famous as a physician 
 and as an author of text-books on physiology, anat- 
 omy and hygiene, persuaded him to go South and 
 introduce his books into the schools and higher 
 institutions of learning in that section of the country. 
 It was arranged that he should lecture on the topics 
 treated in the books he had to sell wherever he could 
 
 15 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 find an opportunity. With headquarters at Nash- 
 ville, Tennessee, Dr. and Mrs. Pearsons spent the 
 winters of 1852 and 1853 in traveling over Tennessee, 
 Kentucky, Alabama and Georgia, the Doctor speak- 
 ing in nearly all of the colleges in those states. So 
 successful were these two winters in the South that 
 he devoted the winters of 1854 and 1855 to lecturing 
 in the State of Maine on his own account, without 
 regard to the sale of books. In these lectures he 
 sought to do good and to disseminate knowledge. 
 He had brought home a fine manikin from Europe, 
 and with his charts possessed an apparatus which 
 could not fail to attract attention. To these lec- 
 tures he has often referred as furnishing an eminently 
 satisfactory experience in his life. In the winter 
 of 1856 lectures were given in the West, and in 1857 
 a course was given in Lawrence University, Apple- 
 ton, Wisconsin, one of the institutions which years 
 afterward received aid from the Doctor's purse. 
 
 Nowhere had he any difficulty in securing an 
 audience. Those who have heard him speak from 
 college platforms can easily understand how attrac- 
 tive he must have been as a lecturer. His subject 
 was comparatively new. It was presented as one 
 of great importance, as one that concerned the 
 health, efficiency and comfort of every living being. 
 It was fully illustrated. The lecturer had the fac- 
 ulty, inborn and carefully cultivated, of saying in 
 simple terse language what he wanted to say and 
 no more, and of saying what his audience apparently 
 wished him to say. A plain man, like Brutus, he 
 
 16 
 
PREPARATION FOR LIFE IN CHICAGO 
 
 spoke straight on, and used words which no one had 
 any difficulty in understanding. At the end of every 
 lecture those who had heard him felt that they had 
 learned something worth knowing, had listened to 
 a man who had said something for them to remem- 
 ber. He was attractive in personal appearance, 
 with a clear penetrating voice, absolute master of 
 himself, with a fine command of the language of 
 common life and a power to employ technical terms 
 so that common people could catch their meaning. 
 With a native wit which burst forth spontaneously 
 in nearly every sentence and illuminated every sub- 
 ject upon which he touched, it is only what we 
 might have anticipated that he should be as success- 
 ful as a lecturer as he had been as a physician, or as 
 in later years he would prove himself to be as a man 
 of business. During these years he made lecturing 
 a business, and took care not to fail in it. 
 
 It was no easy matter, even after the decision had 
 been made to go West, to find just the place for a 
 permanent home. A visit to Janesville, Wiscon- 
 sin, had made it clear that northern Illinois offered 
 more attractions for business enterprise than any 
 other point in the Middle West. But the decision 
 to settle in Chicago was not reached for several 
 years. While studying the country and making 
 several trips a year between the East and West, the 
 Doctor purchased a farm in Vermont on which there 
 was a fine lot of wood with a large amount of timber 
 on it ready for marketing. He knew that the rail- 
 road wanted both timber and wood and that, as the 
 2 17 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 way to the railroad station was down hill, it would 
 be easy to haul them to the station. He knew that 
 he could secure Frenchmen at a reasonable price to 
 get the wood ready for him, and he persuaded him- 
 self that after disposing of the wood and timber he 
 could sell the farm and its buildings for all they cost 
 him. His father, with whom he was staying at the 
 time of his purchase of the farm (for which he paid 
 cash), was much surprised at what his venturesome 
 son had done, and wondered a little what he would 
 do next. The father protested, mildly, against the 
 desecration which would be wrought by cutting down 
 "those beautiful trees" which had stood so long 
 and were so dear to the people who lived in the 
 neighborhood. The protest did little good. The 
 son persisted and in the course of three or four years 
 sold his timber and four thousand cords of wood, 
 obtained the money for it and then disposed of the 
 farm and the buildings on it, for what he had paid 
 in the beginning. He was led to undertake this 
 experiment while waiting for a business to which 
 he could devote his life, partly to show a younger 
 brother what could be done in this direction and to 
 encourage him to go into business himself. That 
 brother was an apt pupil and made good use of the 
 instruction he received. 
 
 But four years of lecturing as a business seemed to 
 the Doctor a sufficiently long period for that kind 
 of life. True, he had made it profitable. He saw 
 that he could secure an independent fortune were 
 he to follow it. But with all of its attractions it did 
 
 18 
 
PREPARATION FOR LIFE IN CHICAGO 
 
 not satisfy him, and although he continued to lec- 
 ture occasionally for two years longer, here and there, 
 and especially in the West, he ceased to look upon 
 lecturing as an occupation to be followed through 
 life. 
 
 One day, when in Springfield, Massachusetts, the 
 owner of 14,000 acres of land in Champaign and 
 Livingston Counties, Illinois, met him on the street, 
 and asked him if he would undertake the sale of 
 these lands on a five per cent commission. The 
 offer had come as if by chance and was accepted. 
 Mrs. Pearsons and her husband now felt that the 
 time had come for them to settle permanently in 
 the West; just where, they left the future to decide, 
 but somewhere in Illinois. For more than a year 
 their headquarters were at Rochelle, Ogle County. 
 Here the Doctor owned a farm of several hundred 
 acres from which in a single season he cut one hun- 
 dred and fifty tons of hay and on it fed seventy head 
 of cattle through the winter. But his heart was 
 not in farming; rather in selling land for others to 
 occupy. 
 
 First of all he sought to discover the best way to 
 secure a perfect title to land that had been sold, 
 perhaps more than once, for taxes. Very often this 
 was a difficult task, for land titles had become very 
 complicated. Many who held them would not give 
 them up on reasonable terms. There were land 
 sharpers in those days in Illinois. It took the Doc- 
 tor more than a year to learn their crooked ways; 
 but nature had endowed him with keenness of per- 
 
 19 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 ception and with a shrewdness which the sharpers 
 failed to take into account. In a little while they 
 soon discovered that in dealing with the people he 
 was more than their match. He dealt honestly. 
 The people trusted his word. The titles he gave 
 proved to be good. There was less and less business 
 for men who did not intend to keep their word. 
 Such men hated him, as a matter of course. They 
 spoke against him. He paid no attention to them, 
 but went quietly on disposing of the land already 
 entrusted to him, and becoming agent for the sale 
 of other large tracts of land and even of small ones, 
 if asked to do so. 
 
 Pleasantly situated, as he had been in Rochelle, 
 living sometimes with a private family, sometimes 
 on his farm, he saw that with the increase in his 
 business, it would be for his advantage to be in 
 Chicago. Some idea of the extent of that business 
 soon after his settlement in that city, may be ob- 
 tained from the fact that Michael Sullivan, "the 
 land king," made him his agent for the sale of 40,000 
 acres and Solomon Sturgis entrusted him with the 
 agency for the sale of 20,000 more. Nor were these 
 the only tracts of land for which he was agent; his 
 growing reputation as a land broker and his extraor- 
 dinary success in selling lands where others had 
 failed and the confidence which the people in various 
 sections of the state had in him led the authorities 
 of the Illinois Central Railroad Company to offer 
 him the agency for the disposal of their lands. These 
 lands they wished to sell to actual settlers. They 
 
 20 
 
PREPARATION FOR LIFE IN CHICAGO 
 
 were on each side of their right of way and embraced 
 every alternate section and extended out for several 
 miles. Favorably situated, as we now see they 
 were, they were then a drug on the market. Exten- 
 sive advertising had done little good. People pre- 
 ferred to settle near the rivers, in regions already 
 partially occupied. Many of those who had bought 
 near the Road were complaining of its unhealthful- 
 ness. They suffered from fever, ague and discour- 
 agement, and were more ready to offer their own 
 lands for sale than to persuade others to purchase 
 near them. Furthermore, it was rumored that the 
 title to the railroad lands was not good. In such 
 circumstances there was little encouragement for a 
 man like Dr. Pearsons, whose reputation was already 
 made, and who had a large and growing business, to 
 become an agent for their sale. He appreciated the 
 difficulties which stood in his way, but did not shrink 
 from them. He knew he could overcome them. 
 Having satisfied himself that these railroad titles 
 were flawless, and having brought capitalists in the 
 East to his way of thinking, he offered these lands 
 for sale, and as he did so, expressed his willingness 
 to loan money to their purchasers rather than to 
 purchasers of the lands at their side. He knew that 
 with the settlement of the country the suffering from 
 fever and ague and from homesickness would cease. 
 His frank, open ways with the people, his reputation 
 as a man who always did as he agreed, who was ready 
 to relieve a man from his land if its buyer found it 
 too much of a burden for him to carry, rendered it 
 
 21 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 easy for him to succeed where many others had 
 failed. To him, more than anyone else in his gen- 
 eration, is the disposal of these lands due, and their 
 occupation, by industrious, intelligent and prosper- 
 ous communities. 
 
 If we have somewhat anticipated later events in 
 Dr. Pearsons' life, it has been in order to bring out 
 more clearly the nature of that preparation through 
 which he passed before entering upon a business 
 career in Chicago, which in less than three decades 
 made him several times a millionaire. 
 
 When he came to the City his reputation as a 
 dealer in land was fairly well established. Out in 
 the State he was better known than by business men 
 of Chicago. There the people trusted him implicitly. 
 Men in the East controlling large capital had given 
 him their complete confidence. The ^Etna Life 
 Insurance Company of Hartford, Connecticut, had 
 deemed itself fortunate in securing such a man to 
 handle its funds. With a business as large as his 
 and a reputation for honesty which had never been 
 questioned, he was soon reckoned as one of the solid 
 men of the city. He had mastered the details of 
 the business he had chosen to follow. His accounts 
 at the banks were never overdrawn. Bills were al- 
 ways paid as soon as presented. He had few, if any, 
 confidants, but it was noticed that his transactions 
 were large and that he was always able to carry them 
 out. 
 
 For such a man with such a training, with such 
 capitalists behind him and success already won, it 
 
 22 
 
PREPARATION FOR LIFE IN CHICAGO 
 
 is easy to see that in spite of the political unrest in 
 the country, it would be easy to win a competency, 
 and even a large fortune in Chicago. He himself 
 has always said that everything worked for his advan- 
 tage. He had met with nothing to discourage him. 
 Everything that he had touched turned into money. 
 True his personal capital was small, but in mental 
 power, in business ability he was rich. He was per- 
 sistent also. Never for a moment did he doubt 
 his complete success. He did not undertake to do 
 many things, but the one thing to which he gave his 
 mind he made sufficiently important to tax all his 
 energies. 
 
 The good Providence, which had led him hitherto, 
 and had brought him to Chicago, he felt sure would 
 not forsake him there. 
 
 A great blessing had come to him in his wife. She 
 never doubted the wisdom of any of his movements. 
 They had in fact counselled together in regard to 
 them all. She was the silent partner in all her hus- 
 band's undertakings. From the day when he sold 
 his practise in Massachusetts and they had turned 
 their back on its delightful social life, through years 
 of patient waiting, she had cheered him with her 
 presence and strengthened him by her approval. 
 In that early period of their life they were one in 
 thought and aim, as they continued to be, until for 
 her the end came, and she was taken home to enjoy 
 her well-earned rest. But for the wife, the husband 
 might not have been able to do what he has done for 
 the benefit of his fellowmen. To her wisdom, her 
 
 23 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 sympathy, her love and her support in weariness and 
 disappointment, he could turn for refuge and strength. 
 In her clear vision, he never failed to see light. "To 
 her," he has said again and again, "I owe everything 
 that I have become. The fortune which I have 
 distributed was as much hers as mine. She helped 
 me to earn it and while she lived she helped me to 
 distribute it." 
 
Ill 
 
 CHICAGO IN 1860 AND AFTER 
 
Ill 
 
 CHICAGO IN 1860 AND AFTER 
 
 THE Census of 1860 gave Chicago a population 
 slightly in excess of 112,000. At that time 
 the three divisions of the city, North, West 
 and South, were well marked. The North Side was 
 the aristocratic side. It had been first settled, and 
 by excellent and prosperous families. On or near 
 the shore of the lake dwelt such men as the Honorable 
 Isaac N. Arnold, member of Congress, and Author 
 of a Life of Lincoln, Ezra McCagg, Judge Mark 
 Skinner, Mahlon D. Ogden, William B. Ogden, by 
 common consent, the ablest, most prominent and 
 influential citizen of Chicago, E. H. Sheldon, Walter 
 L. Newberry, the founder of the Newberry Library, 
 E. B. Washburn, Minister of the United States to 
 France, Gurdori S. Hubbard, the Indian Trader, and 
 E. W. Blatchford, interested in every plan formed 
 for the benefit of the city. Such a group of men 
 and associated with them were many others whose 
 names cannot be here mentioned it would have 
 been difficult at that time to have found in any other 
 city of its size in the country. The residence quar- 
 ter on the North Side was very attractive. Though 
 
 27 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 the houses were nearly all of wood, they stood back 
 from the street in the midst of ample grounds and 
 were surrounded by trees which furnished abundant 
 shade. Houses similar to these, though less costly, 
 were scattered along the Lake Shore, beyond what 
 is now Lincoln Park, out into Lake View, on whose 
 open fields the German contingent in the city was 
 wont to make merry on Sundays and holidays. 
 
 Then, as now, there were more people on the West 
 Side than on the other two sides combined. But 
 beyond Ashland Boulevard, then Reuben Street, 
 and south of Adams Street, the houses were few and 
 widely scattered. Here and there manufacturing 
 establishments had begun to spring up. The popu- 
 lation was chiefly of the industrial class. It was 
 intelligent, energetic and frugal. Not a few men of 
 wealth belonged to it and lived in its midst. Be- 
 yond Twenty-second Street on the South Side, with 
 the exception of a few houses on Cottage Grove 
 Avenue, the territory was largely unoccupied. The 
 Stock Yards were about one half mile west of Camp 
 Douglass, where Confederate prisoners were kept 
 during the war. This camp was at the corner of 
 Thirty-first Street and Cottage Grove Avenue. In 
 1860 and for some years afterward, Chicago pre- 
 sented the appearance, to a stranger, of an over- 
 grown country village, with here and there a street 
 which reminded one of a city. 
 
 Among the dealers in real estate Peter Page and 
 the Bowen Brothers were prominent. Potter Palmer 
 with Marshall Field and L. Z. Leiter, as partners, 
 
 28 
 
CHICAGO IN 1860 AND AFTER 
 
 C. B. and J. V. Far well, controlled the dry-goods 
 business. J. W. Doane, G. S. Hubbard, E. W. 
 Blatchford, Cyrus H. McCormick, T. W. Harvey 
 and scores of others hardly less prominent in different 
 lines of business, were building up fortunes for them- 
 selves, and at the same time doing what they could 
 to build up the city. Among the physicians, Dr. 
 N. S. Davis was a leader; Emory A. Storrs stood at 
 the head of the Bar. Solomon Smith, W. F. Cool- 
 baugh, Chauncy M. Blair and George Smith, who 
 died in London only a few years ago leaving a very 
 large fortune, were leading bankers. The late Chief 
 Justice Melville W. Fuller was a rising young lawyer. 
 Van H. Higgins, Norman B. Judd, Jerome Beecher, 
 Jacob Beidler, Peter Schuttler, the wagon maker, 
 B. W. Raymond, L. D. Boone, T. M. Avery, H. Z. 
 Culver, Deacon Philo Carpenter, Deacon William 
 Bross, afterwards Lieutenant Governor of Illinois, 
 in addition to those above mentioned, were some of 
 the men with whom during his early years in Chicago, 
 Dr. Pearsons was brought into contact. To say 
 that in ability, he compared favorably with the best 
 of them, is not going beyond the truth. For a young 
 city the pulpit, too, had fully its share of fame. Dr. 
 W. W. Everts of the First Baptist Church, Dr. Z. M. 
 Humphrey of the First Presbyterian Church, Dr. 
 R. W. Patterson of the Second Presbyterian Church, 
 Drs. T. M. Eddy and I. H. Tiffany of the Methodist 
 Church, Dr. W. W. Patton of the First Congrega- 
 tional Church, Dr. W. H. Ryder of St. Paul's Uni- 
 versalist Church, Dr. Robert Collyer of Unity Church 
 
 29 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 were men who were able to fill any pulpit in the land. 
 Without exception they were staunch defenders of 
 the Union and throughout the war were untiring in 
 their efforts to support the government and provide 
 for the wants of the soldiers. Not less outspoken 
 than they or less earnest in their service were Dr. 
 Robert H. Clarkson of St. James' Episcopal Church 
 and Father Dennis Dunne of the Roman Catholic 
 Church. From his own minister, Dr. Humphrey, 
 and from each of the others, as he listened to them 
 from time to time, Dr. Pearsons heard words which 
 could not fail to deepen his sense of the value of an 
 education and his conviction that opportunities for 
 acquiring it should be open to the children of the 
 poorest families in the country. 
 
 The leading newspaper was The Tribune, owned in 
 part but edited and controlled by Joseph Medill, 
 whose instinct for journalism was inborn, and whose 
 great ability was always used for what he conceived 
 to be right. Its competitor, The Times, brilliant 
 and somewhat unscrupulous, was edited and owned 
 by William F. Story, a man of rare talent, and greatly 
 loved by those who knew him intimately. During 
 the war this paper was not always loyal to the Gov- 
 ernment. The evening journals were of less impor- 
 tance, though they filled a large place in the estima- 
 tion of the public. Outside their respective denom- 
 inations, the religious papers were little known and 
 their circulation was small. The business of the 
 city was ranged around the Court House, which 
 stood on the present site of the City Hall, and occu- 
 
 30 
 
CHICAGO IN 1860 AND AFTER 
 
 pied an entire block. It was not till after the war, 
 although the city rapidly increased in size during 
 the period of hostilities, that a new and better Chi- 
 cago began to show itself. This new Chicago, which 
 the Census of 1870 reported as having a population 
 of 293,000, was in its business section, as well as in 
 its North Side residence quarter, almost wholly 
 swept away by the fire of 1871. In the new Chicago, 
 which gradually took the place of the one which had 
 been destroyed, its builders had commendable pride, 
 though many years passed before all the marks 
 which the tornado of fire had left were removed. 
 That third Chicago is now giving place to a city 
 whose hotels, immense stores, sky-scrapers, office 
 buildings, railway-stations and palatial homes call 
 forth the admiration of every visitor. That a retail 
 store, and a dry-goods store at that, should occupy 
 in the first decade of the new century, the entire 
 front on State Street, between Washington and 
 Randolph Streets and nearly as much space on the 
 Wabash Avenue front had hardly entered the mind 
 of Marshall Field, the great merchant, or of any of 
 his partners in the seventies or the eighties. Nor 
 had William Deering or Cyrus H. McCormick or 
 P. D. Armour or Gustavus A. Swift dreamed of a 
 business like that which their successors now control. 
 But even then the stress of business was severe and 
 the problems which were daily coming up for solu- 
 tion were perplexing. That so many of them were 
 solved satisfactorily may well excite wonder. 
 
 Lake Street was the center of the dry-goods trade 
 
 31 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 of the city. Dearborn Street, between Lake and 
 Madison Streets, was the center of the banking 
 business. Until 1864, the Second Baptist Church 
 worshipped in a building which stood on the South 
 East corner of La Salle and Washington Street, a 
 corner afterwards occupied by the Board of Trade. 
 The Second Presbyterian Church was at the corner 
 of Wabash Avenue and Randolph Street, and the 
 First Baptist Church and the First Presbyterian 
 Church were not far from each other on Wabash 
 Avenue near Van Buren Street. 
 
 Where the Auditorium Hotel now stands was a 
 row of marble fronts, three stories in height, with 
 a basement for kitchen and dining room, known as 
 the Marble Terrace, in which Tuthill King, S. C. 
 Griggs, J. W. Peck, J. W. Scammon and ex-Governor 
 Bross had their homes. This row of houses was 
 destroyed in the fire of 1871 and was never fully 
 rebuilt. 
 
 Important as Chicago was in 1860 as a business 
 center, it was then yet little more than a straggling 
 western town. Since the panic of 1857 there had 
 not been much building. The prevailing architec- 
 ture, save in a few residence quarters, was unattrac- 
 tive. The hotels were the most imposing buildings 
 in the city. As houses of entertainment, few better 
 could be found anywhere. Among them the Sher- 
 man House, Tremont, Richmond and Metropolitan 
 deserve mention. 
 
 The Wigwam, in which Abraham Lincoln was 
 nominated for the Presidency, stood on Market 
 
CHICAGO IN 1860 AND AFTER 
 
 Street between Randolph and Washington Streets. 
 In it the Honorable W. M. Evarts of New York City, 
 presented as a candidate for the Presidency the name 
 of the Honorable William H. Seward of New York, 
 whose nomination the East had taken for granted. 
 He was followed by the Honorable Norman B. Judd 
 of Chicago, who presented the name of Abraham Lin- 
 coln of Illinois. There were no nominating speeches 
 like those to which we are now accustomed. But 
 feeling was intense and often very bitter. Outside 
 his own state Lincoln was little known, while Seward 
 was known and honored throughout the whole coun- 
 try. The nomination of Lincoln added to the inter- 
 est which the East had begun to take in Chicago, 
 and drew attention to it as a new center for the 
 creation and expression of public opinion. Through- 
 out the war Chicago was faithful to the cause of the 
 Union, not only in the raising and equipment of sol- 
 diers, but in providing for their comfort in field and 
 hospital. It was in this city that immense fairs were 
 held in the interest of the Sanitary Commission, in 
 which such women as Mrs. M. D. Hoge and Mrs. 
 Mary Livermore were prominent and movements 
 originated which contributed not a little to the 
 efficiency of our armies. 
 
 But while outwardly patriotic and apparently 
 ready to submit to any sacrifice for the honor of the 
 flag, the city as early as 1859 was divided into parties 
 which took opposite sides on the questions which 
 led to the Civil War. Native Americans, coming 
 from places north of Mason and Dixon's Line, were 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 for freedom and the Union, at whatever cost. Sym- 
 pathizing with them were the Germans and the 
 Scandinavians, an important element in the city, 
 and a majority of the Irish. Men born and educated 
 in the South, and the number was quite large, fa- 
 vored slavery and the doctrine of States Rights, and 
 were willing to permit secession as a last resort. 
 These honest differences of opinion and the discus- 
 sions to which they gave rise, help to make Chicago 
 an interesting place in which to live, even if its busi- 
 ness interests were sometimes threatened. 
 
IV 
 
 BUSINESS LIFE IN CHICAGO 
 
IV 
 BUSINESS LIFE IN CHICAGO 
 
 IT WAS a rainy morning in April, 1860, when Dr. 
 and Mrs. Pearsons came to Chicago to live. 
 They had no home of their own to which they 
 might go. There were no friends or relatives to bid 
 them welcome. Their entrance into the city excited 
 little interest, either on the part of men of wealth or 
 of the general public. As capital, the Doctor brought 
 five thousand dollars in cash in his handbag and 
 deeds to farms he owned out in the state. 
 
 A slight acquaintance with Mr. William H. Carter, 
 who kept a boarding-house at 46 Van Buren Street, 
 led him thither. Here board was secured for him- 
 self and wife at ten dollars a week. Here for several 
 years they had their home. A desk for business 
 was hired in the office of Harvey B. Hurd and Henry 
 Booth, 116 Randolph Street, for twenty-five dollars 
 a year. The second year the rent was doubled, and 
 the third, on the ground of the Doctor's growing 
 business, it was trebled. The Doctor decided that 
 if he must pay seventy-five dollars a year for a desk 
 in an office not his own, it would be better for him 
 to have an office which he could control. One was 
 
 37 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 found at a moderate rent not far from the one he had 
 occupied. It was in the Methodist Church Block. 
 This office he cared for himself and remained in it 
 for several years. It was always in good order. 
 
 When Mr. Carter, following the example of 
 Messrs. Hurd and Booth, raised the price of board 
 beyond what Dr. Pearsons deemed a reasonable 
 figure, he determined to have a house and home of 
 his own. He found no difficulty in exchanging land 
 in the country for 48 Van Buren Street, where he 
 lived many years. The house was well situated. It 
 was not far from the business center of the city, not 
 far from the First Presbyterian Church, at which 
 Dr. and Mrs. Pearsons were constant attendants. 
 As the city grew, however, this house became less 
 and less desirable as a place of residence; and after 
 disposing of it, its occupants went to the Palmer 
 House, where they continued to reside for sixteen 
 or seventeen years, or until their removal in 1885 
 to Hinsdale, a suburb sixteen miles from the city. 
 
 From a business point of view to most men the 
 outlook in 1860 would not have appeared altogether 
 promising. At that time few would have thought it 
 possible to lay the foundations of a large fortune by 
 the sale of land in neglected sections of the state. 
 
 Hay, when delivered, was bringing one dollar and 
 fifty cents a ton. Oats were selling at twelve and 
 one half cents a bushel. Corn brought only ten 
 cents a bushel. What inducement could there be to 
 buy land in Illinois? Neither farming nor stock- 
 raising at prevailing prices offered any great attrac- 
 
 88 
 
BUSINESS LIFE IN CHICAGO 
 
 tion to settlers. With an energy that seemed inex- 
 haustible, and an optimism that discouragements 
 could not weaken, Dr. Pearsons began and continued 
 to persuade men and women from the East, native 
 Americans, not a few of whom were of Scotch, Irish 
 or German descent, to make their homes in Illinois. 
 Of failure there was no thought. Sales of land were 
 made in lots of forty, eighty, one hundred and 
 twenty, one hundred and sixty acres, one quarter 
 of the price in cash, the remainder in one, two, three 
 years with interest at six per cent although the 
 regular rate was ten per cent or more. Usually he 
 was ready to loan money on favorable terms for 
 improvements, and thus was able to secure one fee 
 for the sale of the land, and another for lending 
 money with which to improve it. 
 
 When he settled in Chicago he was forty years old. 
 His faculties were well developed and thoroughly 
 disciplined. Rugged strength and a tenacious pur- 
 pose had come to him through his early struggles 
 and continued self-denials for an education. As a 
 physician he had studied people and learned some- 
 thing of the motives by which they are influenced. 
 Interest in Mary Lyon and her work for young 
 women, as well as personal efforts to improve the 
 sanitary, the intellectual and the moral conditions 
 of the village in which he had lived, had introduced 
 an altruistic element into his character which years 
 afterward became masterful. Travel abroad had 
 given him a glimpse of old-world conditions, and 
 travel in his own country had prepared him for the 
 
 39 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 business career upon which he was now entering. 
 He knew men East and West, North and South. 
 Tall, straight as an arrow, with no superfluous flesh, 
 with a keen black eye, which seemed to penetrate 
 to the depths of one's nature at a glance, with a 
 dignity of movement and manner which indicated 
 complete confidence in himself, with a frankness and 
 even bluntness of expression which spoke of honesty 
 of purpose and a determination to deal fairly with 
 all who came to him, he began in Chicago that 
 struggle for wealth which in thirty years brought 
 about results with which the world is familiar. 
 
 Whatever others may have thought, the man and 
 the times, were suited to each other. The oppor- 
 tunities for business which the city and state afforded 
 with the difficulties connected with them, were just 
 what a person with Dr. Pearsons' temperament and 
 character needed to stimulate him in the highest 
 degree and to bring out all that was best in him. To 
 his credit it should be said that if the money-making 
 instinct was strong in him, equally strong was the 
 purpose that the gains which came to him should 
 sometime be devoted to the cause of Christian 
 education. 
 
 The years were strenuous, the earlier ones in par- 
 ticular. For months at a time, Monday morning 
 would find the Doctor at a railway station, carpet- 
 bag in hand, ready for a trip to the country. He 
 had carefully arranged his route. He knew where 
 he would stop at night, where he would get each 
 meal. It was not at every house one would care to 
 
 40 
 
BUSINESS LIFE IN CHICAGO 
 
 sleep or eat. Ordinarily the Doctor would take 
 from four to six men with him to see the land he 
 was offering for sale. These men were all prospec- 
 tive buyers. But the Doctor did not care to sell 
 until purchasers had been on the land he wished 
 them to buy. While looking over the different 
 tracts of land, one would say, "I will take this sec- 
 tion, or a part of it," another would choose another 
 section, and a third and a fourth each, another, 
 till the entire tract, sometimes containing several 
 thousand acres, was sold. On one of the best of 
 these days more than five thousand acres passed 
 through his hands. In this way the foundations of 
 many villages were laid, which afterwards grew into 
 large and prosperous towns. Was this kind of work 
 profitable? Ask the Doctor, and he will tell you that 
 his five per cent commission on the sale of land 
 brought him very large returns. Did all of this 
 remain in his hands? By no means. Some of it 
 was expended in order that more might be made. 
 Apart from the cost of selling, which was deducted 
 from his profits, he was constantly asked for special 
 gifts. Men would say, "We are Methodists," or, 
 "We are Baptists" or " Presbyterians, and we must 
 settle where we can have schoolhouses or a church, 
 where we can feel at home, or a library," and then 
 the Doctor would reply, "Get together just such a 
 company as you want, select the place where you 
 want to live, and I will furnish the land at so much 
 an acre. I will loan you so much on it and I will 
 give one hundred, two hundred, perhaps three hun- 
 
 41 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 dred dollars for your schoolhouse, church or library." 
 Though the Doctor believed in being generous with 
 the people who bought his land, he disclaimed any 
 idea of benevolence in gifts like those just men- 
 tioned. They were investments from which he looked 
 for large returns in money. All the same, they were 
 gifts, and their frequency, and their amount had a 
 share in preparing him for the time when the making 
 of money would cease and the distribution of it 
 became the business of his life. 
 
 It was in the eastern part of the state or a. little 
 to the east of the center that the larger portion of 
 the land Dr. Pearsons had for sale was located. 
 Prior to his coming to Illinois settlers had shunned, 
 as undesirable, lands very far east of the line of the 
 Illinois Central Railroad, or even adjoining it. The 
 Doctor saw very soon that if he would succeed in his 
 business, he must convince people that just as good 
 homes could be made on the lands he had for sale as 
 those already occupied farther West. With the re- 
 sources at his command he soon effected an entire 
 change of feeling in the minds of incoming settlers. 
 
 Sundays were spent in Chicago. They were 
 happy, restful days. Mornings and evenings, Dr. 
 and Mrs. Pearsons would be in their pew in the First 
 Presbyterian Church. At home the Doctor would 
 learn from his wife what the women of the church were 
 trying to do for the needy, and through her, money 
 would find its way to them in ever-enlarging streams 
 of benevolence. The first year of his life in Chicago 
 saw him a teacher in the Railroad Mission established 
 
 42 
 

 BUSINESS LIFE IN CHICAGO 
 
 by Father Kent, and under the care of the First Pres- 
 byterian Church; he was soon deeply interested 
 in it and glad to give both time and money to its 
 support. Patriotic as a man born in Vermont and 
 living so long in Massachusetts could hardly fail to 
 be, in spite of the political excitement of the times, 
 he gave himself wholly to business. Perhaps, like 
 many others, he doubted at first if the South would 
 take up arms against the North. Were war to 
 break out, he could not believe it would be serious 
 or last long. He felt, too, that in bringing the right 
 kind of men into the State as permanent residents, he 
 was adding strength to the cause of freedom. 
 
 More and more his office became the center of 
 important money transactions. Profits from his 
 regular business and from increasingly large invest- 
 ments drew the attention of moneyed men to him. 
 As has been said, he not only sold land, but also 
 loaned money on it after its sale. For many years 
 hundreds of thousands of dollars were paid out by 
 him for first mortgages and in a majority of instances 
 on land which he himself had sold. Nor need any- 
 one be surprised at the amount of the loans he made, 
 for he sold not less than two hundred thousand 
 acres of land in Illinois alone. In the decade from 
 1860 to 1870 Dr. Pearsons became a rich man. He 
 was recognized as such in banking circles and in the 
 commercial circles of the city. His advice was 
 sought in matters pertaining to the city as the 
 advice of one of its leading citizens. When a new 
 bank was formed, it was a good advertisement for 
 
 43 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 it, if the name of Dr. D. K. Pearsons could be found 
 in the list of its stockholders. It was equally valu- 
 able for the Company which was seeking to develop 
 the South Side City Railway System. A man of 
 the strictest integrity, of unusual force of charac- 
 ter, of rare judgment in all financial matters, he 
 easily had found a place among the financial leaders 
 of the city. 
 
 It was in the late sixties that Dr. Pearsons began 
 to buy pine lands in Michigan. Business friends 
 shook their heads, warned him against the risks he 
 was taking, said that there was timber enough in 
 Michigan to last five hundred years, and that any 
 man buying these lands would surely lose all of the 
 money he put into them. The Doctor persisted, as 
 he usually did when he made up his mind to do any- 
 thing, and kept on buying and paying cash for his 
 purchases, until he had become the owner of six- 
 teen thousand acres of some of the best timber land 
 in the state. He, himself, superintended the cutting 
 of the logs, and often sold them himself. The Fire 
 of 1871 increased the demand for timber, and it was 
 fortunate for him, that when twelve of his houses 
 on the North Side were burned, he could exchange 
 his lumber for their reconstruction. The fire 
 brought him his share of loss, although he suffered 
 less than many others, for the larger part of his 
 houses were on the South Side. But he was one of 
 the men who with courage went through those terri- 
 ble days of devastation and suffering, and gave him- 
 self earnestly and enthusiastically to the work of 
 
 44 
 
BUSINESS LIFE IN CHICAGO 
 
 reconstruction. From him no expression of doubt 
 was ever heard as to the power of the city to rise 
 from its ashes with new strength and a more pros- 
 perous business life than it had yet seen. 
 
 A broker in land, a lender of money, director in 
 several banks, director in the South Side City Rail- 
 way Company, representative of the JStna Life 
 Insurance Company of Hartford, Connecticut, and 
 of other men's interests till 1877, in that year he 
 laid aside the obligations he had hitherto assumed 
 for others, and gave himself wholly to his own inter- 
 ests. The business which he had built up, he turned 
 over to two of his clerks, Mr. H. A. Pearsons, a 
 nephew, and Mr. O. B. Taft, young men of fine 
 business ability who first, as Pearsons and Taft, 
 and later as the Pearsons-Taft Land Credit Com- 
 pany, have continued and enlarged that business, 
 until it is now one of the most prominent and sound- 
 est land companies in the United States. 
 
 45 
 
V 
 
 BUSINESS LIFE IN CHICAGO Continued 
 
V 
 
 BUSINESS LIFE IN CHICAGO Continued 
 
 FOR the twelve years following 1877, Dr. Pear- 
 sons continued in business for himself only. 
 He bought and sold in his own name, land, 
 houses, wood, timber. A large depositor in the 
 banks, he rarely or never borrowed from them or 
 did anything that in any way could shake his credit. 
 A great deal of his property was in such shape that 
 he could get its value in cash at short notice. Such 
 bankers as Solomon Smith and Chauncy Blair were 
 his close friends. Daniel A. Jones of the Board of 
 Trade was another man with whom, in the church 
 as well as in business, he was intimately associated, 
 and of whose estate of four million dollars, he was 
 one of the executors. From this estate he secured 
 one hundred thousand dollars for the Presbyterian 
 Hospital, which under the influence of Drs. J. P. 
 Ross and E. A. Hamill he had been instrumental in 
 founding. To this hospital he himself has given not 
 far from another hundred thousand dollars, in addi- 
 tion to personal service the value of which cannot 
 be estimated. Without this service it is doubtful 
 if the hospital could have been established as early 
 4 49 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 as 1873, certainly not with anything like its finan- 
 cial strength and magnificent equipment. 
 
 Many of the men with whom he was associated 
 in the management of the South Side Railway were 
 men of very strong personality. S. B. Cobb, Jerome 
 Beecher, whose names are borne by some of the 
 buildings on the campus of the University of Chi- 
 cago, Jacob Rosenberg, S. W. Allerton, were men of 
 wealth and of decided convictions as to the way 
 in which business should be conducted. Dr. Pear- 
 sons was equally strong in his convictions. These 
 were the men who advocated the use of the cable in 
 place of horses, and later were willing to replace 
 the cable with electricity. Conservative as they 
 all were, they did not hesitate to spend money for 
 improvements which would reduce the cost of oper- 
 ation, furnish better service to the public and increase 
 their own profits. 
 
 As a large owner of real estate Dr. Pearsons was 
 brought in close relations with real estate men, and 
 from them learned at first hand when to buy and 
 when to sell. But neither he nor any of the men in 
 whose judgment he confided, had any true idea of 
 the changes which would take place in the values 
 of land within the city limits, or in its outlying 
 districts. They failed to perceive the full extent 
 of the change which would be wrought in trans- 
 portation by the use of electricity instead of the 
 cable, by the building of elevated roads or by increas- 
 ing facilities for suburban travel. They knew that 
 the changes wrought by these means would be 
 
 50 
 
BUSINESS LIFE IN CHICAGO 
 
 very great and of immense importance, but their 
 full significance when they were made, no one seems 
 to have grasped. They would have scouted the 
 idea that land would ever bring within the loop the 
 price now asked for it. Nor did they foresee the 
 demand which would be made and continue to be 
 made for land for great business establishments 
 within or near the limits of the city. 
 
 Though not in competition with any of the 
 real estate men of the city, at the head of a busi- 
 ness whose interests were out in the state rather 
 than in the city, he was yet brought by the force of 
 his character and by the success of the business 
 which he managed into close relations with the lead- 
 ing business-men of the city, and as a man of wealth 
 was associated with them by the public. That he 
 was influenced by the remarkable men whose names 
 have been given in the preceding chapter and that 
 in his turn he influenced them, is certainly true. In 
 any other city and among other men he might not 
 have become the man he was or have attained the 
 prominence he did, as one of the leaders in the finan- 
 cial affairs of the city. 
 
 Great as were the interests of the later years of 
 his business life, Dr. Pearsons did not allow himself, 
 under the pressure of the surprising changes then 
 going forward, to forget the social, intellectual and 
 refining interests of the city. He had a share, and 
 no small one, in organizing the Society of the Sons 
 of Vermont, was a constant attendant at its meet- 
 ings, over which he sometimes presided and not 
 
 51 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 infrequently addressed. He was interested also 
 in the work of the Historical Society, the Academy 
 of Sciences and the Art Institute. He was one of 
 the men to whom it was possible to go for advice 
 and aid in anything which really concerned the wel- 
 fare of the city. 
 
 As Chairman for fifteen years of the Board of 
 Trustees of the First Presbyterian Church, he took 
 the lead with such able helpers as Messrs. Swift 
 and Sherwood in paying the debt of eighty-two 
 thousand dollars resting on the Society. Toward 
 that debt, first and last, he himself contributed not 
 less than fifteen thousand dollars to say nothing of 
 the time spent in visiting persons in order to obtain 
 their subscriptions. Those who were present can 
 never forget the surprise they felt when one Sunday 
 morning Dr. Arthur Mitchell, the pastor, stopped 
 in the midst of his sermon and asked Dr. Pearsons 
 to come forward and address the people. The con- 
 gregation was large. Men of wealth were there in 
 goodly numbers. Rather more than forty thousand 
 dollars were still to be pledged if the debt was paid. 
 The trustees had said that sum could not be secured 
 and so thought the pastor. Dr. Pearsons was con- 
 fident that it could be. His first words were words 
 of cheer. "This debt is going to be paid this morn- 
 ing. We can pay it and we will pay it. It only 
 means that those who have given one thousand 
 dollars must give two thousand. I have given 
 five thousand dollars and I am going to give five 
 thousand more." Then the tellers, carefully selected 
 
 52 
 
BUSINESS LIFE IN CHICAGO 
 
 by Dr. Pearsons beforehand, went round to receive 
 pledges. Thirty thousand dollars came in. Ten 
 thousand were left. "Who will provide for this 
 little remnant of debt in blocks of two hundred and 
 fifty dollars each?" In a few minutes the blocks 
 were taken and so ended this debt-paying affair 
 which meant so much to this important church, 
 but which Dr. Pearsons used to say was not worth 
 mentioning. Its success was due to the generosity, 
 the wisdom, the patience and the persistency of 
 the man who has done so much for the colleges of 
 our country. 
 
 In 1873, while living at the Palmer House, in the 
 First Ward, Dr. Pearsons was nominated as an alder- 
 man to represent that ward in the common council. 
 It was an independent nomination, but was promptly 
 accepted by both parties, so that the election was 
 practically unanimous. He served in the council 
 for three years and to the duties which came to him 
 as alderman, gave almost undivided attention. 
 Speaking of the time required for the discharge of 
 these duties he has said again and again, it cost him 
 not less than fifty thousand dollars a year to serve 
 the Ward while he represented it. Mayor Heath 
 made him chairman of the finance committee which 
 included such men as S. H. McCrea, once President 
 of the Board of Trade, Jacob Rosenberg and J. B. 
 Briggs. The city had suffered very greatly from the 
 fire of October 9, 1871. Taxes had been collected 
 with difficulty. Even those of 1873 and 1874 were 
 delinquent. It was a part of the duty of the finance 
 
 53 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 committee to discover some way to collect them. 
 Meanwhile the credit of the city was at a low ebb. 
 In fact it was as nearly bankrupt as a city could be 
 and preserve the semblance of credit. It was pay- 
 ing its bills in scrip which was selling at a discount. 
 Through a New York bank, five hundred thousand 
 dollars worth of bonds had been sold. Interest on 
 them was overdue and the creditors were demanding 
 their money. Mayor Heath and the other members 
 of the finance committee urged Dr. Pearsons to go 
 to New York, pacify these bondholders by explain- 
 ing the situation, and persuade them to give the city 
 a little more time to meet its obligations. The 
 president of the bank through which the bonds had 
 been sold gave Dr. Pearsons a hearty welcome and 
 set aside a room for him in which to meet the dis- 
 appointed and clamoring creditors. 
 
 There was something in Dr. Pearsons' appear- 
 ance that created a favorable feeling toward him on 
 their part, from the very first. In reporting that 
 meeting he said that as these creditors gathered, 
 they had little to say about what was due them, 
 but a great deal about what the city had suffered 
 from the fire. Although no money was paid them 
 at the time, they went away satisfied that the city 
 would finally, as it did, meet all of its obligations. 
 There was a single exception. One man came into 
 the room where Dr. Pearsons was conferring with 
 the creditors, saying in a loud voice and waving a 
 piece of paper, "Where is that man from Chicago? 
 I want my money, and I want it now." 
 
 54 
 
BUSINESS LIFE IN CHICAGO 
 
 " Do you want the principal as well as the interest?'* 
 
 "Can I have it?" he asked. 
 
 "Certainly," replied Dr. Pearsons. "Wait until 
 I telegraph to Chicago; I have money in the bank. 
 I will pay you myself. The credit of the city is 
 good. I will advance you the money." 
 
 "Do you mean that you will pay this money 
 yourself, and do you say that the credit of the city 
 is good?" 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "Well, then," said the man, in a different tone of 
 voice, "if I can have my money when I want it, I 
 do not care for it now," and putting his paper in his 
 pocket he quietly withdrew. This was one of the 
 men who had given the President of the Bank a 
 great deal of trouble by his unreasonable demands 
 for his money. It was the manner of Dr. Pearsons, 
 his tact in dealing with men, his ability and when 
 necessary, as in the case just mentioned, his willing- 
 ness to pledge his own fortune to save the credit of 
 the city, that rendered this visit to New York at this 
 critical period in its history, so important and so 
 memorable. Without the aid and the firmness of 
 such Mayors as Monroe Heath and Thomas Hoyne, 
 backed by such men as formed their Finance Com- 
 mittee, the scrip which had been issued to meet 
 current expenses would have been repudiated. For 
 on some technical ground the court pronounced its 
 issue illegal. The Finance Committee refused to 
 take advantage of the creditors of the city, even with 
 a decision of a court behind them. In time the scrip 
 
 55 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K PEARSONS 
 
 was taken up at its full value. It is doubtful if any 
 three years of Dr. Pearsons' life have ever been more 
 useful than the three years in which he served Chi- 
 cago as -alder man from the First Ward. 
 
 In 1889 the public was startled by the announce- 
 ment that Dr. D. K. Pearsons had retired from busi- 
 ness, that having acquired a fortune he saw no 
 reason for increasing it, that as he had no children 
 to provide for, no relatives dependent upon him for 
 support, he could see no reason why he should not 
 devote the remainder of his days to travel and to the 
 employment of the means which God had entrusted 
 to him for the welfare of others. But the announce- 
 ment made it clear that it would do no good to 
 solicit gifts from him, that having acquired his for- 
 tune through his own efforts he would dispose of it 
 without asking advice from any one. 
 
 Some years before reaching this decision Dr. 
 Pearsons had purchased a ten-acre tract of land in 
 Hinsdale, a suburb on the Burlington Road, sixteen 
 miles from the city of Chicago. The land was 
 slightly rolling, well covered with noble trees, and 
 within a short walk from the railway station. Almost 
 in the center of this beautiful tract, the Doctor 
 erected a large and comfortable house and furnished 
 it in accordance with his wife's wishes and in deference 
 to her taste. In this delightful home they lived 
 together until 1906, when Mrs. Pearsons, after a 
 long illness, passed on to her eternal rest. Lovers 
 of the beautiful, not indifferent to what is known as 
 good living, with no pleasure in the gaieties of life, 
 
 56 
 
BUSINESS LIFE IN CHICAGO 
 
 rarely entering into society, caring nothing for 
 fashion, above the temptation to spend money for 
 show, they were satisfied to dwell apart from the 
 strife of the business world, and to consider in what 
 way they could most wisely invest the means God 
 had given them for the permanent advantage of the 
 youth of the nation. At Hinsdale they resumed the 
 simple life in which they had taken such pleasure 
 at 48 Van Buren Street, and still earlier, in Chicopee, 
 Massachusetts. They enjoyed the visits of con- 
 genial friends and the freedom of abundant space 
 and pure air, and with daily rides in an attractive 
 country they renewed their strength and deepened 
 their interest in the welfare of mankind. 
 
 Free from business obligations, Dr. and Mrs. 
 Pearsons were at liberty to go where they pleased, 
 whether in their own country or in other countries. 
 Both were very fond of travel, fond of meeting intel- 
 ligent people with views somewhat different from 
 their own. Three times they crossed the Atlantic 
 and extended their visits East. They made them- 
 selves familiar with the Pacific Coast from Southern 
 California to Alaska. Winters they spent wholly, 
 or in part, at the South, sometimes visiting again the 
 places they had visited in the early years of their 
 business life. Summers often found them in New 
 England with friends or at quiet resorts where they 
 met people with whom it was a pleasure to associate. 
 
 A very important member of the Hinsdale family 
 was a sister of Mrs. Pearsons, Miss Julia A. Chapin, 
 who had cared for her mother in the East till her 
 
 57 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 death, and who afterwards made her home in Hins- 
 dale. She was a brilliant woman, intellectually and 
 socially, very benevolent, and heartily in sympathy 
 with her brother and sister in their plans of dispos- 
 ing of their wealth. At her death in 1904, the Wom- 
 an's Board of Foreign Missions for the Interior, 
 received a bequest from her of more than $23,000.00 
 as an endowment. To this home there came visitors 
 from every section of the country, and even from 
 abroad, seeking for such aid as its inmates were giv- 
 ing and confirming them in the wisdom of the plans 
 they had determined to follow. Here were discussed 
 those methods of giving which have placed so many 
 of our colleges on a good financial basis and have made 
 a higher education possible even for poor boys and 
 girls. Nor were these discussions confined to the 
 United States alone. The interests and needs of the 
 foreign field were not forgotten. Anatolia College 
 in Turkey received large and timely aid, and through 
 Mrs. Pearsons the Presbyterians were enabled to 
 keep at least two women steadily at work in the 
 fields under their care. Young women from the 
 South, chiefly from Berea, born among the moun- 
 tains, uncultured and untrained as they were, were 
 received into the home, and while employed as serv- 
 ants were treated as friends and companions; after 
 receiving instructions from Mrs. Pearsons in the 
 mysteries and duties of housekeeping and the usages 
 of good society, they returned to the college to finish 
 their studies, or to their homes, from which others 
 were sent away for an education. 
 
 58 
 
BUSINESS LIFE IN CHICAGO 
 
 Here we may pause to ask how it was possible for 
 a man forty years of age, without influential friends, 
 in less than thirty years to acquire a fortune of sev- 
 eral millions of dollars in a city like Chicago? Most 
 people would say it was because of his rare business 
 capacity, the singleness of his aim, of his power to 
 read men at a glance, his honesty in all his transac- 
 tions, and his evident interest in the welfare of the 
 men with whom he dealt. The Doctor's answer to 
 this question always has been, "Through a kind 
 Providence all things worked together for my advan- 
 tage. All my plans succeeded." True, they were 
 well-laid plans. They were carefully thought out, 
 and only those followed which promised immediate 
 success. Few risks were taken. One object was kept 
 in mind, the making of money. Expenses were kept 
 at the lowest point possible, consistent with com- 
 fortable living. Nothing was paid out for costly 
 entertainments. No money was wasted on theatres 
 or operas. With household expenses never exceed- 
 ing two or three thousand dollars a year, and per- 
 sonal expenses reduced to a minimum, it is not diffi- 
 cult to see that with an income that often averaged 
 three thousand dollars a week, money would accum- 
 ulate rapidly. The gains were all invested with 
 great care and were soon adding large sums to the 
 yearly income. Opportunities for investment were 
 constant and promising. Bank stock was pur- 
 chased at its lowest price. This stock was never 
 sold. Its dividends were invested in stock in other 
 banks at or near par, and as this stock was con- 
 
 59 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 stantly rising in value, the gain on it alone in the 
 course of a generation would produce a fortune. 
 For many years houses and land in different parts 
 of the city rapidly increased in value. The pine 
 lands in Michigan yielded large returns. But with 
 the same opportunities another man might not have 
 obtained the wealth which seemed to flow so natur- 
 ally into Dr. Pearsons' hands. His success was 
 certainly due to the good Providence of God, but 
 with that Providence he cooperated. He was care- 
 ful to keep his character good. He looked after his 
 health. He dressed with scrupulous care, though 
 inexpensively. If his diet was simple, it was as 
 nourishing as possible. He never failed to give him- 
 self sufficient sleep, or to sleep where he would have 
 an abundance of fresh air. Nor did he hesitate to 
 spend money generously when necessary to secure 
 more business. He advertised extensively. He 
 gave money to churches, schools, libraries in order 
 to persuade people to buy his land. He cultivated 
 the acquaintance of leading men who lived in the 
 region where his lands were situated. He took 
 pains to have good stories to tell when he met farm- 
 ers and business men out in the state. Whenever he 
 made a sale of land he did his best to make the pur- 
 chaser feel that he had obtained the worth of his 
 money. In various ways he sought and succeeded 
 in winning the confidence of people, so that when 
 immigrants came from the East their friends would 
 refer them to him as a man who would treat them 
 honestly and befriend them to the best of his ability. 
 
BUSINESS LIFE IN CHICAGO 
 
 True, he held people to their agreements. They were 
 expected to meet their obligations promptly, but 
 no more was ever exacted than was due, and no land 
 title which passed through his hands was found 
 imperfect. 
 
 He never complained. Disappointed at times he 
 may have been, but of these disappointments he 
 said nothing. He was cheerful in the homes where 
 he stopped for a night for food. He was optimistic 
 in the darkest period of our history. Were the times 
 hard? He knew they would be better. He could 
 give reasons for his belief, and often won many 
 others over to his way of thinking. 
 
 As a business man he trusted his own judgment. 
 He did not ask advice of other men, however suc- 
 cessful they may have been. Yet he did not over- 
 look the fact that the methods they had pursued, 
 might be the methods he ought to pursue. But he 
 did not follow them, until after careful investiga- 
 tion, he had convinced himself of their value. 
 He did nothing hastily, yet at times his decisions 
 seemed to be made on the spur of the moment. In 
 reality they were the result of years of experience 
 and study. Having made himself master of all 
 the facts connected with the transactions he had in 
 hand, be was, naturally, equal to any emergency 
 that might arise with regard to any one of them. 
 In his case there was not much chance for emer- 
 gencies. He had prepared for them so carefully that 
 they did not arise, or if now and then one met him, 
 he was ready for it. He was careful not to be taken 
 
 61 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 off his guard, or to be tempted into speech or action 
 he might afterwards regret. In his later business 
 years as the result of long experience, he could say 
 almost immediately whether he would or would not 
 consider a proposed trade. He learned to know 
 men. His clerk used to say of him, that he would 
 look a man through as soon as he came into his 
 office, and that his judgment of him was nearly 
 always correct. This gift was of value to him not 
 only in his business life, but in that more strenuous 
 period devoted to the distribution of his property. It 
 enabled him to detect beggars who came to him as 
 gentlemen, but whose object was personal gain. 
 Not many of these beggars of the first rank were 
 likely to call upon him a second time. His refusal 
 to grant their request did not need to be repeated. 
 He was equally quick to detect merit, and many a 
 man who entered his office in fear went away with 
 courage, for he had seen a man who sympathized 
 with him, realized what burdens he was carrying 
 and had promised him help. 
 
 One of the rules which he followed and commended 
 to a company of young men seeking his advice in his 
 own language is as follows: "Keep cool, don't 
 overload the stomach, breathe pure air, and lots of 
 it, eat a vegetable diet, don't eat late suppers, go to 
 bed early, don't fret, don't go where you will get 
 excited, and when you grow older, don't forget to 
 take a nap after dinner. Old age depends upon 
 heredity, common sense and a good stomach." In 
 a speech at Beloit in reply to the question, "How 
 
 62 
 
BUSINESS LIFE IN CHICAGO 
 
 did I make my money?" he said: "I'll tell you 
 boys a secret. I did it by keeping my character 
 clean. That's the only thing I had to start with, 
 and it is the best thing any man can have. With- 
 out it you are not worth a picayune." In an address to 
 the Sons of Vermont, at one of their annual dinners, 
 he said, "It is not easy to give the secret of success. 
 It cannot be described. It is inborn." And yet he 
 was always careful to say that he never lost sight 
 of his determination when in business life to make 
 money, to put aside anything and everything that 
 interfered with it; that he never spent money fool- 
 ishly, or for anything not absolutely necessary, 
 nothing for theatres or operas, or base-ball or foot- 
 ball exhibitions, nothing for simple pleasure unless 
 in travel; that he practised the utmost economy, was 
 frugal from the first and intended to be until the end 
 of his life, that he never did any business on borrowed 
 capital or entered into speculations of any sort. He 
 kept his resources so completely under his control 
 that he could turn them into cash at an hour's 
 notice. 
 
 It is not strange that such men as he should suc- 
 ceed. It would have been stranger if he had failed. 
 For to clearness of vision, a cheerful and optimistic 
 disposition, a judgment of men that rarely failed to 
 be correct, native endowments of a very high order, 
 a business ability that seemed to thrive on difficulties, 
 and singleness of aim, there were added a persis- 
 tency of purpose which nothing could turn aside, a 
 willingness to endure hardship and continuance of 
 
 63 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 toil which would have broken down almost any other 
 man, a combination of qualities which won success 
 almost as soon as they were brought into exercise 
 and rendered failure well-nigh impossible. 
 
 64 
 
VI 
 
 BEGINNING OF A GREAT BENEVOLENT CAREER. 
 GIFTS TO CHICAGO INSTITUTIONS. DECI- 
 SION TO AID COLLEGES 
 
VI 
 
 BEGINNING OF A GREAT BENEVOLENT CAREER. 
 GIFTS TO CHICAGO INSTITUTIONS. DECI- 
 SION TO AID COLLEGES 
 
 PREVIOUS chapters have shown that Dr. 
 Pearsons was looked upon as a generous man 
 long before colleges became the chief object 
 of his bounty. Until his removal to Hinsdale in 
 1885, he was a steady attendant at the First Presby- 
 terian Church, of which his wife was a member, one 
 of its staunchest and most liberal supporters, and 
 a willing contributor to its many charities. As has 
 been said he was a teacher in its Railroad Mission, 
 founded by Rev. Aratus Kent, in hearty sympathy 
 with its work and ready always to bear his full 
 share of its expenses. 
 
 After his removal to Hinsdale in 1885, at a largely 
 attended meeting of its Society, the church put on 
 record its appreciation of the service he had rendered 
 it while acting as Chairman of its Board of Trustees. 
 It was through his initiative, by his personal efforts 
 in connection with such men as the late Messrs. 
 Sherwood and Swift and by his own gifts of more 
 than ten thousand dollars that its debt was paid. 
 
 67 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 The Resolution, which reads: "Resolved: that 
 hearty thanks be given to Dr. D. K. Pearsons for his 
 faithful and devoted service, wise counsel and liberal 
 gifts, especially during the financial distress of this 
 church," was unanimously adopted and with expres- 
 sions of sorrow that he had found it necessary to 
 remove from the city and establish his home in one 
 of its suburbs. 
 
 Interested from its organization in the work of 
 the Y. M. C. A., to which from the first to the last 
 he has given very large sums, in October, 1887, he 
 turned over to its President, J. V. Far well, Jr., 
 property valued at $30,000.00. In 1908 the Asso- 
 ciation received from him $20,000.00 in cash and in 
 1909 $20,000.00 more. For the LaSalle Street 
 Building he gave $10,000.00. That the Association 
 appreciates his interest in it, is shown in the follow- 
 ing statement by its Secretary, L. Wilbur Messer. 
 
 "Dr. Pearsons has made four substantial gifts to 
 The Young Men's Christian Association of Chicago. 
 His first gift was a piece of property on Cottage 
 Grove Avenue, then valued at $30,000.00. In that 
 period of the Association's history this gift was 
 most significant in its amount, and in the recogni- 
 tion by Dr. Pearsons of the need of permanent 
 endowment for the future development of the Asso- 
 ciation work. The amount realized by the sale of 
 this property was invested in the endowment por- 
 tion of the LaSalle Street Building. 
 
 " The second gift of Dr. Pearsons was to the amount 
 of $10,000.00 in cash for the LaSalle Street Building. 
 
 68 
 
DECISION TO AID COLLEGES 
 
 This additional gift was most timely in showing the 
 continued interest of Dr. Pearsons in the welfare of 
 the Association and in binding conditional sub- 
 scriptions. 
 
 "The third gift of Dr. Pearsons was the amount of 
 $20,000.00, made in the early stage of the canvass 
 for the Fiftieth Anniversary Million Dollar Fund. 
 This fund was dependent on securing the larger 
 portion of the substantial gifts from representative 
 citizens. The generous cooperation of Dr. Pearsons 
 assisted us in closing large conditional subscriptions 
 and in securing the cooperation of many others. 
 
 "The fourth gift was for the sum of $20,000.00 at 
 the time of the twelve-day canvass for the comple- 
 tion of the million dollar fund. The Association 
 had raised $831,000.00 toward its million dollar 
 fund in subscriptions from less than three hundred 
 persons. The twelve-day canvass was then inaugu- 
 rated to raise $350,000.00 which would not only com- 
 plete the Anniversary Fund, but would make pos- 
 sible the building improvements not contemplated 
 when that fund was started. Toward the close of 
 this campaign Dr. Pearsons really saved the situ- 
 ation by this, his second subscription of $20,000.00, 
 to the anniversary fund. This gift was the more 
 significant in view of the fact that the Doctor had 
 said that he would make no other gifts except to 
 colleges which had already been included among 
 his beneficiaries. The work of this Association so 
 appealed to him, however, and his former interest 
 having continued, he made his gift consistent by 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 stating that he had adopted The Young Men's 
 Christian Association of Chicago as one of his 
 family. 
 
 "Even more significant than the gifts already men- 
 tioned was the generous and spontaneous offer from 
 Dr. Pearsons on the last day of the canvass that he 
 would pay any amount that was needed at the close 
 of that day to complete the fund of $350,000.00. 
 The Association needed $18,000.00 at the time this 
 offer was telephoned to our office, with only four 
 hours to raise that amount. The public response 
 was so prompt and generous, however, as to com- 
 plete the fund without calling on Dr. Pearsons to 
 make up any deficit. The gratitude of the Associa- 
 tion was expressed at that time in a resolution, 
 which was personally presented to Dr. Pearsons, at 
 his home, by the President and the General Secre- 
 tary of the Association. 
 
 "This statement will show that Dr. Pearsons has 
 been a most important factor in the broad develop- 
 ment of the life of The Young Men's Christian Asso- 
 ciation of Chicago and in the wise provision for 
 adequate endowment to safeguard its many in- 
 terests." 
 
 The Resolution of which Mr. Messer writes, as 
 passed by the officers and friends of the Y. M. C. A. 
 and presented to Dr. Pearsons in person, is as follows: 
 
 "The five hundred officers, members and friends 
 of The Young Men's Christian Association who 
 have successfully promoted the campaign for $350,- 
 000.00 in twelve days, send hearty congratulations 
 
 70 
 
DECISION TO AID COLLEGES 
 
 and greetings to you as you approach your ninetieth 
 birthday on Thursday of this week. 
 
 "Your generous subscription of $20,000.00 at a 
 critical point in the campaign, in addition to your 
 former subscription of $20,000.00 for the anniver- 
 sary fund, and your further offer by telephone this 
 afternoon to make a further subscription of the 
 amount needed to complete the fund at 6 p. M., 
 have cheered every worker and have been largely 
 responsible for the final success of the undertaking. 
 
 " The Young Men's Christian Association is proud 
 to be numbered with the many institutions whose 
 work has been extended and strengthened by your 
 generous benefactions. It is our sincere wish that 
 you may enjoy many years of unmeasured happiness 
 in realizing the results of your practical philan- 
 thropy." 
 
 No hospital is better known in Chicago or has 
 done better work than the Presbyterian. As already 
 said this hospital grew out of the efforts of Dr. 
 Pearsons in connection with those of Drs. E. A. 
 Hamill and J. P. Ross. It was the personal gifts of 
 Dr. Pearsons at the very beginning of the life of the 
 hospital, and his personal interest in it and work for 
 it that secured its early prominence and success. 
 He was President of its Board of Managers from 
 December, 1883 to April, 1884; from April, 1885 to 
 April, 1889; from April, 1899 to December, 1900, 
 about seven years in all. 
 
 His gifts to the hospital as reported by its Super- 
 intendent, Mr. Asa Bacon, have been as follows: 
 
 71 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 August 31, 1885 $10,000.00 
 
 January 20, 1887 5,000 . 00 
 
 November 10, 1888 10,000.00 
 
 January 24, 1889 5,000.00 
 
 April 10, 1889 30,149.00 
 
 April, 1907 5,000.00 
 
 Other gifts were made from time to time of which no 
 account is here made. Through his efforts, in 1888 
 for example, the books show that at least $5,000.00 
 came to the hospital. Many large gifts are traceable 
 to his influence. As to the effect of his gifts and his 
 personal interest reference may be made to the 
 dedicatory address, dated April 22, 1889, of Dr. 
 John Henry Barrows, then Pastor of the First Pres- 
 byterian Church. His words are: "It would be 
 unjust not to mention, even in his presence, the 
 incalculable services which have been rendered by 
 the gifts, the active interest, and the sleepless labor 
 of him who for years has been the President of this 
 institution, Dr. D. K. Pearsons. The debt which 
 the hospital owes to him can never be fully under- 
 stood, except by those who have so faithfully worked 
 with him." 
 
 Ernest A. Hamill, in his report to the Board of 
 Managers, April 8, 1901, said: "Our esteemed 
 President, Dr. Daniel K. Pearsons, retired Decem- 
 ber 17, 1900, from the presidency of the Board of 
 Managers, owing to the many demands made upon 
 his time and strength by his philanthropic work. 
 One of the hospital's earliest friends, Dr. Pearsons 
 gave generously in money and encouragement when 
 
 72 
 
DECISION TO AID COLLEGES 
 
 both necessities came slowly, and for many years 
 his interest in the hospital has been active and 
 practical." That interest continued unbroken to 
 the last days of his life, and was as deep as his inter- 
 est in any one of the colleges he had aided. 
 
 In the Historical Society, The Academy of Science 
 and more recently in the Orchestra Association, he 
 had an interest which found expression in substan- 
 tial gifts. What a single gift has accomplished for 
 the Art Institute we know from its highly hon- 
 ored Director, Mr. W. M. R. French, who 
 writes : 
 
 "From the foundation of the Art Institute in 
 1879, I had longed for a collection of Braun and 
 Company's reproductions of standard works of art. 
 I had a list of about 500 carefully prepared, hoping 
 to be able to buy them. About 1892 an agent of 
 Braun and Company visited Chicago, and I took 
 him to Mr. Hutchinson. (Mr. Hutchinson has been 
 one of the men who has put time, money and thought 
 into the Institute, and done more than any other 
 person, apart from the Director, to secure its suc- 
 cess.) I remember the Artist, Mr. Childe Hassam, 
 was here and went along with me to interpret the 
 agent's French. Mr. Hutchinson promptly asked 
 the agent to ascertain from his House at what price 
 they would sell their whole publication, amounting 
 to 16,000 or more autotypes. The Columbian Expo- 
 sition was coming on, and the House of Braun and 
 Company was anxious to have its works put before 
 the people. The Art Institute Building was used for 
 
 73 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 the World's Congress. The whole collection, I sup- 
 pose, at the retail price, would be worth $40,000 or 
 $50,000. The result of it all was that they offered 
 to sell the whole collection, excepting a few which 
 were virtually duplicates, or otherwise undesirable, 
 for $15,000.00. The photographs we actually 
 received numbered a little above 16,000. We have 
 not added more than 500 since. Mr. Hutchinson 
 went to Dr. Pearsons and proposed to him to pay 
 for half the collection, the Art Institute to pay for 
 the other half. To this Dr. Pearsons assented. The 
 next day he came in and told Mr. Hutchinson that 
 when he told his wife what he had done, she said he 
 ought not to be doing things by halves that way; 
 and he would pay for the whole. So the collection 
 was named the 'Mrs. D. K. Pearsons Collection of 
 Carbon Photographs/ It is the largest of its kind 
 in America, the second being in the Public Library 
 in Portland, Oregon, the third in the Athenaeum 
 Library in Boston. In the Art Institute it forms a 
 wonderful basis for the study of art. It is entirely 
 accessible to students at all times, and is really open 
 to the public on the free days of the Art Institute, 
 Wednesday and Saturday. It has suffered little 
 from its free use for sixteen or seventeen years. We 
 always show it to our visitors as one of the remark- 
 able features of the library." 
 
 The gift was made in 1892 and was without con- 
 ditions. This gift emphasizes a remark frequently 
 made by Dr. Pearsons. "It is surprising how much 
 good a little money will do if given wisely at the 
 
 74 
 
DECISION TO AID COLLEGES 
 
 right time and to persons who know how to use it 
 for the benefit of others." 
 
 In 1887 he conveyed property worth $50,- 
 000.00 to the Trustees of the McCormick Theo- 
 logical Seminary (Presbyterian), the income to be 
 used as scholarships for needy young men prepar- 
 ing themselves for the ministry. The President of 
 this Seminary, Rev. Dr. James G. K. McClure, 
 writes : 
 
 "As to the gift made by Dr. Pearsons and his wife 
 to the Scholarship Endowment Fund of the Mc- 
 Cormick Theological Seminary, 'out of glad and 
 willing hearts, in the hope that it will prove to the 
 glory of God in the education of young men in the 
 Gospel Ministry/ I cannot speak with too high appre- 
 ciation. It came at a time when it was absolutely 
 necessary for the continuance of the work of the 
 Seminary. Without it there would have been no 
 sufficient provisions for the needs of the students 
 and the students would have been obliged either to 
 give up studying for the ministry or to seek some 
 other institution which could properly care for them. 
 The income from this gift has been applied care- 
 fully to the assistance of young men whose means 
 are not sufficient to carry them through the Semi- 
 nary course. The men who have been thus assisted 
 have gone into every part of the world, living and 
 preaching the gospel. I can well believe that no 
 gift Dr. Pearsons has ever made tends to bring him 
 larger comfort of heart than this gift to the Scholar- 
 
 75 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 ship Fund on October 25th, 1887, of McCormick 
 Theological Seminary." 
 
 Two days later, October 27th, as a joint gift from 
 himself and Mrs. Pearsons, he conveyed property 
 valued at $20,000.00 to the officers of the Woman's 
 Foreign Missionary Board of the Presbyterian 
 Church of the Northwest, so much of the income as 
 might be required to be set aside for the support of 
 two women as missionaries in the fields under the 
 care of this Board and the remainder to be used for 
 current expenses. 
 
 October 24, 1887, he invited Professors Fisk and 
 Boardman, Curtiss and Scott of the Chicago Theo- 
 logical Seminary (Congregational) to meet him in 
 his office, and after asking a few questions and 
 affirming his interest in the Seminary, he put into 
 their hands deeds to seven houses, then renting for 
 $4,000.00 a year and valued by experts at $50,000.00, 
 the income to be used as scholarships for students 
 in the Foreign Departments of the Seminary. 
 
 Since that first gift, Dr. Pearsons has made other 
 gifts amounting to more than $350,000.00, which, 
 coming at critical periods and for special objects, 
 have not only added to the efficiency of the Semi- 
 nary, but, as Dr. G. S. F. Savage, for so many years 
 its financial secretary, and one of its wisest leaders, 
 and most devoted friends, says, saved it from extinc- 
 tion. These gifts came to it when professors and 
 directors and friends were despondent, and inspired 
 new hopes in them, and stimulated them to renewed 
 and successful efforts in its behalf. 
 
 76 
 
DECISION TO AID COLLEGES 
 
 In a statement concerning the results of these 
 gifts to the Seminary, Dr. O. S. Davis, its President, 
 writes : 
 
 "It is somewhat difficult to measure by any con- 
 crete standards the practical results of generous 
 donations toward the endowment of an institution. 
 The practical issues are seen in so many different 
 ways that only the record of the entire service of the 
 institution to civilization can adequately measure 
 the result of those means by which such a service 
 has been made possible. Therefore, since it is not 
 too much to say that the entire service of Chicago 
 Theological Seminary has depended essentially upon 
 the gifts of Dr. Pearsons, the first result is seen in 
 the total service of the Seminary to the Kingdom of 
 God from the day when his first gift was received. 
 
 There are, however, certain definite lines of serv- 
 ice in which the gifts of Dr. Pearsons have borne 
 peculiar fruit. Chicago Seminary has had under its 
 instruction nearly two thousand students. Its 
 unique contribution to the Kingdom and Church of 
 Christ has been in the establishment of three Insti- 
 tutes for the training of Germans, Norwegians and 
 Swedes; and from these Institutes have been sent out 
 almost five hundred men, who have gathered over 
 three hundred and twenty-five churches of their 
 own speech. There has been no other institution 
 which has made an experiment of this kind, but 
 Chicago Seminary has spent over a hundred thou- 
 sand dollars in this enterprise. It is needless to say 
 that the donations of Dr. Pearsons have rendered 
 
 77 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 possible through their income the pursuit of this 
 unique work. 
 
 "In its regular departments, however, Chicago 
 Seminary has furnished an opportunity for techni- 
 cal training to the graduates of the colleges of the 
 Central West, and has given them the privilege of 
 studying in the city of Chicago, where there is to a 
 pre-eminent degree the one especial field in which 
 men may be adequately prepared for service in the 
 interior states. There is a freedom and democracy 
 in the cosmopolitan city of Chicago which is scarcely 
 to be found elsewhere, and the permanence of Chi- 
 cago Seminary in this field is essentially important 
 to the life of our Congregational churches in the 
 Middle West. While the service of our New Eng- 
 land Seminaries to our Congregational churches 
 has been efficient beyond any criticism, it is still 
 true that a Seminary in Chicago is logically and 
 essentially necessary to our Congregationalism. It 
 is not too much to say that without the gifts of Dr. 
 Pearsons the work of the Chicago Seminary could 
 not have been successfully maintained and its future 
 service could scarcely be anticipated." 
 
 From 1887 to 1911 Dr. Pearsons' interest in the 
 Seminary has continued. He has watched its work 
 and its development carefully, and, as his last gift 
 of $100,000.00 made without conditions shows, its 
 welfare has been on his heart as that of one of his 
 own children. Nor can anyone doubt that his con- 
 ditional gifts have largely increased the constituency 
 and friends of the Seminary. They were made at 
 
 78 
 
DECISION TO AID COLLEGES 
 
 critical periods in its history and in such a way as 
 put courage and enthusiasm into the hearts of its 
 professors and directors. 
 
 A gift to the training school for young women as 
 pastor's assistants of $25,000.00 has secured a home 
 for teachers and students and through the affilia- 
 tion of the school with the seminary, made it possible 
 for the professors in the seminary to furnish, with- 
 out cost, a large part of the instruction they require. 
 During its short life it has already accomplished 
 very much good and laid foundations for future 
 service, the value of which can hardly be estimated. 
 
 But no gifts that Dr. Pearsons has made have 
 been more useful than those to the Chicago City 
 Missionary Society. This Society was organized 
 by the Congregational Churches of Chicago twenty- 
 nine years ago as an agency through which the larger 
 and more prosperous churches might aid those that 
 were weak and establish churches and mission schools 
 in places where they were needed. While aiding 
 churches which gave promise of speedily or in course 
 of a few years being able to care for themselves, its 
 main efforts were from the first and have continued 
 to be directed to purely mission fields to work with 
 our foreign population, or with churches which, 
 while doing earnest and aggressive work, give small 
 promise of self-support. It was to the work in this 
 needy field, with the poorer classes of our popula- 
 tion, with laboring men and women, with the chil- 
 dren of parents who had left their native land in the 
 hope of bettering their condition, that the attention 
 
 79 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 of Dr. and Mrs. Pearsons was called. With this 
 kind of Christian service they were both in deep 
 sympathy, and very early in the history of the Society 
 they contributed liberally to its funds. An effort of 
 the Society in 1904 to increase its endowment to 
 $150,000 met his hearty approval, and he promised, 
 on considering what had been accomplished and what 
 might be accomplished with larger means at its dis- 
 posal, to add to previous gifts enough to bring them 
 up to $50,000.00 as soon as the friends of the Society 
 would raise $100,000.00 more. The offer was grate- 
 fully accepted and the money obtained. Two or three 
 years ago Dr. Pearsons added another $50,000.00 to 
 his gifts without any conditions, except that the 
 work already carried on should be made more and 
 more efficient, and that still greater care be taken to 
 reach that vast class in the city which needs nothing 
 so much as the Christian education imparted by 
 churches, Sunday schools, Endeavor Societies and 
 the agencies connected with them or growing out of 
 them. Only the income of the somewhat more than 
 $200,000.00 endowment fund of the Society can be 
 used each year. But with this income grounds for 
 new work can be secured, aid furnished in the erec- 
 tion of buildings or in needed repairs, in the payment 
 of taxes and for such enlargement of work already 
 begun as otherwise would be impossible. To the 
 invaluable aid furnished by Dr. Pearsons the officers, 
 directors and friends of the Society have repeatedly 
 given emphatic testimony. 
 
 The honored and efficient Superintendent, who 
 
 80 
 
DECISION TO AID COLLEGES 
 
 has been with the Society from its organization, Dr. 
 J. C. Armstrong, writes: "I am glad to bear testi- 
 mony to the indebtedness of the Chicago City Mis- 
 sionary Society to Dr. Daniel K. Pearsons. More 
 than 25,000 members have been gathered into its 
 churches in twenty-eight years, and there are now 
 (November, 1910) in the Sunday schools it has 
 aided and is sustaining more than 20,000 children 
 and young people. Unborn generations will share 
 in the benefits of Dr. Pearsons' princely gifts. He 
 has made himself a great name among the benefac- 
 tors of our fellow-men. His splendid insight and 
 unfaltering purpose to help his fellow-men at the 
 point where Christian education is sure to be of the 
 greatest possible benefit, will be an example for 
 years to come which men and women of wealth will 
 certainly follow." 
 
 It is doubtful if any gift he has ever made has 
 been or will continue to be through the years to 
 come more fruitful than the $100,000.00 thus far 
 entrusted to the City Missionary Society. It will 
 restrain crime, promote good works, encourage vir- 
 tuous conduct and develop Christian character in 
 circles which without it would hardly have been 
 reached. 
 
 These early gifts to institutions in or near Chicago 
 stimulated and confirmed a purpose long cherished 
 by Dr. Pearsons of retiring from business at the age 
 of seventy and devoting the remaining years of his 
 life to the giving away, or rather of investing, as he 
 has preferred to call it, the fortune which thirty 
 6 81 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 years of economy, strenuous effort and prudent use 
 of early savings had brought him. He desired to be 
 his own executor. He refused to be called benevo- 
 lent, denied that he had any benevolence in his 
 nature. He gave, so he affirmed, because he could 
 not take his money with him beyond the grave, 
 because he wished to invest it himself, and invest 
 it where it would do good long after he had left the 
 world. He also wanted the privilege of watching 
 the outcome of his investments; and this privilege 
 he has enjoyed to the full. 
 
 At the outset he determined to be independent in 
 his giving, to give as he himself and Mrs. Pearsons, 
 his only and his constant adviser, should think best. 
 Not a few people who felt that they knew better 
 than its possessor where the money ought to go 
 were at first inclined to call in question his wisdom. 
 To criticisms for refusal to contribute to certain 
 objects he replied: "If I choose to give away what 
 I do not want, I rather think I have the right. I 
 give where I have the largest satisfaction in the 
 knowledge that it is doing good, instead of leaving 
 my money to be quarrelled over when I am gone." 
 
 Soon after he began his benefactions to colleges, 
 he made it known that he was disposing of his prop- 
 erty under a deep sense of responsibility to God. 
 " Giving is my only occupation. I am working hard 
 at it. I kept getting rich until I was seventy, and 
 then I started to give away the fortune that had 
 been placed in my hands. There is more responsi- 
 bility in giving away money than in making it. I 
 
 82 
 
DECISION TO AID COLLEGES 
 
 am responsible for the just distribution of the great 
 wealth to the Providence under which it came to 
 me." In making these gifts he was influenced a 
 very great deal by his sympathy with the laboring 
 classes, with the boys and girls who are born into 
 the families of working people. In announcing a gift 
 of $50,000 to the Chicago City Missionary Society 
 he made this the chief reason for the gift. He had 
 studied its work, had seen how constantly and suc- 
 cessfully its representatives had ministered to the 
 poorer classes of the city, with what wisdom they 
 were trying to give moral instruction to children 
 who might otherwise be left to roam the streets, and 
 foresaw the almost unlimited influence for good 
 which this Society properly supported might exert. 
 In deciding to devote the larger portion of his 
 fortune to educational purposes he had in mind the 
 needs of the country as a whole. These needs he 
 believed would be more fully met by aiding the 
 smaller colleges scattered over the country than by 
 concentrating his gifts upon a few institutions here 
 and there, or by increasing the endowment of some 
 great eastern university. The smaller colleges, he 
 saw, were training a large class of young people who 
 could not afford the expense of an education in one 
 of the prominent colleges of the East. This was a 
 good reason, he thought, for aiding those colleges 
 in the West and South which had proved their right 
 to live, but which might find it difficult to survive 
 without his help. " Common schools excepted," he 
 said, after he had given the subject a great deal of 
 
 83 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 study, "the so-called fresh- water college is the 
 greatest educational institution in America." Hence 
 his determination to use his fortune to develop these 
 colleges, and so far as possible secure for them 
 an adequate equipment. In these colleges, he clearly 
 saw, were gathered the young people from whose 
 ranks must come the future leaders of the country, 
 in education, religion and patriotic service. Insen- 
 sibly as the years passed, the students in these col- 
 leges won a warm place in his heart. He began to 
 look upon them as his own children and to consider 
 how he could treat them as such. His thought finds 
 expression in one of his addresses in the following 
 words: "I've got the smartest set of boys in the 
 world. Flaxen-haired boys from the sod houses of 
 the mountains and the prairie, poor boys who will 
 appreciate an education because they know how 
 hard it is to get. They can't go down east to college 
 and I am trying to build up colleges where they can 
 go. My boys are the very smartest." For girls 
 when occasion called for it, he had an equally strong 
 word. 
 
 With all his love for the small college and his 
 conviction that in certain sections of the country 
 new colleges should be established, he has never 
 founded a college or suffered one to be called after 
 his name. He felt, indeed, that the country has too 
 many colleges, that no inconsiderable number of 
 them would do well to become academies. He was 
 struck by the fact that too many of the states had 
 become "college graveyards." Hence the rule from 
 
 84 
 
DECISION TO AID COLLEGES 
 
 which there was no deviation, to promise no aid to 
 an institution till either he himself or those in whose 
 wisdom and experience he had full confidence, had 
 thoroughly investigated its condition. The location 
 of the college, its proximity to other colleges, the 
 character of the work done, the standing of the 
 faculty, the promise of future growth, were always 
 carefully considered. 
 
 Decision to aid, or to refuse aid, was slowly reached, 
 but once made, it was rarely reversed. In order to 
 test the real strength of a college, the Doctor almost 
 always made his gifts conditional. To live and be 
 useful a college must have a constituency to which 
 whenever need for increased funds arises, it may 
 appeal. To obtain his gifts the friends of a college 
 by a certain date must therefore themselves furnish 
 a certain sum of money, a sum large enough in gen- 
 eral to tax their liberality and determine their loyalty 
 to the institution which had asked assistance. Diffi- 
 cult as these conditions have sometimes been to 
 meet, experience has proved their wisdom, for in 
 addition to the money received in its campaigns for 
 funds the college has created or deepened an interest 
 in its affairs in many communities, which is of more 
 value, if the future be considered, than the aid 
 immediately obtained. 
 
VII 
 
 CONDITION OF THE DENOMINATIONAL COL- 
 LEGES WHEN DR. PEARSONS MADE HIS 
 FIRST GIFTS TO THEM. PRINCIPLES UPON 
 WHICH THESE GIFTS HAVE BEEN MADE 
 
VII 
 
 CONDITION OF THE DENOMINATIONAL COL- 
 LEGES WHEN DR. PEARSONS MADE HIS 
 FIRST GIFTS TO THEM. PRINCIPLES UPON 
 WHICH THESE GIFTS HAVE BEEN MADE 
 
 IT IS within the truth to say that during the 
 eighties, the decade from 1880 to 1890, nearly all 
 the colleges in the West and South which had 
 been founded by the various Christian denominations 
 were financially weak. If a few of the elder of these 
 colleges came to the end of the year without debt, it 
 was rarely done without aid from the churches or 
 wealthy friends. For the majority of these denomina- 
 tional institutions the close of the year increased the 
 burden resting upon them at its beginning. Debts 
 were steadily becoming larger. Nor was there any 
 prospect that means would be found for their payment. 
 To a few of these small Christian colleges, compara- 
 tively large gifts had come, from broad-minded men of 
 wealth; Congregationalists had been favored by Mrs. 
 Valeria Stone, in the distribution of the fortune which 
 her husband's death placed at her disposal. Yet even 
 from the most promising point of view the situation 
 was discouraging. As the decade drew to an end, 
 
 89 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 conditions in many instances were becoming more 
 and more desperate. The rate of interest on endow- 
 ments was steadily declining. Many of the older 
 professors in the colleges had passed their prime. 
 There was money at command neither for their 
 retirement on well-earned pensions, nor for the sup- 
 port of younger men to take their places. Nor did 
 trustees see any way to provide for those new pro- 
 fessorships which the times called for, or for the labo- 
 ratories without which science could not be success- 
 fully taught. 
 
 To make matters worse for the small college, the 
 state, under the provisions of the Morrill Act had 
 begun to lay the foundations of those universities 
 which have had such rapid growth, have done such 
 admirable work, and which now occupy such a prom- 
 inent place in the educational world. How could an 
 institution with an endowment rarely exceeding two 
 hundred thousand dollars, more frequently with less 
 than that amount, with inadequate buildings, with 
 little scientific apparatus, with few or no men in the 
 faculty able to teach science had facilities for teach- 
 ing it been present, compete with institutions having 
 the wealth of a state behind them, and ungrudgingly 
 placed at their disposal ? The wonder is that the small 
 college did not at once give up in despair. Many of 
 the friends of the state institution said that the small 
 college had outlived its usefulness, that as the high 
 school was so generally taking the place of the acad- 
 emy, or of privately endowed preparatory schools, 
 it might wisely be encouraged to extend its course of 
 
 90 
 
DENOMINATIONAL COLLEGES 
 
 study so as to embrace subjects usually taught in 
 the freshman and sophomore years in college and then 
 send the young men and the young women thus 
 trained directly to the state university. Or if these 
 smaller colleges are not at once given up, let them 
 voluntarily cease to call themselves colleges, and take 
 the rank of secondary schools and do such work as 
 may be called for by those students to whom the high 
 school in the cities and larger towns is not accessible. 
 It is not strange that to many of its warmest 
 friends the outlook for the small college seemed des- 
 perate. They saw clearly that even if Christian, 
 and favored by the denomination whose name it bore 
 it would not long survive, unless well endowed, and 
 so well equipped with facilities for elementary scien- 
 tific study at least, as to be able to furnish as good 
 or even better instruction than the state university. 
 To be sure professors in the small college would be 
 brought into closer relations with the student than 
 would be possible in the larger institution. More 
 emphasis would be laid on morals and Christian 
 character in the small college than in the university. 
 But it was replied, there are no charges for tuition in 
 the state universities. Nor is there any prejudice 
 there against religion. The views of the different 
 denominations are tolerated, so that there is no good 
 reason why Christian character should not be culti- 
 vated in the larger as well as in the smaller school. 
 Many were ready to go further and demand the 
 extinction of the small college altogether. They 
 said it would be a waste of funds to contribute to its 
 
 91 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K PEARSONS 
 
 support. Nor can there be any doubt of the sincer- 
 ity with which many of these objections to the 
 continued life of the institution which had done so 
 much for the country and had filled such a prominent 
 place in the intellectual development of the West 
 and the South were brought forward. A new day had 
 come. With it had come a demand for a new educa- 
 tion, for a kind of training along practical lines which 
 the college of the earlier time had overlooked or had 
 failed to see. Young people must be prepared for 
 their life work. Theory must give place to reality; 
 idealism to the pressure of practical life. 
 
 Before making his first gift to a Christian college 
 Dr. Pearsons saw three things clearly: First that the 
 small Christian denominational college had filled 
 and was filling a place in our educational system as 
 important to the welfare of the country as the common 
 school. This conviction had come to him as the 
 result of long-continued observation and careful 
 study. He saw, further, that to do its work well this 
 small college must be amply endowed and furnished 
 with such facilities in the way of buildings and equip- 
 ment as the education and training it was seeking 
 to give might demand. He saw also that in order to 
 save the college from future disaster, its endowment 
 must be obtained in such a way as to create for it a 
 constituency of graduates and lovers of learning upon 
 which it could depend in the future. Hence, the con- 
 ditions upon which he made his offers of help. If at 
 the beginning they seemed onerous, it soon became 
 apparent that in meeting them the college was making 
 
DENOMINATIONAL COLLEGES 
 
 for itself more permanent gains than in securing the 
 money it sought. 
 
 Probably even Dr. Pearsons did not foresee the 
 significance and full extent of the service he would 
 render in his deliberate effort to save the small 
 Christian college from extinction. 
 
 With an accurate knowledge of the educational 
 situation at the end of the eighties, and in the begin- 
 ning of the nineties, he began that careful investiga- 
 tion of the condition of the colleges, seminaries and 
 high schools in the different states of the Union and 
 that special study either in person or through trusted 
 agents of each particular institution desiring aid, 
 which here marked his career as the founder of the 
 Christian college. Comparatively few of the colleges 
 applying to him for help received it. He gave only 
 to institutions which had in them the promise of life 
 and growth, and were so situated as through their stu- 
 dents to minister to a wide extent of territory. He 
 was careful not to give to any large number of colleges 
 in any single state. A glance at the list at the end of 
 Chapter XV indicates the location of the schools, sem- 
 inaries and colleges which have been aided by him, 
 and shows how large a portion of the country in the 
 distribution of his fortune he has sought to reach. 
 
 When satisfied that his money would be wisely 
 used and would bring swift return, no man has ever 
 been more ready to give than he. Thus he writes 
 the Eaton Brothers, who were trying to establish an 
 institution for higher education and for practical 
 training in Montana. "I have been waiting for 
 
 93 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K PEARSONS 
 
 Montana for years: if I give $25,000.00 toward an 
 endowment for $100,000.00, can you secure $75,- 
 000.00?" To this question an affirmative answer was 
 returned and the money soon obtained. Such per- 
 sons as Mrs. Cyrus McCormick of Chicago, the late 
 John H. Converse of Philadelphia, F. August Heinze 
 of Pittsburgh, Senator Clark of Montana, Andrew 
 Carnegie of New York, and many others seemed to 
 take delight in furnishing it. The college has made 
 rapid strides, has a large and promising body of 
 students, several good buildings, a fine faculty, a 
 growing endowment and a bright outlook for the 
 future. It is under the care of the Presbyterians, but 
 is free from anything like sectarianism. It is not 
 strange that in following the mission of that gift of 
 $25,000.00 Dr. Pearsons has had great pleasure. 
 
 It would be surprising if he had not sometimes been 
 disappointed in the results of his giving. "The 
 greatest sorrow, I recall," he once said, "was when I 
 advanced a large amount of money to put a brilliant 
 young man through college. He promised to pay 
 me back, in fact, gave me his note. But I found 
 that he never intended to pay me. It doesn't pay 
 to help young men through college that way. I have 
 tried it dozens of times. I help them through college 
 with my money, but they do not pay me back; they 
 don't try to pay. It is little to me, but it is bad for 
 them. It is a calamity. It destroys the initiative. 
 The boy or girl who is determined to get through 
 college cannot be restrained by any difficulty. Such 
 people will work their way through untold hardships." 
 
 94 
 
DENOMINATIONAL COLLEGES 
 
 Let a leaf be taken out of his own experience. In re- 
 counting it he says : " For five years I boarded myself, 
 baked my own Johnnie cake, cooked my own pota- 
 toes, fried my own meat. For five years I depended 
 upon myself entirely and during that time I waxed 
 fat in the doing of it, and was well and hearty at all 
 times." 
 
 The kind of personal aid the Doctor enjoyed giv- 
 is indicated in words uttered in the parlor of 
 his house in Hinsdale. "Up-stairs in my sitting- 
 room are two young girls from Berea. They came 
 here last week, and I am paying them good wages 
 to do my housework. Two others who had earned 
 $150.00 each, left here a few days ago to go back and 
 finish out their course at the college. When the two 
 that are here have earned enough, they will return 
 also, and two others will come to take their places. 
 That's the kind of help I believe in giving. It lifts 
 up. It lets the sun shine into my own heart and 
 theirs too, and it is sending out into the world men 
 and women who will take rank with the best of us." 
 It was indeed a rare privilege to live in a home like that 
 of Dr. Pearsons and to be under the influence of a 
 woman like Mrs. Pearsons, who spared no pains to 
 give such instruction in housekeeping as was needed 
 and who in every way took the place of a mother to 
 the girls who lived with her, and in her quiet and 
 refined way imparted to them a goodly share of her 
 own beautiful character. 
 
 And yet the Doctor could say and say it truth- 
 fully: "I do not believe in charity. It destroys self- 
 
 95 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 respect and does no good. My principle is to give 
 other people an opportunity. I have hundreds of 
 applications for mere charity, but I pay no attention 
 to them. My work is merely a business proposition. 
 It is the investment out of which I get the best 
 returns." This statement was made when the Doctor 
 was eighty-five years of age. For this reason he was 
 never willing to be called a benevolent man. He gave, 
 he said, as an investment whose returns were to be 
 looked for in the moral and intellectual training of 
 poor young men and women. 
 
 "Benevolent? Do you call me benevolent? 
 Look at me. I am the most close-fisted, economical 
 man you ever set eyes on. I never wasted twenty dol- 
 lars in my life. I never went to a theatre but once 
 in my life, and then I was ashamed of myself. I 
 never went to a horse race, nor a base-ball game, nor 
 a foot-ball game. I live simply, frugally. I shall 
 live longer and better and more happily by living 
 simply. And if I choose to give away what I do 
 not want, I rather think I have the right. I give 
 where I have the largest satisfaction in the knowl- 
 edge that it is doing good, instead of leaving my 
 money to be quarrelled over when I am dead. Do 
 you call that benevolence?" A great many would, 
 and taking all things into account, would not be far 
 out of the way in doing so. At any rate, the more 
 men there are who imitate Dr. Pearsons in the way he 
 has taken to settle his own estate, the better will it be 
 for the world. On his eightieth birthday he said, 
 "I believe my plan of bestowing what I have to give 
 
 96 
 
DENOMINATIONAL COLLEGES 
 
 before my death will be adopted by those who have 
 money to give. It is the simplest and best way. I 
 flatter myself that I was the first to commence the 
 plan. Anyway I have found it the best method, 
 and I am satisfied." 
 
 In the distribution of his fortune the Doctor has 
 displayed the same remarkable business ability and 
 self-restraint which were so prominent in his business 
 life and contributed so much to his success. He did 
 not undertake to meet all the demands, which appar- 
 ently with reason might be made upon him. As a 
 rule he gave little heed to many of them. He 
 knew what he could do, and to the doing of that 
 one thing he confined his thought. "When I began 
 this enterprise of giving away money, I made up 
 my mind that I would have but one string to my 
 bow. I said to myself that the churches and the socie- 
 ties should care for their own. For my part I would 
 save souls by developing brains. This is my text." 
 To this rule Dr. Pearsons invariably adhered. Ap- 
 peals to break away from it did no good. Temp- 
 tations to do so, to which many a man would have 
 yielded, he steadily resisted. In this way he was 
 able to continue his gifts through a period of more 
 than twenty-two years, and in every instance to 
 put his money where he had ample reason to believe 
 it would do the most good. Where he knew others 
 would help, or had abundant means for doing so, 
 he declined to give. Where personal interests were 
 chiefly concerned, or institutions were in rivalry 
 with one another, he declined aid. 
 7 97 
 
VIII 
 GIFTS TO ILLINOIS INSTITUTIONS 
 
VIII 
 GIFTS TO ILLINOIS INSTITUTIONS 
 
 FOR some time before he had begun to make 
 the distribution of his fortune the business 
 of his life, Dr. Pearsons built four houses, 
 and turned them over to the Woman's Educa- 
 tional Aid Association of Evanston for the sup- 
 port of young women who were seeking an educa- 
 tion at the Northwestern University. Before doing 
 this, the Doctor had paid for the support of seven 
 young girls, but had tired of providing the money 
 in installments every year, and as he had discov- 
 ered, as he thought, the ability of the members of 
 the Association to manage property entrusted to 
 them, he proposed at first to build two houses, 
 provided the site could be secured and then two more, 
 the women to collect the rent, keep the houses in 
 good repair and out of the profits meet the expenses 
 of as many young women as possible. The plan 
 was entirely successful, and in every way satisfac- 
 tory. Many years afterwards representatives of 
 this association came to him for further aid and as 
 one of the reasons for their appeal, gave the history 
 of some of the more than one hundred girls who had 
 
 101 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 been aided through the income from his previous 
 gifts. Surprised at the story, deeply interested in 
 it, he replied that he thought he was receiving credit 
 which did not belong to him, as he had no recollec- 
 tion of having made any gift to the women of Evans- 
 ton. They said they could not be mistaken, and 
 left the Doctor with a promise from him that he would 
 consider their appeal. After a careful search through 
 note-books long before laid aside, entries were found 
 here and there referring to houses in Evanston, built 
 for the Woman's Education Aid Association. It 
 was not difficult to persuade him to spend thirty 
 thousand dollars more for a Hall, which he named 
 Chapin Hall, after Miss Julia A. Chapin, the sister 
 of Mrs. Pearsons. This Hall is always full and has 
 been of great service in furnishing a home to young 
 women who find it necessary to economize to obtain 
 an education. The Doctor was present at the dedi- 
 cation of the building and was greatly pleased with 
 its appearance, and its promise of usefulness. The 
 motto of the Association: 
 
 "Opportunity for service is our greatest blessing, 
 and to improve that opportunity will make for our 
 best development," is a motto whose meaning Dr. 
 Pearsons has himself strikingly illustrated. 
 
 In 1889 Dr. Pearsons gave Lake Forest Univer- 
 sity the sum of $100,000.00 on condition that $400,- 
 000.00 more be raised, as an endowment, and that 
 one half of the money he gave should be used as a 
 loan fund for needy students, no one of them to re- 
 ceive more than $100.00 a year, and the whole to be 
 
 102 
 
GIFTS TO ILLINOIS INSTITUTIONS 
 
 paid back within a reasonable time after graduation. 
 The remainder of the gift was to be set aside for the 
 support of a professorhip. That loan fund increased 
 by gifts to other institutions to about $150,000.00, 
 has produced very gratifying results. Not many 
 young men have failed to meet their obligations, and 
 as a small interest has been charged, the fund has 
 steadily increased. The suggestion of such a fund 
 came to Dr. Pearsons from his own experience as a 
 medical student, when a small loan enabled him to 
 graduate. 
 
 The prominence of this University, now called 
 Lake Forest College, justifies the taking of space 
 to present in full a report of the effect of Dr. Pearsons' 
 gifts as made by Dr. J. G. R. McClure, then its Pres- 
 ident. This account shows what these gifts have 
 done for other colleges of the country, as well as Lake 
 Forest, not only in the amount they have added to 
 their funds, but in bringing to them other and larger 
 gifts. Dr. McClure writes: 
 
 " GIFTS OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS TO LAKE FOREST 
 UNIVERSITY. 
 
 " 1889. $100,000.00. Property Endowment, consist- 
 ing of six brick and stone houses, No's 
 1215, 1217, 1219, 1221, 1223, and 1225 
 North State Street, and a six apartment 
 flat building, No's 5, 7, and 9 Scott Street, 
 Chicago. Lake Forest University still 
 owns this property intact and in good 
 condition. 
 
 103 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 " 1901. $25,000.00 Cash. Incorporated with the per- 
 manent endowment of Lake Forest Uni- 
 versity. 
 
 "Conditions attached to the gift of $100,000.00 in 
 
 1889: 
 
 "I. That half the amount be used for a foundation 
 of a Professorship of Political Economy and Social 
 Science, and the income from the other half be loaned 
 to students needing aid in their collegiate course, at 
 3% interest, the total loans for one year not to exceed 
 $3,000.00. These conditions have been met: First, 
 in the establishment, by action of the Trustees of 
 Lake Forest University on June 25, 1889, of the 
 'D. K. Pearsons Chair of Political and Social 
 Science 5 ; 
 
 " Second : in the continuous operation since 1889 of 
 the Pearsons 'Loan Fund,' from which loans have 
 been granted to worthy students in sums not exceed- 
 ing $100 for one student in any year. 
 
 " II. That a total of $400,000.00 new endowment be 
 raised, in addition to Dr. Pearsons' gift. This con- 
 dition was also met. 
 
 " The effects produced by this gift were, immediately, 
 to assure the success of the first great effort for the 
 permanent endowment of Lake Forest University; 
 and, subsequently, to endow the chair held by Pro- 
 fessor John J. Halsey, who has given the longest and 
 most distinguished service on the Faculty of Lake 
 Forest College in its history; and to aid 252 worthy 
 students from 1889 to 1910 in the gaining of an edu- 
 
 104 
 
GIFTS TO ILLINOIS INSTITUTIONS 
 
 cation. Up to September 30, 1910, these students 
 had borrowed a total of $40,439.50 from the income 
 of the Pearsons Fund, and repaid $18,378.20 of prin- 
 cipal and $6,294.19 of interest. Loans to the amount 
 of $21,986.30 (one note only surrendered) are still 
 outstanding, in the form of notes, upon which interest 
 is being paid. During the twenty years of the opera- 
 tion of the Pearsons Loan Fund, no application from 
 a worthy student for aid has ever been refused. The 
 maximum amount loaned in one year was $2,750.00. 
 Condition attached to the gift of $25,000.00 in 1911: 
 
 "That a total of $100,000.00 of new endowment 
 be raised in addition to the gift. This condition 
 was met. 
 
 "The effect of this gift was to stimulate the friends 
 of Lake Forest to the completion of an important 
 addition to the permanent endowment." 
 
 It should here be said that this gift of $25,000.00 
 on condition that $100,000.00 more be raised was 
 promised to Dr. McClure, personally, and that the 
 sum was secured almost entirely by his personal 
 solicitation. "A happier man than he," he writes, 
 "when the sum required was subscribed, has never 
 been known." It was this addition of $125,000.00 
 to the endowment of Lake Forest, which secured 
 permanency to its life and made possible the develop- 
 ments which followed. 
 
 A very timely gift of $20,000.00 was made to the 
 Grand Prairie Seminary, Onarga, Illinois, in 1900. 
 The Honorable W. A. Rankin had offered $25,000.00 
 for endowment provided $100,000.00 were obtained. 
 
 105 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 President Frost says that undoubtedly the effort 
 would have failed but for Dr. Pearsons' gift. That 
 endowment the President thinks was "the saving of 
 the school for larger usefulness. It is quite a question 
 whether it would have been open for work today had 
 not that endowment been obtained. At present the 
 school has an endowment of nearly a quarter of a 
 million in sight, and bids fair to become a permanent 
 institution for secondary work." This Seminary is 
 one of the best Methodist Schools in the State. 
 
 Illinois College has received $50,000.00 from Dr. 
 Pearsons. Some of the friends of the college thought 
 the conditions upon which the gift was secured were 
 rather severe, but they admit that the money-raising 
 campaign enlarged its constituency. President Ram- 
 melskamp is sure that "Dr. Pearsons has done a 
 great work for the small colleges. He was a pioneer 
 in the movement in favor of them. No man did more 
 to combat the notion that the day of the small college 
 was over than Dr. Pearsons. His gifts aided the 
 colleges and at the same time drew public attention 
 to the work they were doing and to the important 
 place they fill in our system of education." 
 
 Dr. John F. Harmon, President of McKendree 
 College (Methodist) at Lebanon, Illinois, declares 
 that he has no language at command to set forth the 
 service which Dr. Pearsons has rendered that insti- 
 tution. "Founded in 1828, and therefore one of the 
 oldest colleges in the State, until Dr. Pearsons came 
 to the rescue, it struggled along with great difficulty, 
 wholly unable to rise to her opportunities, in spite 
 
 106 
 
GIFTS TO ILLINOIS INSTITUTIONS 
 
 of the fact that it has graduated men of national 
 fame." 
 
 September 20, 1905, Dr. Pearsons gave the college 
 $20,000.00, which, with $80,000.00 secured as a 
 condition of receiving this sum of money, made an 
 endowment of $100,000.00. That was the beginning 
 of a new day for the college. Many new friends were 
 found, and new hopes were inspired. July 23, 1906, 
 Dr. Pearsons wrote: "I will give you $10,000.00 as 
 soon as you get $75,000.00. You need a dormitory 
 and also a building for poor boys and girls to board 
 themselves." The college failed to raise the money 
 within the year allowed, but in October, 1909, the 
 offer was renewed and over $90,000.00 were obtained, 
 so that April 10, 1910, the Doctor sent $10,000.00 to 
 the President of the College. Other friends added a 
 little later, $3,000.00 more, so that three modern 
 up-to-date brick buildings are now standing on the 
 campus. Governor Deneen, by his personal gifts 
 has added twenty acres to the campus, and a St. 
 Louis friend has added six acres more for field sports. 
 With several new buildings, and the old ones reno- 
 vated, the college is now enjoying an era of great pros- 
 perity. A spirit of enthusiasm unlike any previously 
 existing is showing itself among the students, whose 
 numbers have been greatly increased. A finance 
 committee, of which Governor Deneen is Chair- 
 man, has been organized in every county in the South- 
 ern section of the State, in order to obtain still more 
 money. But the President writes, "Dr. Pearsons 
 has saved the college. The good which he has done 
 
 107 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 in helping McKendree will last through the ages. 
 We do not know how to thank him enough. His 
 gift was made at the right time and under conditions 
 which could be met, but which called for an amount of 
 effort and personal sacrifice which endeared the col- 
 lege to its old friends, and created for it a multitude 
 of new friends." 
 
 To this College the Doctor added, in response 
 to a request from Governor Deneen, a gift of ten 
 thousand dollars just before his ninety-first birth- 
 day. 
 
 The proposal to give Knox College $50,000.00 in 
 1889 marks the change which afterwards took place 
 in the conditions made in this one of the earliest 
 gifts to the college and those which followed in later 
 years. The proposal was read by Dr. Robert W. 
 Patterson, one of the Trustees of the college and for 
 more than a generation Pastor of the Second Presby- 
 terian Church of Chicago. Evidently the proposal 
 was presented in language which indicated a desire 
 to preserve the denominational character of the 
 college. The proposal read as follows: 
 
 " CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, May 27, 1889. 
 "To the Trustees of Knox College, 
 
 Galesburg, Illinois. 
 
 "I intend to give an income-paying property in 
 Chicago, valued at $50,000.00, to your Knox College, 
 the income to be used: 
 
 "First: In endowing a professorship in Latin or 
 some other. 
 
 108 
 
GIFTS TO ILLINOIS INSTITUTIONS 
 
 "Second: To furnish a fund to be loaned to poor 
 and worthy students at the rate of One Hundred Dol- 
 lars a year during the regular classical course of four 
 years at three per cent interest annually, no student 
 to receive help unless he pursues a regular college 
 course. 
 
 "It is herein provided, however, that the following 
 conditions must be strictly observed and fulfilled by 
 the Trustees of Knox College, and that in case they 
 are not observed and fulfilled, the property aforesaid, 
 or the avails from the sale thereof, shall revert to the 
 donor, his heirs or assigns, and shall no longer be 
 held or in any manner controlled by said Board of 
 Trustees, to wit: 
 
 " 1st : Not less than two-thirds of said Trustees shall 
 be members of some evangelical church or churches. 
 
 " 2nd : The Board shall embrace a number of mem- 
 bers of the Presbyterian Church in the United States 
 of America, at least equal to that of any one denomi- 
 nation connected with it, excepting in the case of 
 vacancies occurring in said number by death, removal 
 from the State or other cause, which vacancies must 
 be filled so as to meet the requirements of this condi- 
 tion at or before the next annual meeting of the Board 
 after such vacancies have become known to the 
 Board. 
 
 "3rd: Neither of the foregoing conditions shall be 
 changed without the written consent and approval 
 of at least two-thirds of the members of the Board. 
 
 " 4th : Before the actual conveyance of the property 
 aforesaid to the Board of Trustees of Knox College 
 
 109 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 by the donor, the Board shall at a regular meeting 
 signify its acceptance of the property on the condi- 
 tions herein defined and approved, and shall cause 
 this acceptance with the conditions to be placed on 
 its permanent records. 
 
 DANIEL K. PEARSONS. 
 "Addendum. 
 
 In case any portion of said income should not be 
 desired by the students on the terms aforesaid, the 
 Trustees may apply same for any year in the purchase 
 of additional apparatus, or for the enlargement of the 
 college library, but in no case shall this be used for 
 other purposes if it is needed by promising students. 
 
 DANIEL K. PEARSONS." 
 
 The proposition of Dr. Pearsons was presented to 
 the Board at its annual meeting June 11, 1889, and 
 the following resolution was passed with reference 
 to it: 
 
 "Be it resolved, by the Board of Trustees of Knox 
 College in regular annual session assembled: 
 
 "First, that the gift of Dr. Daniel K. Pearsons of 
 Chicago, Illinois, contained in his proposition of 
 May 27, 1889, be and the same is hereby accepted 
 on the terms and conditions therein contained, and 
 
 "Second, that the Board unanimously express to 
 the generous donor of this most timely gift their 
 heartfelt thanks and high appreciation of the gift 
 and the giver; 
 
 "Third, that these resolutions be spread upon the 
 records of the Board. 
 
 110 
 
GIFTS TO ILLINOIS INSTITUTIONS 
 
 "On motion the resolutions were unanimously 
 adopted." 
 
 President McClelland writes that so far as the 
 records show, no conditions requiring a contingent 
 to be raised were attached to this offer. 
 
 June 9, 1892, the minutes show the reception of an 
 additional proposition from Dr. Pearsons. "The 
 Board of Trustees had met on the platform to listen 
 to the closing exercises of the graduating classes, 
 and the exercises having been satisfactory, the de- 
 grees were conferred as voted. Dr. D. K. Pearsons 
 of Chicago was present and made a written proposi- 
 tion to endow Knox College with Fifty Thousand 
 Dollars in Chicago Real Estate, providing Knox 
 College raises Two Hundred Thousand Dollars ($200,- 
 000.00) additional to go with it, and he gives the 
 College two years to secure the $200,000.00. The 
 proposition was received with cheers, and it was voted : 
 
 '"Resolved that the noble gift of $50,000. 00 tendered 
 by Dr. D. K. Pearsons of Chicago, Illinois, be and is 
 hereby accepted with sincere thanks and with feelings 
 of profound gratitude, and that we hereby pledge 
 our utmost efforts to the complete fulfillment of 
 every condition of his offer.' ' 
 
 Owing to the financial conditions prevailing in the 
 country, it was found impossible to meet these con- 
 ditions. The offer was renewed and the time ex- 
 tended, and when one hundred thousand dollars had 
 been obtained Dr. Pearsons gave the college twenty- 
 five thousand dollars, thus making his gifts to it 
 seventy-five thousand dollars in all. 
 
 Ill 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 "It is hard to see," writes the President, "how the 
 Institution could have maintained itself, but for the 
 timely and generous assistance which Dr. Pearsons 
 gave it." 
 
 To Knox as to many other colleges, the offers he 
 made furnished the impulse needed to encourage 
 Trustees and Professors to put forth the effort re- 
 quired to increase the endowment, and when the 
 money was obtained, they felt that the college not 
 only had friends, whose generosity it had not fully 
 appreciated, but that they were under a new and 
 greater obligation than ever to make the college 
 worthy of the support of the men and women who 
 had come to its rescue. 
 
 Several deserving colleges in the State have failed 
 to receive aid from the Doctor, not because he did 
 not recognize their claims for consideration, but 
 because he had determined to give aid to only two 
 colleges in a state. Having made an exception of 
 Illinois, and aided five colleges, one secondary school, 
 and two Theological Seminaries within its bounds, 
 he felt that in justice to other states he could not 
 extend the list. His example, however, has led others 
 to take some of these needy colleges on their hearts 
 and to exert themselves successfully to procure the 
 funds which have enlarged their endowment and 
 increased their efficiency. 
 
 112 
 
IX 
 GIFTS FOR INSTITUTIONS EAST OF CHICAGO 
 
IX 
 
 GIFTS FOR INSTITUTIONS EAST OF CHICAGO 
 
 WHEN Dr. Pearsons began his gifts to colleges 
 he had decided to confine them to schools 
 and colleges in Illinois, or in states west 
 of it. He felt that the East was able to care for 
 itself, and that his mission was to provide, so 
 far as his means would permit, for those centers of 
 learning which, having sprung up in a new country, 
 had been unable to establish themselves upon a self- 
 supporting basis. For several years he remained 
 firm in his decision to give no money to any insti- 
 tution east of Chicago, but appeals from points in 
 Michigan, Ohio, Massachusetts and Vermont became 
 so pressing that he could not refuse to consider them. 
 
 OLIVET COLLEGE, MICHIGAN 
 
 Olivet College is the only Congregational college 
 in Michigan. From the pine forests of the state he 
 had obtained a goodly portion of his fortune. Presi- 
 dent Sperry, then at the head of Olivet College, 
 asked him if having taken so much money away from 
 Michigan he did not feel that he would be justified 
 
 115 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 in sending a little of it back to help in the endowment 
 of one of its prosperous, yet very needy colleges. 
 After studying the situation carefully, the location of 
 the college, its relation to other institutions of similar 
 grade in the state, the number and character of its 
 students, the ability and self-denying work of its 
 faculty, he saw clearly that it would be quite in 
 accordance with his original plan of distributing his 
 fortune where it would do the most good to aid in the 
 strenuous effort the college was making to add $100,- 
 000.00 to its modest endowment. Hence his pledge 
 of $25,000.00, provided $75,000.00 more were secured 
 within a year. The effort was successful and the col- 
 lege placed on its feet. In reference to this gift from 
 Dr. Pearsons, President Lancaster, under date of 
 November 15, 1910, writes: "the money was invested 
 as an endowment fund and has benefited us to 
 the amount of six per cent on that amount since he 
 gave it, and will continue to do so for all time, the 
 rate of interest only changing possibly. The college 
 could not exist without the hundred thousand dollar 
 endowment, which was completed at that time. 
 It means, then, that Dr. Pearsons practically saved 
 the life of the institution." 
 
 Olivet has grown steadily, and although a small 
 college, and connected with a denomination, it has 
 shown that notwithstanding the overpowering influ- 
 ence of the University of Michigan, there is a demand 
 for its work and for other colleges of similar standing 
 in the state. Olivet has always been an earnestly 
 Christian, but never a sectarian college. It has main- 
 
 116 
 
GIFTS FOR INSTITUTIONS 
 
 tained a high standard of scholarship, has sought 
 to develop character in its students, and has been 
 content to remain and fill the place of a small college. 
 
 MARIETTA COLLEGE, OHIO 
 
 It was with more than usual difficulty that Dr. 
 Pearsons convinced himself that he ought to give 
 $25,000.00 to Marietta College. Why should one of 
 the oldest colleges in the rich state of Ohio come to him 
 for assistance? A college with such a number of 
 distinguished men on its list of graduates, and with 
 history running back almost to the settlement of the 
 little city whose name it bears, ought, it seemed to 
 him, to care for itself. Nor did he look favorably on 
 the fact that it was in debt, had in fact rarely closed 
 a year without adding to its deficit. But at last, 
 considering its relation to Western Virginia, and to 
 the region south of the Ohio River, and its own 
 local constituency, and recalling the fact that here 
 one of the first settlements, if not the very first settle- 
 ment was made in that great tract of land conse- 
 crated to liberty, education and religion, under the 
 ordinance of 1787, and honoring the memory of Dr. 
 Israel W. Andrews, so long at the head of the college, 
 he promised $25,000.00, if its friends would pay 
 all its debts and raise $75,000.00 additional. That 
 gift was magical in its influence. The debts were 
 paid ; the money for endowment secured and the era 
 of the New Marietta began. Mr. W. W. Mills, a grad- 
 uate of the college, one of its trustees, its treasurer, 
 
 117 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 one of its most generous friends, President of the 
 First National Bank of Marietta, says, "The gift 
 of Dr. Pearsons was most timely, as it enabled the 
 college to pay its debts and to secure a substantial 
 addition to its endowment funds. I have no doubt 
 the offer of Dr. Pearsons influenced many to give to 
 the college at that time, and enlarged its constitu- 
 ency. The gift enabled the college to liquidate a 
 debt which had existed practically ever since the 
 foundation of the institution, and to lay the founda- 
 tion of an endowment which has been considerably 
 increased. There is no doubt about the great value 
 of the effect of Dr. Pearsons' gift upon the present 
 and future of Marietta College." 
 
 It has brought it an increased number of students, 
 encouraged its friends and its faculty, and made it 
 possible for it to maintain that high rank in scholar- 
 ship which the Secretary of the General Board of 
 Education has given it. One who visits the Marietta 
 of today, and looks upon the noble buildings which 
 surround and adorn its campus, or enters the building 
 furnished by Mr. Carnegie in which are stored many 
 of the rarest documents relating to early American 
 History, can hardly realize through what straits the 
 college has passed, or in what financial distress it 
 found itself only a few years ago. Out of these 
 difficulties the timely gift of Dr. Pearsons extricated 
 it, put new life into all its friends, and secured for it 
 a future of large and ever enlarging usefulness. 
 
 118 
 
GIFTS FOR INSTITUTIONS 
 
 MONTPELIER CONFERENCE SEMINARY, VERMONT 
 
 When Dr. Pearsons made up his mind to help 
 Montpelier Conference Seminary to secure an endow- 
 ment which would perpetuate its usefulness and en- 
 able it to do its work without anxiety as to its sup- 
 port, he wrote to one of the leading Methodists of the 
 state to ask if a gift from him of $50,000.00 would 
 bring $150,000.00 from eastern friends. The Seminary 
 was on the point of disbanding. Its credit was gone. 
 It owed $50,000.00 and had only $18,000.00 produc- 
 tive endowment. Impossible as it seemed to meet 
 the conditions, answer was returned to Chicago that 
 they should be met. At times many were discour- 
 aged but a few would never give up. Again and 
 again the time for meeting the conditions was 
 extended till at length after four years of struggle 
 it was possible to inform the Doctor that he might 
 send the money. No one had done more toward 
 creating the spirit which triumphed in the face of 
 great difficulties than the Doctor himself. When 
 he learned that the friends of the Seminary were 
 almost ready to confess defeat, and vote to close the 
 Seminary, he wrote letters to the President of the 
 Seminary, and through him sent words of greeting 
 to all its friends assuring them of success if they 
 would only pull all together and keep on giving 
 until the money was obtained. No one rejoiced in 
 the success of the money-raising campaign more than 
 the man who had started it. No wonder President 
 
 119 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K PEARSONS 
 
 Bishop says "The Doctor saved the school. Bless- 
 ings on him." 
 
 There were special reasons for Dr. Pearsons' 
 interest in this Seminary. When it was known as 
 Newbury Seminary he had prepared for college in it. 
 Here he had a teacher whose influence upon him was 
 profound and of whom he never ceased to speak 
 with gratitude. Here he was converted and began 
 that Christian life in which he rejoiced during the 
 years of his strenuous business career and which fur- 
 nished the principles by which he was guided in the 
 distribution of his millions. In that old Seminary 
 apart from the aid he received from home, he lived 
 on forty cents a week and this money and what was 
 needed for tuition, books and clothing he earned as 
 he went along. It was in Vermont that he was born 
 and this name was dear to him. How could he be 
 content to do nothing when a school of which he had 
 so many memories and to which he felt so much 
 indebtedness was about to die? There is pathos in 
 the letter which accompanied the check sent to 
 President Bishop. It is full of clear vision of the 
 future. To understand it one must read between 
 the lines. It is the message of a prophet, and if its 
 words seem inspired, we must remember whose 
 words they are, and dwell for a moment on the 
 seventy and more years which lay between their 
 utterance and the student of seventeen years. They 
 were years of ambition, ambition which had been 
 realized ; years of professional success, of business tri- 
 umph, of ability in old age to repay the debt which 
 
 120 
 
GIFTS FOR INSTITUTIONS 
 
 he owed the institution by saving its life and fitting 
 it for a larger usefulness than it had ever known. 
 Though often printed, that letter should always 
 have a prominent place in any account of what Dr. 
 Pearsons has done. In it we get a hint of the motives 
 by which he was governed, and the vigor of his mind 
 at ninety. 
 
 "Fifty Thousand Dollars, farewell! You have 
 been in my keeping for many years, and you have been 
 a faithful servant. Your earnings have helped to 
 educate many young men and women who have 
 helped make the world better. You came to me from 
 the grand old white pine forests of Michigan, and now 
 you are going into the hands of other stewards in the 
 State of Vermont. There you are to become a part 
 of a perpetual endowment fund of $150,000 for Mont- 
 pelier Seminary, $100,000 of which sum has been 
 given by the people of Vermont. When you arrive 
 in Montpelier you will go into the keeping of good 
 business men, and you will be safe; as I expect that 
 every dollar of this perpetual endowment fund will 
 be kept intact and actively doing good for five hun- 
 dred years. 
 
 "Over one hundred years ago a good man gave 
 $50,000 for mission work. The interest on this fund 
 has educated more than a hundred good men for the 
 mission field, and is still being used for training men 
 for the business of brightening the world and mak- 
 ing it better. 
 
 "In Denmark there is an endowment fund 
 founded over nine hundred years ago, and not one 
 cent has been lost or wasted. I expect the same 
 fidelity in managing this endowment fund. 
 
 "I left Vermont in 1840. This gift, added to other 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 gifts, makes $90,000.00 which I have been privi- 
 leged to contribute to the betterment of the dear old 
 State. 
 
 "Now Fifty Thousand Dollars, farewell! Go into 
 the keeping of younger men, and God's blessing go 
 with you! Do your duty and give the poor boys 
 and girls of Vermont a fair chance. 
 
 D. K. PEARSONS." 
 
 MlDDLEBURY COLLEGE, VERMONT 
 
 The value of Dr. Pearsons' twenty-five thousand 
 dollars to this old college and the immediate effect 
 of his offer cannot be described more vividly, or in 
 more emphatic langage than in a letter from its 
 President, John M. Thomas, who is, as Dr. Pearsons 
 repeatedly declared, a man after his own heart. 
 
 "NOVEMBER 14th, 1910. 
 
 "I was elected to the Presidency of Middlebury 
 College in October, 1908. The college had then 200 
 students, and its numbers had increased steadily 
 for a number of years, but its endowment was alto- 
 gether insufficient and there were not enough build- 
 ings. Only two buildings had been erected since 
 1861, and the endowment had remained practically 
 stationary for a number of years. There was special 
 need of a building for girls, who were scattered in 
 homes all over the village. 
 
 " Something needed to be done to arouse the loyalty 
 of the Alumni and to stir interest throughout the 
 State of Vermont. I appealed unsuccessfully to 
 the General Education Board and other benevolent 
 organizations and individuals. The feeling seemed 
 to be that our college was too small to need help and 
 
GIFTS FOR INSTITUTIONS 
 
 that we had not been making sufficient progress. 
 Then I wrote Doctor Pearsons and asked him for 
 $50,000.00 for a building for girls. His reply was 
 'Can you raise $100,000.00 in Vermont or other 
 places? Are you a good beggar? It takes a smart 
 man to raise money.' I answered that I thought I 
 was a fairly good beggar and proposed to raise a good 
 deal more than $100,000 before I got through. He 
 answered right away, 'You need $100,000.00 to do 
 the work right. I will give you $25,000.00 when you 
 raise $75,000.00. I have only one style of doing 
 business. 5 
 
 " That was my first gleam of real hope in my work 
 as a college president. It was a very little thing, as 
 many of our great colleges and universities count 
 benefactions, but for me, it meant a chance to get 
 started on my life-work. With all my heart I 
 thanked God for Doctor Pearsons and my gratitude 
 to him will continue as long as I live. 
 
 "I announced the conditional offer of $25,000.00 
 on my inauguration day. While the people were 
 still applauding one man put his hand on my shoulder 
 with a pledge of $5,000.00. Before night I had 
 $22,100.00 and a $10.00 bill from a school teacher 
 the first actual cash to meet Doctor Pearsons' offer. 
 In just one year to a day from the date of his offer, 
 I had the $75,000.00 in hand and the Doctor was 
 writing his check. 
 
 "The campaign thus initiated was incalculable to 
 our institution. It rallied our Alumni and won new 
 attention to our College all over this region of country. 
 The class received the following autumn was the larg- 
 est Middlebury had ever known. In two years the 
 attendance has increased from 203 to 275, and the 
 income from tuition is $10,000.00 greater. A suc- 
 cessful summer school has been inaugurated. The 
 
 123 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 General Education Board, which earlier would not 
 consider our appeal, has given us a conditional 
 grant of $50,000.00 towards a fund of $200,000 and 
 all but $62,000 of that is now pledged. The Vermont 
 Legislature has made us an appropriation of $6,000.00 
 a year and established a Department of Pedagogy 
 for the training of high-school teachers. The col- 
 lege has really started upon a new era of expansion 
 and usefulness, and no one can question that the 
 beginning of the movement was the offer of Doctor 
 Pearsons and his 'one style of doing business. 5 
 
 (signed) JOHN M. THOMAS." 
 
 The real reason for this gift as Dr. Pearsons has 
 said again and again is not only his love for Vermont 
 and her schools, but his wish that poor girls, espe- 
 cially, living in the state and unable to attend large 
 and wealthy colleges, may have a place near their 
 homes, where at a comparatively small expenditure of 
 money they may go and receive an education as 
 good as that furnished at Wellesley or Smith or 
 Mount Holyoke. 
 
 MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE, MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 It has already been stated that very early in his 
 professional career in Chicopee, Dr. Pearsons had 
 been interested in Mount Holyoke College. It 
 was a seminary then, and very small, for it was at 
 the beginning of its great history. His wife, who had 
 been trained under Miss Emma Willard in Troy, 
 believed fully in the higher education for women. 
 The members of her family shared in her belief. 
 
 124 
 
GIFTS FOR INSTITUTIONS 
 
 Her father's house was one of the places to which 
 Mary Lyon could always come and be sure of a 
 welcome. Her whole family sympathized with Miss 
 Lyon in her purposes and in her plans. It is only 
 natural that the husband of one of the daughters in 
 such a home should be interested in Mary Lyon also, 
 and that with his love for learning and his sympathy 
 with those who obtain it with great difficulty, he 
 should frequently visit it and resolve that if ever he 
 were able he would assist just such schools as this 
 one at South Hadley. Years passed all or nearly 
 all of the early friends of the school had died. The 
 school had grown into a college. Still, although 
 there were many teachers now, the spirit was the 
 spirit of Mary Lyon. The prosperity of the institu- 
 tion had increased its burdens till they could no 
 longer be borne. Young women were knocking for 
 admittance at doors which could not open to them. 
 The graduates of the old seminary saw that something 
 must be done. In all parts of the country meetings 
 of these graduates were held to consider the situation 
 and to devise plans to meet the crisis. Dr. Pearsons 
 was at once interested in the movement and having 
 broken his rule to make no gifts for any institution 
 east of Chicago, he found it easy to persuade himself 
 that money set aside for a college which had trained 
 girls like those who had gone out into the world from 
 Mount Holyoke, would be well invested. 
 
 "In January, 1896," reports Mr. A. L. Williston, 
 the Treasurer of the college, "Dr. Pearsons offered 
 to give $50,000.00 for endowment, if its friends would 
 
 125 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 raise $150,000.00, and as he wrote that he was sure 
 we would get it, he gave us $25,000.00 at once. After 
 the great fire in September Dr. Pearsons telegraphed 
 from the South where he was then resting, while 
 the embers were still burning, '40,000.00 to rebuild 
 Mt. Holyoke'; in July, 1897, he sent the $40.000.00 
 in cash. In March of the same year he gave $10,- 
 000.00 toward the sum which the New York Alumnae 
 were raising for the Mary Brigham Hall. In June, 
 1898, the college had raised $150,000.00 for endow- 
 ment, and the Doctor sent the $25,000.00 remaining 
 unpaid on his pledge of $50,000.00. So well pleased 
 was he at what he saw and heard on a visit to the 
 college, that he agreed to continue his offer of one 
 dollar for every three dollars others would raise for 
 the college during another year. This cost him 
 $50,000.00 more, and when he sent it, it was with the 
 conviction that no money had ever been better ex- 
 pended than that which he had given for the educa- 
 tion of girls in Mount Holyoke. It was a home insti- 
 tution to which he was contributing, an institution 
 founded by a woman whose memory he revered, and 
 whose example he was praying that many others 
 would follow." 
 
 Miss Woolley, the President, says "We cannot 
 overestimate the value of Dr. Pearsons' gifts from 
 the point of view, both of the material assistance 
 rendered at a very critical time in the history of the 
 college, and also of 'moral support' and stimulus to 
 other gifts. I think I am right in saying that with 
 the exception of the 'Todd bequest,' about two 
 
 126 
 
GIFTS FOR INSTITUTIONS 
 
 hundred thousand dollars, Doctor Pearsons has given 
 more than any other single giver, and we are very 
 grateful to him. The good work which he started 
 by his gifts for endowment we are now trying to con- 
 tinue in an attempt to add at least half a million 
 dollars to that endowment before our seventy-fifth 
 anniversary in nineteen hundred and twelve, an 
 addition which is imperative for the raising of our low 
 salaries. Dr. Pearsons is one of the comparatively 
 few people who appreciate the necessity for endow- 
 ments, and the academic world should be grateful 
 to him for his influence in that direction, as well as 
 for many other reasons." 
 
 127 
 
X 
 
 GIFTS TO BELOIT COLLEGE 
 
X 
 
 GIFTS TO BELOIT COLLEGE 
 
 DR. PEARSONS was drawn toward Beloit by 
 many reasons in addition to its proximity to 
 Chicago, the promising character of its field 
 and the excellence of its work. He recalled the fact 
 that in 1835 his interest in the locality of the college 
 had been aroused by seeing four wagons pass his 
 father's house in Vermont with people and their 
 baggage from northern New Hampshire on the way 
 west to settle in a place afterwards called Beloit. 
 On his first visit to the West in 1851 with Mrs. 
 Pearsons he forded the Rock River and stopped at 
 the place of which he had first heard, when a boy of 
 fifteen. As previously stated, on starting for Janes- 
 ville he asked a man who entered the stage at Beloit 
 what that building was which was going up on the hill 
 and received as an answer, "Oh, that is a college 
 which some eastern cranks are trying to build." 
 "During the ride to Janesville," says the Doctor, "he 
 and I discussed the value of colleges, he attacking 
 them, I defending them, till at parting I told him 
 I was going to help such colleges as that when I 
 had become rich." Dr. Pearsons did not forget his 
 
 131 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 promise although nearly forty years had passed 
 before he was in a condition to redeem it. 
 
 One morning in May, 1889, a letter was put into 
 the hands of President Eaton, from a man he had 
 never met, of whom he knew nothing. It contained 
 these words: "President Eaton. If I give Beloit 
 $100,000.00, can you raise $100,000.00 by July 1? 
 I mean business. 
 
 Truly, 
 
 D. K. PEARSONS." 
 
 Could the challenge be met? At any rate the at- 
 tempt must be made. The result was that the $100,- 
 000.00 was obtained in the short space of seven weeks 
 and the college put into possession of what then 
 seemed to be the large sum of $200,000.00. That 
 was the beginning of a series of gifts which have 
 brought the college into the rank of the strong col- 
 leges of the country. The conditions of an offer in 
 1895 of $50,000.00 if three times that amount were 
 raised were not met till 1898. In 1901 $200,000.00 
 were offered the college if $150,000 were added to it. 
 This condition was met. In 1908 $25,000.00 more 
 were given toward the $200,000 the Trustees were 
 trying to add to the college endowment. Mean- 
 while the Doctor had given large sums for much- 
 needed buildings. For the erection of Chapin Hall 
 $25,000 were provided in 1891. The next year $60,- 
 000.00 went into the Pearsons Science Hall and in 
 1897 $30,000 were expended for the building of 
 Emerson Hall, the home of the college girls. Dr. 
 
 132 
 
GIFTS TO BELOIT COLLEGE 
 
 Pearsons' gifts to Beloit thus amount to more than 
 a half million dollars, to say nothing of the constit- 
 uency he has helped to create for the college and the 
 stimulus he has imparted to its faculty and its friends. 
 
 The value of these gifts and the effect they have 
 had on the fortunes of the college no one can set 
 forth so well as Dr. E. D. Eaton, the president of 
 the college when the gifts in money were made and 
 the buildings erected. Slightly modified and con- 
 densed, his words are as follows: 
 
 "In 1889, Beloit College, with a splendid record 
 of over forty years of devotion to high ideals, was 
 struggling to obtain resources for its development 
 along the lines of the new education. Its equip- 
 ment was meager, its faculty few in number. On 
 the tenth of May in that year the President received 
 a letter which read as follows: 'President Eaton: 
 If I give Beloit College $100,000.00 can you raise 
 $100,000.00 more by July 1? I mean business. 
 Truly, D. K. Pearsons.' The effect was electric. 
 Citizens of Beloit, Trustees and Faculty, Alumni and 
 friends of the College bent to the task, and in less 
 than seven weeks the money was obtained and the 
 new Beloit was born. Commencement that year 
 was a time of great rejoicing. Dr. Pearsons then 
 made his first visit to Beloit College. As he walked 
 over the campus, he exclaimed 'This is New England.' 
 He was now redeeming the promise he had made so 
 long ago, and was helping the college on the hill. 
 On the platform on Commencement Day, he made 
 the first of a series of addresses, keen, witty, elo- 
 
 133 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 quent, with thought and feeling, which have become 
 historic in the annals of Beloit. That autumn the 
 foundation of a new building was laid, the first of 
 ten buildings which these years of swift development 
 have brought the college." 
 
 At that time the pressure of two urgent problems 
 had begun to be increasingly felt: One, the 
 want of an adequate building and equipment for 
 teaching physical sciences; the other the demand 
 for a commodious dormitory. Under the guidance 
 of Professors Chamberlain and Saulsbury, of the 
 University of Chicago, then members of the 
 faculty of Beloit, foundations had been laid 
 for exceptionally good work in science in the 
 college, but accommodations and apparatus for 
 teaching were woefully lacking. Growth in the 
 number of students had increased the rent for rooms 
 in the village, and thus laid a burden on the shoulders 
 of poor students which they were finding hard to 
 bear. Dr. Pearsons was deeply interested in the 
 situation. He expressed his willingness to give 
 $30,000 for a Science Building, if others would give 
 as much, Soon afterwards he had decided to give 
 $25,000.00 for the building of a dormitory, the Pres- 
 ident alone knowing from whom the gift came. It 
 pleased the Doctor to pay for the building in cash, 
 rather than by check, so that the President had the 
 experience of going from Chicago to Beloit with his 
 pockets full of bills for the payment of the contractor. 
 In the meantime the Doctor told the President that 
 he decided to withdraw his offer of $30,000.00 for a 
 
 134 
 
GIFTS TO BELOIT COLLEGE 
 
 Science Building and put a part of that money into 
 a dormitory instead. The President was greatly 
 disturbed, but said nothing. Commencement night 
 1892, Dr. Pearsons made it known, from the plat- 
 form that he was the giver of the dormitory, and 
 named it Chapin Hall, in honor of the revered first 
 President of the College. During the applause that 
 followed he took from his pocket a letter, turned to 
 President Eaton and said, "You have shown that 
 you can keep a secret but I would have you know that 
 I can keep one, also. I have one of my own of which 
 you know nothing. I have put it into a letter which,*' 
 he roguishly added, "I have brought with me from 
 Chicago to save a postage stamp. Here it is and 
 you must read it to the audience." The astonished 
 and almost overpowered President read aloud as 
 follows: "I will give Beloit $60,000.00 for a Science 
 Hall, if the Trustees will raise $120,000 to equip and 
 endow it." Little wonder that at the close of the 
 exercises the college boys laid hold of Dr. Pearsons 
 and in spite of his protests put him into a carriage 
 and drew him to the place where the Commencement 
 dinner was to be served. Toward meeting the con- 
 ditions imposed at this time Mr. William E. Hale 
 of Chicago, one of the Trustees gave $60,000.00 and 
 the other $60,000.00 was raised among other friends 
 of the college. During the autumn of that year 
 the building took shape on the campus, and since 
 has been a prominent and determining factor in the 
 life of the college. 
 
 When, in 1895, it was determined that young 
 135 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 ladies should share in the advantages of the college, 
 Dr. Pearsons at Commencement promised $50,000 
 if $150,000.00 more were raised. At the semi-centen- 
 nial celebration of the opening of the college in June, 
 1897, he declared his purpose to put $30,000.00 into 
 a building for young women, which he afterwards 
 named Emerson Hall, in honor of one of Beloit's 
 oldest and most honored professors. The speech 
 in which that gift was announced is so character- 
 istic of other addresses made at Beloit and at some 
 other colleges, that it is here given entire. 
 
 "I had a college president come to my office a few 
 days ago. He sat down by me, looked me in the 
 eye. I did not know but what he was going to take 
 hold of me by the collar, and he said, 'Why do you 
 give to Beloit so much? Why don't you give to the 
 rest of us?' I did not tell him that it was none of 
 his business. No, because I treat all college presi- 
 dents and college professors with the greatest consid- 
 eration. Are there any men in the world who can 
 compare with the self-sacrificing college presidents 
 and professors? They work for small pay, they 
 work for God and humanity. Therefore under all 
 circumstances I treat them with the utmost kindness. 
 And I receive them from every portion of the coun- 
 try. I have an interview with college presidents 
 nearly every day. 
 
 "Now I am going to answer the question about 
 Beloit. That is a fair question. It is my duty to 
 answer it. The first college I helped . . . and 
 I have helped sixteen, was Beloit College. I did 
 not make any mistake. No, I think it shows that 
 I am a pretty shrewd man. I will tell you why. 
 
 136 
 
GIFTS TO BELOIT COLLEGE 
 
 Beloit College from top to bottom is thoroughly 
 honest. You never have deceived me, you never 
 have tried to terrify me in any shape or manner. I 
 wish I could say the same of all colleges. You have 
 been frank and honest. Everything you have agreed 
 to do, you have done. 
 
 " I could say a great deal more, but I am coming 
 to the point now which I am greatly interested in. 
 A good gentleman and lady, Mr. and Mrs. Stowell, 
 have given this college a beautiful block and build- 
 ing costing. $30,000.00, which they have paid for 
 outright. There it stands. What are the young 
 ladies that come to Beloit to have in the future? 
 Those young ladies who come to Beloit in the future 
 ought to have a beautiful building, a charming build- 
 ing, where they can have a real nice family home and 
 be under the direction of a grand and good matron. 
 And I propose to build that building. That build- 
 ing will cost $30,000.00. It will be taller than Cha- 
 pin Hall, a little longer and a little wider. It will be 
 a beauty. Now I say to you gentlemen of the 
 trustees board, go on and build your building. As 
 fast as you build call for your money and you will 
 get it. When you get it built, you will get every 
 dollar in money, not a check, but right out in money. 
 Build it economically. I intend that that $30,000.00 
 shall build a superb building, and shall put in heat- 
 ing apparatus and a radiator in every room. I will 
 tell you why. You can build thirty per cent cheaper 
 now than you did when you built Chapin Hall. You 
 know that, every one of you. There are men idle 
 who want work. Now is the time to pitch in and 
 build. 
 
 "I am not going to dictate to the Trustees about 
 that building. I have got business enough of my 
 own. I do not run a risk though in telling these 
 
 137 
 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 gentlemen to go on. I confine them with certain 
 limits. That is business. But if you look back 
 eight years and see what these gentlemen have done 
 in building you will see that they can be depended 
 upon to do anything in that line. Look at Scoville 
 Hall, the Chapel, Science Hall, the finest in the 
 world. There is one thing more I would have. 
 That beautiful building has got to be furnished. Do 
 not any of you gentlemen rise up and say, I will 
 furnish it. You are not going to have anything to 
 do with it. The ladies of the North West will fur- 
 nish that building. You and I, ladies, are working 
 together now. The building is going to be furnished, 
 and it will cost about $4,000.00. When you go back 
 to your homes in Janesville and all around, ladies, 
 at the very next meeting of your ladies' association 
 just tell them that you are going to furnish a room 
 in what, I will tell you what it is, in Emerson 
 Hall. It is not often you name a building before it 
 is built, but Dr. Emerson, it is your hall. 
 
 "Now I want to tell you one thing. You know I 
 feel perfectly at home in this audience. I have been 
 here four times. I have talked to you in a form that 
 I would not talk in under ordinary circumstances. 
 I have never given to a liberal institution, as they 
 term it, I never will. Never. I do not believe in 
 giving to an institution that uses the prayer-room as 
 a dancing-hall, or Shakespeare for the Bible. 
 
 "Now I am not coming here again until you get 
 your endowment raised. Then I will come up. 
 You might as well go about raising that endowment 
 now for your prosperity adds to your expense. When 
 you write that you have got it all, I will come up 
 and bring the $50,000.00 in clean cash. I will not 
 give you a check, but the money itself. When you 
 write me that the endowment is raised, I will come, 
 
 138 
 
GIFTS TO BELOIT COLLEGE 
 
 and not before. I have very good reasons why I 
 have given to Beloit. I will help you as much in 
 the future as I have in the past." 
 
 One of the exercises at the commencement in 1898 
 was the dedication of Emerson Hall. Mr. Hale of Chi- 
 cago represented Dr. Pearsons, who could not leave 
 Chicago, and Professor Emerson spoke for the college 
 and the young women for whom it had been erected. 
 At that time Dr. Pearsons gave the college a check for 
 $51,000.00, the extra thousand dollars being for 
 Mrs. Pearsons, to help meet the conditions imposed 
 by her husband when his pledge was made. 
 
 When the health of the President was seriously 
 impaired in 1901, Dr. Pearsons came forward with 
 an offer of $200,000.00 if the Trustees would raise 
 $150,000 and the President would remain with the 
 college and return to his work, after taking suitable 
 rest. These conditions were speedily met, and Be- 
 loit College became as strong a college financially as 
 it long had been in its faculty and in the character 
 of its work. 
 
 Four years later the President found a change of 
 occupation so absolutely necessary that he reluc- 
 tantly accepted a call to the pastorate of a New Eng- 
 land church whence, two years later he was persuaded 
 to return to Beloit. But before consenting to fill 
 his old position he took the lead in a campaign which 
 increased the endowment of the college $200,000.00, 
 toward which Dr. Pearsons contributed $25,000.00. 
 "For twenty years now," says President Eaton, "Dr. 
 
 139 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 Pearsons has been the dynamic of Beloit's new life; 
 at every critical point in the history of the college his 
 moulding and energizing spirit has been embodied in 
 the development which has characterized the epoch." 
 Generous and valuable as Dr. Pearsons' gifts to 
 the college have been, it ought not to be forgotten that 
 the conditions upon which they were offered could 
 never have been met, save for the unflagging inter- 
 est in the college on the part of its trustees, and the 
 liberal way in which they themselves contributed. 
 They were leaders in the money-seeking campaigns. 
 Nor did they grow weary or discouraged when many 
 said, "The conditions cannot be met." They said, 
 "We must meet them, and we will." And they did. 
 In the earlier campaigns, or till he became President 
 of Wooster University, Ohio, they had the invaluable 
 assistance of Rev. Lewis E. Holden, then financial 
 agent of the college. Mr. Holden had a genius for 
 raising money. He could obtain it where every one 
 else would fail. And he obtained it because he loved 
 the college from which he had graduated, in which 
 he was a professor and in whose present and future 
 work he believed with all his heart. His enthusiasm 
 never failed nor did he ever shrink from any task, 
 however distasteful, provided it promised something 
 for his Alma Mater. To him should be accorded 
 as it is by those who know what he accomplished, 
 the credit for no small share in securing the victory 
 in the earlier campaigns for the money called for to 
 meet the conditions upon which the offers of Dr. 
 Pearsons were made. 
 
 140 
 
GIFTS TO BELOIT COLLEGE 
 
 Dr. Pearsons has admired the college for its Chris- 
 tian character and for the devotion to its interests 
 on the part of its trustees, its graduates, and more 
 than all, of its faculty. He has never tired of speak- 
 ing of the noble work of President Chapin, Professors 
 Emerson, Blaisdell and Porter, who literally gave 
 their lives for the college, and for the larger share 
 of their pay were content to look upon the character 
 of their students and the place they filled in the 
 world. Such an institution he felt ought to live, 
 be fully equipped for all the work demanded of it, 
 and its influence perpetuated through an endowment 
 he could help it secure. 
 
 141 
 
XI 
 
 GIFTS TO OTHER WESTERN COLLEGES THAN 
 BELOIT 
 
XI 
 
 GIFTS TO OTHER WESTERN COLLEGES THAN 
 BELOIT 
 
 PARK College, Parkville, Missouri, is one of 
 the colleges in which Dr. Pearsons has 
 been especially interested. It is the out- 
 growth of the devotion of a single family, father and 
 sons, the McAfees. Thoroughly Christian in its 
 spirit, Presbyterian in its denominational prefer- 
 ence, yet absolutely tolerant, furnishing opportun- 
 ities for self-support so abundant that no one who 
 really desires an education need hesitate to seek 
 it, it could not fail to win the respect and sympathy 
 of a man like Dr. Pearsons, who has always sought 
 to invest his money where it would return the larg- 
 est dividends. 
 
 It has a large plant and is entirely out of debt. 
 Its endowment is small, for an institution of its size, 
 though it is steadily increasing. Its President, Dr. 
 Lowell M. McAfee, says, "I can assure you most 
 unqualifiedly that few gifts have come to Park at 
 a time when they were more timely and more help- 
 ful than that of Dr. Pearsons. For some years we 
 had made no appreciable advance in our endowment. 
 10 145 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 We needed just the impetus that his gift of $25,000.00 
 afforded. I cannot speak too highly of our apprecia- 
 tion of his kindness and helpfulness in placing his 
 seal of approval on the work of the institution.'* 
 
 There are thirty or more buildings on the campus, 
 unpretentious all of them, but suited to the purpose 
 for which they were erected. Parkville is not far 
 from Kansas City and is in the center of a region 
 where the work the college is trying to do, and has 
 been successful in doing, is greatly needed. 
 
 Dr. Pearsons has made no large gifts to any of the 
 Iowa Colleges. He has felt that a state with the 
 wealth of Iowa, and the appreciation the people in 
 general have of the value of an education, might 
 wisely be left to provide for its own institutions. 
 
 To Coe College, a small college at Cedar Rapids, 
 he has, however, given a thousand dollars, and at a 
 time when this sum was very much needed. 
 
 Tabor College also received about one thousand 
 dollars from him, without any conditions attached 
 to it. The gift was of very great value, as without 
 it, it would have been well-nigh impossible to com- 
 plete a building greatly needed in the college work. 
 The sympathy expressed in the gift, and the approval 
 thus given the college were worth more than the 
 money, indispensable as that seemed to be. Tabor, 
 as is well known, occupies a field entirely its own and 
 is furnishing opportunities for higher education to 
 a class of students very eager to accept them. 
 
 Hastings College, Nebraska, has received $10,000 
 from Dr. Pearsons. Though a small college, its 
 
 146 
 
GIFTS TO OTHER WESTERN COLLEGES 
 
 history has been creditable, and its future is prom- 
 ising. 
 
 Doane College in southern Nebraska, so called 
 after its most generous benefactor, has done for 
 nearly a generation, fine work with a very scanty 
 equipment. Its graduates have distinguished them- 
 selves in almost every rank of life. As a child of 
 the Congregational churches of the state, it has again 
 and again received their willing aid in adding to its 
 endowment. This year, 1911, it has received from 
 them, notwithstanding recent gifts which taxed their 
 capacity to the utmost, seventy-five thousand dol- 
 lars, for the twenty-five promised and paid over by 
 Dr. Pearsons. The college has a campus of great 
 beauty, one which the oldest and richest university 
 in the country might well covet. President Perry 
 has given his life to the college, and with the assist- 
 ance of able professors, has brought it into the first 
 rank of the smaller colleges. 
 
 The fact that Washburn College, situated as it is 
 at the capital of the State, has been able to attract 
 the attention of wealthy men in the east, and has 
 received large gifts from them, has led Dr. Pearsons 
 to feel that it would be wiser for him to give to col- 
 leges with fewer resources open to them than the 
 college at Topeka. He has, however, taken a deep 
 interest in Washburn, has watched its growth care- 
 fully, and years ago presented it with a thousand 
 dollars. To this gift he makes no reference when 
 speaking of the institutions he has aided. 
 
 Fairmount College, Wichita, in Southern Kansas, 
 147 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 is one of the rapidly growing institutions of that 
 great state. The city in which it is located has all 
 the push and enterprise of the north and west, but 
 in social life is characterized by much of the charm 
 and refinement of the south. Many of the leading 
 citizens of Wichita, and not a few of the best friends 
 of the college are southern born. The majority of 
 the students at Fairmount are from Kansas, though 
 a few are from states further south. To the appeals 
 of Fairmount for aid, Dr. Pearsons has responded 
 with gifts aggregating $40,000.00. These gifts have 
 drawn the attention of many friends of learning to 
 this college, and to such a degree that its enthusiastic 
 and very able President, Rev. Henry E. Thayer, 
 is now inaugurating a campaign for a very consid- 
 erable increase in the endowment of the college, the 
 erection of new buildings and an increase in the 
 faculty. Fairmount has demonstrated its right to 
 live, and its value to the large constituency which 
 geographically belongs to it. That the present 
 campaign for an increase of funds will be entirely 
 successful, those who are acquainted with President 
 Thayer and his Board of Trustees do not for a mo- 
 ment doubt. 
 
 Colorado College at Colorado Springs, is one of 
 the institutions which has received substantial aid 
 from the Doctor's purse. Years ago when on a visit 
 to the Springs during a summer vacation, he declared 
 his purpose to a friend to assist the college at some 
 future time. The friend was dubious. He had 
 heard wealthy men talk before. He made an entry 
 
 148 
 
GIFTS TO OTHER WESTERN COLLEGES 
 
 in his note-book that Dr. Pearsons of Chicago has 
 said that sometime he was going to aid the little 
 struggling college at Colorado Springs, and added 
 that he was going to see how the promise was kept. 
 No man was more surprised than he, when he 
 learned that the Doctor had come to the rescue of 
 the college, had encouraged its President to under- 
 take a money-raising campaign, in which he had 
 little hope of success, but which, pushed with un- 
 wearied energy and carefully planned, brought the 
 college its first large endowment, and fifty thousand 
 dollars from the man who long before had promised 
 to aid the college. That college is now the leading 
 institution in the state, has more students than it 
 can accommodate, and is suffering from a demand 
 for special instruction in departments not yet estab- 
 lished. In appreciation of what Dr. Pearsons has 
 done for Colorado and other colleges, President 
 Slocum writes: 
 
 "It is not easy to place a just estimate upon the 
 value of the beneficence of Dr. D. K. Pearsons. 
 Without doubt Mr. Andrew Carnegie was right 
 when he said that there never had been in the his- 
 tory of America a case of giving which had accom- 
 plished as much of value to the whole country as 
 the gifts of Dr. D. K. Pearsons to the colleges of the 
 West. It is of very distinct advantage that these 
 gifts are the result of painstaking and business-like 
 investigations. No set of institutions in the coun- 
 try has done more for moral, as well as intellectual 
 leadership, than have these colleges, which are dis- 
 tinctly religious in their influence. It is the recog- 
 
 149 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 nition of this fact, which has placed such high value 
 upon the discriminating benevolence of Dr. Pear- 
 sons. He has recognized that there are certain 
 strategic points in the West, where colleges should 
 be established and developed, and with the far-sight- 
 edness of a man well acquainted with this section of 
 the country, he had poured his millions into these 
 institutions and made it possible in many cases for 
 them to go on with their beneficent work. 
 
 " It is remarkable that he has been able to give such 
 a large amount of time to a study of these colleges, 
 visiting them, making careful examination of their 
 curriculums, and especially of their business methods, 
 and watching their growth with an interest that has 
 been keen as well as sympathetic. 
 
 "The result has been that not only have his dona- 
 tions been wisely placed, but he has set an example 
 to others which has resulted in doubling or even 
 trebling the value of his own gifts. 
 
 "Aside, however, from the great financial worth of 
 his munificence, the greatest value of his gifts has 
 been, that by means of them he has set on their way 
 moral and religious influences, which are the hope 
 of America. No one can study keenly such tenden- 
 cies throughout the West, without realizing how 
 these influences are largely centered in the type of 
 college which he is supporting; colleges which are 
 constantly sending into the world a stream of young 
 men and women who are taking places of leadership 
 in all that makes for the highest good of the coun- 
 try. It is this which has made Dr. Pearsons' gen- 
 erosity of such national importance. As the years 
 go on, it will be recognized more and more that it 
 is this which constitutes the inestimable value of the 
 gifts of this great and wise philanthropist, whose 
 memory will be cherished not only by the institu- 
 
 150 
 
GIFTS TO OTHER WESTERN COLLEGES 
 
 tions which he has helped, but by the thousands of 
 earnest, high-minded, self-reliant young people who 
 received college training because of his generosity 
 and who are rendering service throughout the world, 
 which is one of the highest value." 
 
 To the College of Idaho, at Caldwell, Dr. Pearsons 
 gave $25,000.00 in 1909. This with $75,000.00 
 obtained from other sources provided an endowment 
 of $100,000.00, which has been increased through 
 the stimulus created by the interest taken in the col- 
 lege by Dr. Pearsons, to $160,000.00. President Boon 
 says, "The College can never forget that Dr. Pear- 
 sons led the way to financial success, or that its Vice 
 President, Miss Julia V. Finney, one of its faithful 
 teachers, was the agent through whom his interest 
 in the college was aroused." The field which the 
 college occupies is full of promise and as it has the 
 moral and financial support of the Presbyterian 
 Church of the whole country, it can hardly fail 
 to become a large and important institution of 
 learning. 
 
 In the College of Montana at Deer Lodge, Dr. 
 Pearsons was interested when he first heard that its 
 establishment was proposed. His promise of $25,- 
 000.00, made as soon as there was any prospect that- 
 additional funds could be secured, "was," writes 
 the President, "undoubtedly the means of securing 
 our endowment. It made possible the work since 
 done and the high degree of efficiency and success 
 since reached." With a large body of students in 
 attendance, the state rapidly increasing in popula- 
 
 151 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 tion, an able faculty and the Presbyterian Church 
 interested in it, its future is assured. 
 
 Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota, has 
 received $50,000.00 from Dr. Pearsons. It was prom- 
 ised to Dr. J. W. Strong, then President of the college, 
 on condition that double the sum be raised in addi- 
 tion, for endowment. He promised also to pay one 
 half of the amount whenever fifty thousand dollars 
 were secured. May 19, 1900, the college received 
 $25,000.00 and January 8, 1901, $25,000.00. The 
 gift was of great service to the college in itself and in 
 the influence it had in creating confidence in its 
 character and worth. 
 
 Lawrence University, under Methodist control, 
 and located at Appleton, Wisconsin, one of the 
 institutions in which Dr. Pearsons lectured when he 
 represented Dr. Calvin Cutter in the West and in 
 the South, in the late fifties, received from him five 
 thousand dollars, toward the erection of Science 
 Hall. President Plantz says: "This gift was of 
 the greatest importance to us, since it gave a start 
 to a needed enterprise and helped stimulate General 
 Isaac Stephenson to make a large gift for the same 
 cause. I doubt if we would have been able to erect 
 the Science Hall at the time we did if Dr. Pearsons' 
 gift had not given us a valuable start. Its erection 
 marks the beginning of the recent prosperity of our 
 college both in attendance and in the development 
 of our resources." 
 
 Toward the erection of Ingram Hall, which is a 
 Science Hall, for Ripon College, Ripon, Wisconsin, 
 
 152 
 
GIFTS TO OTHER WESTERN COLLEGES 
 
 Dr. Pearsons gave five thousand dollars. The 
 money came at a critical time and made it possible 
 to secure a building which was an absolute necessity, 
 and has served its purpose with increasing efficiency. 
 President Merrill, then at the head of the college, 
 wrote the Doctor that he believed him to be the 
 wisest giver he had ever known. His gifts were not 
 always made on conditions hard to meet. Nor did 
 he always care to have it known that money came 
 from him for any special object. He often concealed 
 his gifts under the name of another. He was thus 
 true to his purpose of investing his money where he 
 was persuaded it would do the most good. 
 
 For Northland College, Ashland, Wisconsin, Dr. 
 Pearsons has invested $10,000.00 in an endowment 
 which as yet is very small. This college is the child 
 of missions and as a frontier college, with a field from 
 two to five hundred miles in extent in different direc- 
 tions, has an opportunity rarely equalled for Chris- 
 tian and educational influence. "It is the leading 
 agency," says Rev. E. P. Wheeler, "to mould and 
 unify and raise up leaders for the virile races of 
 Northern Europe, beginning the struggle among the 
 stump lands of the Lake Superior region." The 
 college is in its infancy, but the children of heroic 
 German and Scandinavian settlers, and of "the 
 equally heroic but defeated peasantry of Finland, 
 Poland and Russia" are showing themselves eager 
 to embrace the opportunities it offers them for an 
 education. 
 
 To Huron College, Huron, South Dakota, $15,000 
 153 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 have been given. This gift was the beginning of a 
 permanent endowment. As to its value, President 
 French writes, "This money from Dr. Pearsons 
 was the first money given to us as general endow- 
 ment funds. Because of his reputation for wisdom 
 as well as generosity in his giving, it has been of great 
 value to us, to be known as one of his children. 
 Our college is an especially good example of the 
 kind of institution in which he believes and which 
 he desires to help. His pioneer work in helping the 
 small western Christian college, I consider of the 
 utmost importance to the country at large. On 
 patriotic as well as on Christian grounds he could 
 have done nothing wiser or more far-reaching for 
 good with his money." This Presbyterian College 
 has made a good name for itself, and in a few 
 years, with a more ample endowment, will become 
 one of the important educational institutions of the 
 state. 
 
 Yankton College, Yankton, South Dakota, has 
 received generous aid from Dr. Pearsons. He 
 greatly admired the character and work of Rev. 
 Joseph Ward, founder of the college, pastor of the 
 First Congregational Church of the city, friend 
 and promoter of all the religious interests of the state, 
 whose service as educator and Christian minister 
 was cut short by his death in 1889. Two years 
 later he offered the college $50,000.00 on condition 
 that $150,000.00 more were raised. If buildings 
 and campus were worth at that time a little less 
 than $50,000, and the debt was hardly less than that 
 
 154 
 
GIFTS TO OTHER WESTERN COLLEGES 
 
 sum, it would seem as if hope of success in meeting 
 these conditions were slight indeed. But through 
 the efforts of the Rev. W. B. D. Gray, seconded by 
 the untiring zeal and self-sacrificing service of Mrs. 
 Ward, so much was secured that part of the pledge 
 was redeemed in 1893 and the remainder at Com- 
 mencement in June, 1895. The panic of 1893, the 
 fact that many of the contributors were unable to 
 pay what they had promised and the general decrease 
 in the price of land, greatly reduced the actual value 
 of the subscription. But the debt was paid, and 
 Ward Science Hall was erected and dedicated with- 
 out incurring any new obligations. In 1895 the 
 Doctor urged President Warren, then at the head 
 of a College in Utah, to leave the college he was then 
 serving, and if called to Yankton, as he was very 
 shortly afterward, to accept the call, difficult as the 
 position would be to fill. Almost the first advice 
 he gave the new President was to reduce expenses. 
 This was done, both in 1898 and 1899, able men put 
 upon a salary of $800 a year, an amount upon which 
 it was very hard to live. 
 
 In the spring of 1900 the Doctor offered the Presi- 
 dent $50,000.00 if the debt, which in spite of every 
 effort had been increasing until it had reached the 
 sum of $30,000.00, was paid by March 1st. The 
 money was raised chiefly in small gifts, though one 
 gift of $5,000.00 from a gentleman in the East, whose 
 name was concealed, changed doubt and despair into 
 cheer and certainty. By June, 1906, $90,000.00 
 had been secured for buildings and endowment, and 
 
 155 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 to this sum Dr. Pearsons added $30,000. In speak- 
 ing of his "princely generosity," Dr. Warren writes 
 "He stretched forth a generous hand to feeble begin- 
 nings which other great givers refuse to consider, 
 and by his benefactions made early and large success 
 possible. Childless, himself, the colleges and the 
 young people in them are his children. In them 
 are thousands of teachers and students who not 
 only now while he is still with us, but to the last day 
 of their lives will rise up and call him blessed." 
 
 It is not too much to say that if Dr. Pearsons 
 had failed to come to the rescue, the college could not 
 have survived the pressure of continued deficit and 
 the panic of 1893. It was the timeliness of his gift 
 as well as its size which gave confidence, as well as 
 relieving the college from burdens almost unbear- 
 able. The college is now well established, though 
 as a flourishing institution it demands far larger 
 means than at present are at its disposal. The 
 President and Trustees are now seeking to obtain, 
 for buildings and further endowment not less than 
 $250,000.00 by the end of the present college year. 
 If this aim is not realized at the coming Commence- 
 ment, the effort will doubtless be continued till that 
 greatly needed sum is secured, and the college brought 
 into a condition where it will be better able to do 
 the work which a growing and prosperous state 
 requires. 
 
 Fargo College, Fargo, North Dakota, has also 
 received a large sum from Dr. Pearsons. He had 
 believed in its mission from the first. He sympa- 
 
 156 
 
GIFTS TO OTHER WESTERN COLLEGES 
 
 thized with the aim and efforts of its first President, 
 Rev. H. C. Simmons, whose sudden death was caused 
 by his devotion to Christian education, and the reli- 
 gious interests of the state. But for a gift of $50,- 
 000.00 from Dr. Pearsons that first endowment of 
 $200,000.00 could not have been obtained. His 
 later gift of $20,000.00 for the completion of Dill 
 Hall was equally important and valuable. "The 
 first gift came," says Dr. Cragin, the President of 
 the College, "at a time when discouragement was so 
 great that the Trustees were nearly ready so give 
 up the institution. That gift saved its life and ren- 
 dered its future growth possible. No wonder that 
 he is spoken of by the Trustees, as our great friend. 
 If he could see," adds Dr. Cragin, "the institution 
 at the present time, with the Carnegie Library, a 
 beautiful building almost ready for use; with our 
 splendid faculty representing some eighteen univer- 
 sities and colleges, including Harvard, Columbia, 
 Oxford, Leipzig, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Oberlin 
 and Beloit; with our fine body of students, an in- 
 crease of fifty per cent as compared with last year; 
 if he could know of the large number of students 
 who are earning their own way, he would feel that 
 he has never made a better investment." That this 
 is nearly always said by the President and friend of 
 every institution he has aided is proof of the wisdom 
 of his beneficence and of the care with which it has 
 been bestowed. 
 
 Rev. E. H. Stickney, one of the Trustees of the 
 college and connected with it from its organization 
 
 157 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 and active in all efforts for its development, writes, 
 "Dr. Pearsons' gift of one thousand dollars to cur- 
 rent funds at a time when all were feeling the burden 
 very much and were ready to give up, was providen- 
 tial. Two out of five members of the Executive 
 Committee had voted to close the doors of the col- 
 lege. Then came the offer of $50,000.00 if $150,000 
 more were raised for endowment. Impossible as it 
 seemed to do this the close of 1902 saw the money 
 in hand. A later gift of $20,000.00 completed Dill 
 Hall, a building greatly needed for administration 
 and scientific purposes. These gifts were the means 
 of saving the college. They came at a time to remove 
 discouragement and to lay the foundations upon 
 which a great institution can safely and surely be 
 built." 
 
 Similar testimony is given by George E. Pearley, 
 Esq., one of the most faithful of the Trustees, and 
 one who often consulted with Dr. Pearsons, and 
 who, if he felt at first that the conditions of his gifts 
 were severe, came afterwards to look upon them as 
 "the severity of kindness and of high wisdom." 
 With an endowment of $200,000.00 well invested, 
 it would seem as if a college with a goodly number of 
 students, in the commercial center of a rapidly 
 growing state like North Dakota, need never again 
 be in a critical condition. But hard times and ina- 
 bility to secure any considerable sum of money from 
 the friends of the college in the state made it diffi- 
 cult five years later, and well nigh out of the ques- 
 tion to complete the Administrative Building. The 
 
 158 
 
GIFTS TO OTHER WESTERN COLLEGES 
 
 walls were up, windows and doors were boarded up. 
 The unfinished structure seemed to be saying to all 
 who saw it, "You perceive the weakness of the insti- 
 tution. It is about to die." At this crisis Dr. 
 Pearsons wrote, "Finish Dill Hall. I enclose a 
 check for $4,000.00. More will be sent as needed, 
 till you have the $20,000.00 you ask for." That 
 gift ended the era of doubt for Fargo College. 
 
 The financial outlook for Drury College in the 
 years 1892 and 1893 was gloomy and discouraging. 
 Competing schools had laid upon the college the 
 necessity of an extended Curriculum and additions 
 to her Faculty. And further a $20,000.00 debt and 
 increasing annual deficits seemed to preclude a for- 
 ward movement. The continual call upon the 
 friends of the College for gifts to meet annual deficits 
 had become burdensome and disheartening. The 
 friends of the College felt that light must break in 
 and early relief must come or twenty years' work 
 be jeopardized. "Letters, prayers and calls were 
 sent everywhere seeking some Moses who should 
 lead us over the Red Sea of our difficulties. It 
 was at this time the college turned its hope toward 
 Dr. D. K. Pearsons of Chicago, and our faith in his 
 wise judgment and benevolent heart was not con- 
 founded." 
 
 When "our necessities and opportunities were laid 
 before him" by Dr. H. T. Fuller, then the President, 
 Dr. Pearsons surprised him by saying promptly, 
 "I will give the college $50,000.00 if the friends of 
 college will give $100,000.00 more. Or I will cover 
 
 159 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 this amount in two pledges giving $25,000.00, if 
 you will raise $50,000.00. This generous pledge 
 brought comfort and hope and some trembling to 
 the college, and the campaign was opened with an 
 effort to meet the first conditional offer, and the 
 amount was raised by January 1st, 1894. Dr. Pear- 
 sons sent forward his check for $25,000.00 and it 
 looked wonderfully good to the college. Again the 
 friends of the institution rallied with determination 
 to meet the second conditional gift of $25,000.00, 
 and it was met January 1st, 1895, and Dr. Pearsons 
 forwarded his second check for $25,000.00 more. 
 
 None except those upon the ground could under- 
 stand the new joy and hope these gifts of Dr. Pearsons 
 inspired. The future of Drury College was felt to 
 be secure. New gifts would come easier since future 
 donors would be assured their gifts would not be 
 lost. 
 
 This royal help of Dr. Pearsons made his name a 
 household word in the whole Southwest, and led 
 many schools and even individuals to write to this 
 benefactor for aid. The college and city now desired 
 to have this great donor visit the Southwest and 
 the Faculty and the City Council extended to him 
 a pressing invitation to come; finally, in April, 1901, 
 Dr. Pearsons and his beloved wife found it conven- 
 ient to visit Springfield while on their journey to 
 Eureka Springs for a brief rest. Great preparations 
 were made to make their visit notable and the whole 
 body of the faculty and students went to the depot 
 to welcome them and escort them to the college. 
 
 160 
 
GIFTS TO OTHER WESTERN COLLEGES 
 
 A carriage was decorated with college colors and the 
 two higher classes planned to draw them to the col- 
 lege grounds. But the unpretentious benefactor 
 declined this offer with thanks and desired to drive 
 down in "his own hired carriage." He was driven 
 down to the grounds and halted before the splen- 
 did edifice that had been made possible by his gift, 
 and he greatly admired it, and told his companions 
 that it made him very happy to see it. After prom- 
 ising to be at morning Chapel exercises they retired 
 to the hotel for the night. 
 
 The visitors were on hand early, and the faculty, 
 students and many from the city were present to 
 greet them. All saw Dr. Pearsons and his wife and 
 heard his unique speech. The following are a few 
 excerpts from his address. 
 
 "Faculty, Students and Citizens, if my tongue 
 were tipped with eloquence, I would throw the tip 
 away, for I wish to talk a little plain common-sense. 
 I am intensely interested in young men 
 and women. I want to give the poor boy a chance. 
 I have a little fund of $150,000.00 which I loan to 
 young men and women through college treasuries, 
 and I have never lost a dollar. ... I was 
 introduced at Beloit College as Dr. Pearsons, C. B. 
 (College Builder). At another place as holding the 
 degree of P. E. (Professor of Endowments). I made 
 my money by strict economy. I never spent a 
 dollar foolishly. I never saw a horse race. I never 
 saw a ball game. I never went to a theatre. 
 
 "Some say I am close fisted; I am. Some call 
 11 161 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 me an old Puritan. I am proud of it. My habits 
 are simple. I rise early. I attend strictly to busi- 
 ness. I have made my money honestly, I take 
 advantage of no man. 
 
 "I advise rich men to put their money in 
 colleges out west, Christian colleges. ... A 
 friend of mine lately told me that he was building 
 a monument for himself and family in the cemetery 
 that would cost him $40,000.00. I told him I was 
 building a monument for myself and wife that would 
 cost over $5,000,000.00, and this monument is 
 associated with the Christian colleges in the land. 
 
 "Young men, if you amount to anything in this 
 world you must hustle. Young men and women, 
 the promised land is before you. You must hustle 
 to obtain it. ... 
 
 "Grit makes the man, the lack of it, the chump, 
 Therefore young man take hold, hang on and hump." 
 
 In honor of this visit the college gave a holiday 
 to its students and the visitors looked over all the 
 college buildings and in the afternoon the President 
 gave a reception to the visitors and many citizens 
 of Springfield called and paid their sincere respects. 
 
 In 1908 Dr. Pearsons again came to the help of 
 Drury College, with the handsome gift of $20,000.00, 
 making a total in gifts of $70,000.00. 
 
 In the present hopeful outlook for Drury College 
 Dr. D. K. Pearsons is regarded as the man and sol- 
 dier who "stood in the breach," and his large gifts, 
 which were accumulated honestly, will continually 
 bless the work of Drury College. 
 
 162 
 
GIFTS TO OTHER WESTERN COLLEGES 
 
 The success of a later campaign for $250,000.00 
 depended very largely upon the judgment of Dr. 
 Pearsons. A number of people, friendly to the 
 college, hesitated about additional gifts. Dr. J. H. 
 George, the President, consulted with the Doctor 
 and received from him, not only a contribution for 
 the fund, but also his unqualified and hearty endorse- 
 ment of the proposition in the interests of Christian 
 education. This opinion of Dr. Pearsons was much 
 quoted in satisfying liberal friends of Education 
 that an investment in cash in Drury College would 
 yield ample and satisfactory returns in the way of 
 fitting young men and women for their life work. 
 Drury regards the Doctor as the one man who has 
 stood firm, strong and hearty in favor of the insti- 
 tution, and has created a sentiment of confidence, 
 among the generous patrons of education through- 
 out the country, so that it is now confidently under- 
 taking to increase the endowment by half a million 
 dollars, to meet the growing needs of the Institution. 
 
 163 
 
XII 
 AID FOR BEREA COLLEGE 
 
XII 
 AID FOR BEREA COLLEGE 
 
 BEREA College was founded in 1855. It was 
 located in the Village of Berea, Kentucky, 
 which is about one hundred and thirty-one 
 miles south of Cincinnati, Ohio, on the Louis- 
 ville and Nashville Railway. Rev. John G. Fee, one 
 of its founders, said of it, "It is a dreary place," but 
 prayer, consecration and untiring effort have built 
 up here one of the most remarkable and useful educa- 
 tional institutions in America. In 1910 it had 1400 
 students, over 1000 of them living in buildings or 
 barracks on the campus. It owns over 170 acres of 
 farming land and 4000 acres of forest land, purchased 
 in order that students may have practical lessons in 
 forestry. It has a system of water works which cost 
 $50,000.00 to install. Several of its buildings have 
 been erected almost entirely by student labor. This 
 is true of the chapel which seats more than 1500 peo- 
 ple. The brick was burned on the farm and the tim- 
 ber obtained from the mountains. The annual bud- 
 get, which is on a very economic scale, in 1910 was 
 $89,000.00. Over and above the income from $900,- 
 000.00 endowment, a large deficit has to be raised 
 
 167 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 every year. This budget provides the kind of edu- 
 cation which the mountain people especially need. 
 These people have been belated in their development 
 by living in comparative isolation for two centuries, 
 and need domestic, agricultural and economic train- 
 ing, as well as that which fits one to be a school- 
 teacher or to follow a profession. There are depart- 
 ments for instruction in nursing, domestic science, in 
 printing, brick-making, mountain farming, carpenter- 
 ing, blacksmithing, the selection and care of stock. In 
 these departments students are trained for the practi- 
 cal work of life. Board is furnished at cost and 
 tuition is low. Students are encouraged to earn 
 their way by their work. From 1859 the school 
 was for a time suspended on account of the feeling 
 of hostility in the state which had arisen against it, 
 and during the Civil War it was twice interrupted 
 by the presence of armies. In 1866 it admitted the 
 first colored students, obtained a charter as Berea 
 College, and until 1904 youth of both sexes, white 
 and colored, profited from its instructions. In 
 that year the legislature of Kentucky, yielding to a 
 growing pressure from many sections of the South, 
 passed a law requiring the separation of the races in 
 all the schools of the state. The law was obeyed, 
 and when its legality was upheld by the Supreme 
 Court, the Trustees of the College promptly set aside 
 $200,000 of its then scanty endowment, for the sup- 
 port of its colored students in institutions like Fisk 
 University, Nashville, Tennessee, where at one time 
 141 were taught. A campaign for $200,000 more 
 
 168 
 
AID FOR BEREA COLLEGE 
 
 was immediately begun and when the money was 
 secured, a site between Louisville and Lexington 
 was purchased: there under the name of the Lincoln 
 Institute of Kentucky, a new and separate school 
 was started on its independent career. This move- 
 ment left Berea free to devote itself with greater 
 consecration to the cultivation of the special field 
 open to it, the training of the young people of the 
 mountains. For this work increased endowment 
 has been sought and obtained, but more and better 
 buildings are still greatly needed. In confining its 
 efforts to this, at first seemingly more limited field 
 the friends of the college have received sympathy 
 and aid from many of the most influential and far- 
 seeing people in America. As an example of this, 
 one may point to the great meeting held on Lincoln's 
 birthday, February 11, 1911, in Carnegie Hall, 
 New York, at which such men as the Hon. Seth 
 Low of New York, and Governor Woodrow Wilson 
 of New Jersey were present, and in which they took 
 a prominent part. At that meeting a letter from 
 President Taft was read in which he said, "Berea 
 is doing a great work in educating the mountaineers 
 of the South." 
 
 Governor Wilson of Kentucky wrote, "No school 
 has done, or can do so much for this Appalachian 
 Region as Berea." 
 
 Justice Harlan, as one familiar with the moun- 
 taineers of the South, wrote "What these moun- 
 taineers need, who are by nature manly Americans 
 is opportunity. Give them churches, and school- 
 
 169 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 houses, and financial aid, and great results for the 
 country will follow." 
 
 As one of the speakers at that meeting, President 
 Frost of Berea called attention to the fact that these 
 mountaineers are living in a state of society not 
 unlike that of the time of Alfred the Great of England, 
 that they are of the best possible stock with many 
 noble traditions, the finest traits of character, and 
 eager for a training that will make their mountains 
 a better place in which be to born and to live. 
 
 Governor Wilson, of New Jersey, himself a south- 
 erner, and acquainted with the mountain region of 
 the South from boyhood, said "When you are asked 
 to subscribe for Berea you are asked to subscribe 
 for a renewal of the life of the country at its sources. 
 
 "These people, living as they do, remote from the 
 great routes of travel, in the pockets of the mountains, 
 on their slopes, amid their forests, are of an old 
 stock, Scotch-Irish, are conservative by nature, yet 
 thoughtful as well as imaginative, are the kind of 
 people out of whom the best kind of American citi- 
 zens can be developed. President Lincoln was of 
 them. He knew them, honored them because he 
 knew them, and trusted them, and they did not 
 disappoint him in the trying times of the Civil War. 
 There are three million of these southern whites 
 living in the mountains which belong to the ends of 
 seven states, grouped around East Tennessee, to be 
 educated." 
 
 The Charter of Berea reads : "In order to promote 
 the cause of Christ, primarily by contributing to 
 
 170 
 
AID FOR BEREA COLLEGE 
 
 the spiritual and material welfare of the mountain 
 region of the South, affording to young people of 
 character and promise a thorough Christian educa- 
 tion, elementary, industrial, secondary, normal and 
 collegiate with opportunities for manual labor as an 
 assistance in self-support." 
 
 The school was begun by slaveholders, who did 
 not believe in slavery, who hoped that through 
 education its gradual abolition might be brought 
 about. Although slavery has gone, the purpose for 
 which the school was founded, the education of the 
 children of the sturdy people of the mountain regions 
 of the South, remains . . . They need a different 
 training from that furnished in northern academies, 
 or in the high schools and colleges of the South. 
 All that is best in their traditions and habits should 
 be preserved. They should be encouraged to con- 
 tinue their fireside industries, weaving and the like. 
 As not all of the young people can attend school and 
 none of the older people, efforts are made to reach 
 them in the summer by going among them and living 
 among them in tents and giving instruction in house- 
 keeping, improvement in the management of farms, 
 the raising of stock, and exciting interest in these 
 and kindred subjects by the use of the stereopticon. 
 Travelling libraries are kept constantly in circulation. 
 Coming thus into close touch with the people in their 
 homes, a desire is created to attend the school at 
 Berea, even at the great sacrifice which must often 
 be made to do so. That Berea is doing something 
 toward helping these mountaineers into a new and 
 
 171 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 larger life, while yet encouraging them to remain in 
 their mountain homes is evident from the fact that 
 every year many more students apply for admission 
 to its privileges than can find shelter in its buildings. 
 Dr. Pearsons was interested in Berea by a visit 
 from its President, W. G. Frost, in 1895. At first 
 he declined to put it on his list of college benefici- 
 aries, but he agreed to go to Berea for Commence- 
 ment and after thorough investigation said in public 
 that as soon as Berea would raise $150,000.00 he 
 would add $50,000.00 to that amount. He made no 
 limitation as to time. At the end of four years the 
 money was in the treasury and Dr. Pearsons sent 
 his check for the amount he had promised. Another 
 pledge of $50,000.00 made on the same conditions 
 was paid in July, 1900. Then in 1904 he paid as 
 called for $50,000.00 for a system to bring water 
 to the college campus and thus render the hygienic 
 conditions of the college what they should be. This 
 gift, Dr. Pearsons regards as the best gift he has ever 
 made to any institution or to any object. On his 
 89th birthday writing from Pasadena, he promised 
 $25,000.00 for a dormitory for boys and sent the 
 money in a month. To this no conditions were 
 attached. During that year he promised $100,- 
 000.00 as soon as four times that sum was secured, 
 and the pledge was redeemed in January, 1911. 
 
 Writing November 16, 1910, President Frost says: 
 "I went to Chicago to see Dr. Pearsons in January 
 or February, 1895, and had an interview with him 
 in his office in the usual form. I was introduced by 
 
AID FOR BEREA COLLEGE 
 
 Dr. Simeon Gilbert, former editor of the The Advance. 
 The Doctor asked me a great many questions, and 
 then said that he was powerless to do anything for a 
 year or more at least, and waved me out of the office. 
 Being in Chicago, I took the time to call upon a num- 
 ber of leading men, in order to make them acquainted 
 with Berea's work and opportunity. Shortly after 
 I left the city, it seems Dr. Pearsons called a little 
 conference of advisers as to Berea, and among them 
 several of the gentlemen whom I had just seen and 
 'posted.' 
 
 "The result was that a few weeks later Dr. Pearsons 
 wrote me saying that if Dr. Fifield would attend the 
 next Commencement at Berea to give the address, 
 he would come with him and visit the college. He 
 came and was entertained at our house. He investi- 
 gated the institution from the library to the kitchen, 
 and took great delight in the stalwart mountaineers 
 who filled our Tabernacle on Commencement Day. 
 At the close of the exercises, he made a speech which 
 was much appreciated and at the end gave us our 
 first pledge. Realizing that Berea did not have an 
 Alumni and constituency like other schools he waived 
 the time limit: 'Whenever Berea College will raise 
 $150,000.00 for additional endowment, I will add $50,- 
 000.00 to it.' 
 
 "This pledge was an immediate introduction to 
 people of means and patriotism everywhere. We 
 had the double burden of raising money for current 
 expenses at the same time we were working for the 
 new endowment. It took us four years, but in 1899 
 when we completed this endowment we had a list 
 of friends. 
 
 " The whole endowment had drawn attention to the 
 mountain region as nothing before, and Dr. Pearsons 
 received many letters of congratulation from public 
 
 173 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 men all over the country. In a few months, he re- 
 peated the offer of $50,000.00 on condition of our 
 raising $150,000.00 more. This time the task was 
 completed in a year. 
 
 "Berea then entered upon a course of internal 
 development, adapting its methods more carefully 
 to the peculiar conditions of its mountain field. The 
 number of students increased rapidly. The new 
 friends who had been enlisted for the Pearsons' 
 endowment helped us in the construction of the 
 industrial building and in other improvements. 
 Some of these friends interested themselves in helping 
 us to buy a considerable forest reserve. 
 
 "The project of piping water from certain springs 
 on this forest reserve to the college grounds in Berea 
 was kept in mind as we purchased land, and plans 
 and specifications were laid before Dr. Pearsons in 
 1902, and in 1903 he made his pledge to Dr. Barton 
 of $40,000.00 for these water works, and an 
 additional $10,000.00 for sewers and plumbing. 
 This, at once, put Berea on an hygienic basis. We 
 had not realized what risks and deprivations were 
 involved in our limited water supply. 
 
 "Then came the gift of $25,000.00 for Pearsons 
 Hall, a dormitory for young men. Our only men's 
 dormitory was Howard Hall, built by the Freed- 
 man's Bureau right after the war, a building whose 
 very floors had been trodden through by honest wear. 
 The majority of our young men were living in tem- 
 porary quarters in the upper stories of the Industrial 
 Buildings or in barracks of cheap construction. This 
 gift of Pearsons Hall was particularly cheering, com- 
 ing as it did, when we were in the agony of raising 
 the 'Adjustment Fund.' 
 
 "The offer under which we are now working, 
 November, 1910, and which was made successful by 
 
 174 
 
AID FOR BEREA COLLEGE 
 
 gifts from more than eighty people, is for $100,000.00, 
 conditioned upon our securing $400,000.00 more by 
 the end of this calendar year. This offer came at a 
 time when I was just breaking down from too eager 
 and incessant work, and the whole movement had 
 to wait for my recovery. Perhaps, we should have 
 despaired had it not been for a $50,000 bequest from 
 John S. Kennedy of New York; following this, our 
 Trustees during my absence secured other important 
 pledges. 
 
 "Dr. Pearsons has done far more than any other 
 man for Berea and for the entire mountain region. 
 He has given us the things that were most needed, 
 and at the time when they were needed, and he has 
 given them in such a way as to enlist a multitude of 
 other friends in the cause of Berea and in the general 
 cause of mountain uplift. He has right to a happy 
 old age." 
 
 Rev. William E. Barton, D. D., of Oak Park, 
 
 Illinois, a graduate and one of the Trustees of the 
 College, in describing the installation of the Water 
 Supply and the efforts to obtain it says: 
 
 "It is difficult to speak in terms other than super- 
 lative of Dr. Pearsons' gifts to Berea College. Twice 
 in succession he gave to it conditional gifts of $50,- 
 000.00, each, requiring the raising of $150.000.00 
 more, and now has pending an offer of $100,000.00 
 upon the condition of the securing of $400,000.00 
 additional, making a total of $900,000.00 Endow- 
 ment secured to the Institution under the leverage 
 of his conditional offers. His gift of $25,000.00 for 
 Pearsons' Hall, secured the erection of the first modern 
 building for men, and his interest in the Institution 
 has been alert, continuous and helpful. 
 
 175 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 "But, of all his benefactions to this important 
 institution, his gift of the Water Works stands out as 
 perhaps the most unique and interesting gift ever 
 made to an American College. 
 
 "Berea College, admirably located for the varied 
 work which it has to do, stood subject to great incon- 
 venience in the lack of an adequate water supply. 
 Rev. John G. Fee, himself, told of the dreariness of 
 the place when he first visited it, and of the rebuke 
 that came to him through the word of a bystander 
 living in the neighborhood. * It is a dreary place,' 
 said Mr. Fee, and Mr. Rawlins replied in the words 
 of the hymn, * Prisons would palaces prove, if Jesus 
 abides with us there.' * There is no water,' said 
 Mr. Fee; 'Moses smote the rock and water gushed 
 out,' answered the neighbor. 'Dig a well where 
 we stand,' said Mr. Fee, and the well was dug. 
 
 "In the early years that and other wells supplied 
 the school, but the time came when another smiting 
 of the rock was necessary. The great growth of the 
 institution rendered the water supply dangerously 
 inadequate. There was peril from fire and pestilence, 
 for the town extended far beyond all adequate water 
 resources and contaminated the surface springs. 
 Epidemics of typhoid fever were annual and fire- 
 insurance premiums rose to an almost prohibitive rate. 
 
 "The problem of securing water was not easy to 
 solve. No sufficient supply was within five miles 
 and the springs were widely scattered over a large 
 area. Through the wise foresight of President Frost 
 a large domain had been secured as a forest preserve 
 and this was extended so as to include a number of 
 pure flowing springs. A right of way also was ar- 
 ranged for and a series of surveys and testings extend- 
 ing over many months gradually brought the plan to 
 a point of feasibility. 
 
 176 
 
AID FOR BEREA COLLEGE 
 
 "At this stage of the proceeding, a Chicago Trustee 
 took the plans of the survey to Dr. Pearsons, and by 
 appointment carried them to his home where he went 
 carefully over them with Dr. and Mrs. Pearsons. 
 Every important point in the situation was canvassed 
 and at length the promise was made of $50,000.00 to 
 install a complete and permanent water system for 
 Berea College. 
 
 "There were ten large springs, five in each of the 
 two valleys. The ground plan of the reservoir 
 position looked like two arms of a man spread out 
 and with five fingers on the end of each and a spring 
 at the end of every finger tip. Ten large stone 
 reservoirs were built and pipes laid from each to 
 junction points, from which the water was conveyed 
 down the two valleys to another junction, thence 
 carried in a single pipe across the valley and over a 
 gap 200 feet high to the College Campus five miles 
 away. It was a great engineering feat, embracing 
 very many practical difficulties, and when it was 
 finally completed and water was successfully piped 
 to the campus with sufficient pressure to carry it to 
 the tops of the buildings, a new chapter in the develop- 
 ment of Berea College began. Health, cleanliness, 
 security from fire, all took on new promise, and again, 
 as of old, the rock had been smitten and abundant 
 streams of water gushed forth. 
 
 "Dr. Pearsons has repeatedly said that no gift ever 
 made by him gave him such satisfaction as this. 
 He has said of it that he regarded it as a definite 
 inspiration and impulse from God, and profoundly 
 believed that in doing this he was obeying a distinct 
 divine command. Perhaps no gift ever made to an 
 American college is so fitted to appeal to the imagina- 
 tion or so visibly fitted to supply a great, imperative 
 and permanent need. Buildings may be destroyed, 
 
 12 177 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 endowments may be squandered, trusts may be 
 betrayed, but so long as human beings need water, 
 Berea will need this gift, and so long as water flows 
 down hill, the plans on which these Water Works 
 were constructed will continue to be of service to the 
 great and growing institution at Berea." 
 
 While a believer in higher education for those who 
 are prepared for it, Dr. Pearsons as a practical 
 man has believed thoroughly in providing for the 
 people of mountains the kind of instruction best 
 fitted for their wants. He has confidence in their 
 ability and in their desire to make the most of them- 
 selves. He is in deep sympathy with them. "I 
 am a mountain man. I was once as poor as they are, 
 and as ignorant." Hence when he had become 
 familiar with the work which Berea has been raised 
 up to do, he devoted large sums for its enlargement. 
 
 That these gifts have been appreciated is indicated 
 by letters like the following from Rev. J. A. Rogers, 
 Woodstock, Illinois, dated June 18, 1904. Mr. 
 Rogers was one of the founders of Berea and wrote 
 as one who had knowledge. His letter was addressed 
 to Dr. and Mrs. Pearsons, as the latter was as much 
 interested in the gift as her husband. The letter 
 is given in full and reads as follows: 
 
 "Dr. and Mrs. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 Dear Friends: I call you friends for you have 
 shown yourselves such devoted friends that any one 
 who loves Berea College as I have loved it for fifty 
 years, though now absent, can but look upon you as 
 dear and choice friends. I think if you knew the 
 
 178 
 
AID FOR BEREA COLLEGE 
 
 joy your last gift to Berea of the Water Works has 
 caused your hearts would sing for joy. It is not easy 
 to express the gratitude we all feel, and we rejoice 
 not only in the present blessing through this gift of 
 yours by which God's gift is brought to men, but 
 generations unborn will receive help through this flow 
 of the pure stream of life-giving water. As the oldest 
 living trustee and one who helped lay the foundations 
 of Berea College in a little shanty of a schoolhouse, I 
 give you for us all, our grateful thanks. May the 
 God of all blessings bless you most abundantly. 
 
 Your grateful friend, 
 
 J. A. ROGERS." 
 
 As other gifts from Dr. Pearsons were announced 
 from time to time, letters of approval and congratu- 
 lation came from Governor Bradley of Kentucky 
 and ex-President Roosevelt, then Governor of New 
 York. The wonderful development of the institution 
 and its widely extended influence are proof that no 
 mistake has been made in providing so generously 
 for its endowment and its buildings. But no one 
 has been able to appreciate the importance and value 
 of these gifts so well as President Frost, who has been 
 at the front in all the money-raising campaigns. 
 
 When a check for $25,000.00 for the Dormitory 
 was received, he wrote, May 4, 1909: 
 
 "You are the most astounding man, and the only 
 man I know who can do something more remarkable 
 than D. K. Pearsons ever did before. Here comes 
 your check for the entire amount of our new building. 
 You meant to shock us, and we were shocked. Treas- 
 urer Osborne hardly knows what to do with his 
 responsibilities. But all of us are swept away by a 
 
 179 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 great wave of love and gratitude for the friend who has 
 been so much to the institution and to each one of us 
 now for sixteen years. You have a right to be happy." 
 
 In another letter of later date he uses these same 
 words, "You have a right to be happy," and adds 
 to them, "I believe you are happy." 
 
 At this time Berea students sent this telegram: 
 
 "Berea students and workers send you hearty 
 thanks. We pledge ourselves to follow your example 
 in unselfish devotion to the things which make the 
 world better." 
 
 In approval of the method of conditional giving 
 followed so largely by Dr. Pearsons and criticized 
 by many, Dr. Frost wrote, as late as March 1, 1911: 
 
 "I wish to go on record every time I can as com- 
 mending the specific plan of conditional gifts which 
 Dr. Pearsons has pursued so consistently. In fact if 
 he did not invent the plan, he has given currency to it 
 beyond any other giver, so that many others must 
 be considered as following in the line of his example. 
 
 "There are always those who complain against this 
 form of giving, alleging that it distresses the institu- 
 tion and seems ungenerous on the part of the giver. 
 It is my sincere conviction that the only way in 
 which rich men can give large gifts without doing 
 ultimate harm by weakening the hold of institutions 
 on the general public and drying up the spirit of 
 benevolence among those of more moderate means is 
 to make their gifts conditional. The offer of a large 
 sum on such conditions always compels attention 
 on the part of wealthy people, it raises sympathy, it 
 advertises the cause and it finally develops a wide 
 circle of friends and supporters." 
 
 180 
 
XIII 
 
 AID FOR SOUTHERN COLLEGES OTHER THAN 
 
 BEREA 
 
XIII 
 
 AID FOR SOUTHERN COLLEGES OTHER THAN 
 BEREA 
 
 NEARLY all the institutions which Dr. Pearsons 
 has assisted in the South had established 
 a name for themselves before he interested 
 himself in their welfare. He recognized fully 
 the need of the South for the kind of education 
 in which he believed long before he did anything to 
 promote it. But he did not see his way clear to 
 furnish the help the colleges in the South seemed to 
 demand until he had been aiding colleges in the 
 North nearly or quite ten years. Yet in spite of the 
 difficulties with which they contended many of them 
 had done and were doing heroic work and every year 
 were sending out into the world a large army of 
 well-trained young men and women. Let J. Henry 
 Harms, President of Newberry College, Newberry, 
 S. C., a Lutheran Institution founded in 1856, tell 
 the story of what was done for it. It is too well 
 told to justify the omission of any part of it. 
 
 "DECEMBER 14, 1910. 
 
 "Dr. Pearsons came to the help of our college in 
 1906. The college was preparing to celebrate its 
 
 183 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 fiftieth anniversary. Its endowment was sadly 
 insufficient, the opportunities tremendous. Under 
 the able leadership of Dr. James A. B. Scherer, at 
 that time President, an effort was begun to raise 
 money for the institution. Dr. Pearsons was ap- 
 pealed to for aid in the undertaking. In his own 
 wise and thorough way he inquired into the merits 
 of the appeal, and decided to give us $25,000.00 
 provided our people would raise the sum of $50,000.00 
 to make a fund of $75,000.00 for endowment. His 
 offer was accepted. The conditions were met. And 
 the fund was raised. 
 
 "In the first place this offer of Dr. Pearsons was a 
 compliment to the college. It was an endorsement 
 that the people needed. It renewed their faith in the 
 institution. They argued that if a wise, judicious 
 giver like Dr. Pearsons gave his money to their col- 
 lege, then their college must be more worth while 
 than even they imagined. It charmed the people. 
 They had pride in their institution. But it was the 
 oratorical sort of pride that says nice things on holi- 
 days and commencement. Dr. Pearsons' offer put 
 their pride to work. That is one of the best things 
 he has done for us. He made the college bigger in 
 the estimation of its friends. 
 
 "In the next place Dr. Pearsons' gifts tirred the 
 people up to give. We had a small constituency. 
 We were weak financially. It looked impossible for 
 such a handful of poor Lutherans to raise the sum of 
 $50,000.00. But Dr. Pearsons had flung a challenge 
 at them. And they said that if 'an old abolition- 
 ist,' as he calls himself, thinks enough of our college 
 to give it $25,000.00, surely we who know the college 
 and know its value to the South, can raise at least 
 twice as much. And they did. Dr. Pearsons 
 proved to be the right sort of an 'abolitionist.' 
 
 184 
 
OTHER SOUTHERN COLLEGES 
 
 He * abolished' the slavery of hundreds of white 
 people in this state their slavery to limited notions 
 of themselves, their money and their college. In a 
 few months after the offer was made the campaign 
 wound up with all conditions met. It was an epoch- 
 maker in our history. Hundreds of people gave the 
 college money who never gave money to it before. 
 After fifty years the college was born again. And I 
 think the story of the man behind the gift helped as 
 much as anything. The story of Dr. Pearsons' life 
 stirred the people everywhere. The spectacle of a 
 man deliberately setting himself to give away a 
 fortune simply captured the imaginations of our 
 warm-hearted Southern people. It stirred their 
 deepest benevolent emotions. The short of it is: 
 Dr. Pearsons is our benefactor, not so much because 
 he gave us money, as because he made our people 
 give it. And the beauty of it is they like to give, 
 as he likes to give. They caught his secret, the secret 
 he received from the Man who gave himself and said 
 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.' 
 
 "Then again Dr. Pearsons helped to enlarge the 
 scope of our college work. Our particular business 
 in the South is to help the poor boy get an education. 
 Our college aims to help the boy who is willing to 
 help himself. We want to put the price of education 
 down within the reach of the poorest farmer's son. 
 We find hundreds of boys back in the country who 
 are hungry to go to college, but cannot quite afford 
 it. There are hundreds of young men in our cotton- 
 mill villages who need help and need it badly. We 
 want to help these farmers' sons and 'factory' 
 boys. To get these boys into a Christian college 
 is the biggest moral and social problem in our state. 
 And that was what we were after when Dr. Pearsons' 
 offer came. There are thousands waiting yet. 
 
 185 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 We could have twice our enrollment if we had the 
 money to get more teachers and accommodations. 
 We have done well with Dr. Pearsons' money. 
 Invested at eight per cent, we have used the proceeds 
 to employ three new teachers and enlarge our dormi- 
 tories, laboratories and lecture rooms. We have 
 boys here who are working their way. We have 
 forty-one in this session who are being helped with 
 scholarships. We give some of them employment at 
 the college. Located in the center of the state, we 
 are in the very midst of ripe and ripening opportuni- 
 ties. With our reputation for thoroughness and econ- 
 omy we have no trouble getting students. Our 
 only trouble is that we cannot make room for all 
 who want to come. 
 
 "I may conclude by saying that Dr. Pearsons has 
 helped us to grow in every way. He helped to put 
 us in the front rank of southern colleges. He showed 
 us our possibilities. With an endowment of little 
 over $102,000.00 we are maintaining a plant of ten 
 buildings and a teaching force of fifteen. It takes 
 strict economy to pull through. Dr. Pearsons has 
 made us realize our need of more endowment. We 
 are still very poor but most ambitious to be of service. 
 Dr. Pearsons has been our partner in the manufac- 
 ture of intelligent Christian manhood the greatest 
 business in the world. 
 
 "We like Dr. Pearsons down here. On May 6, 
 1909, he sent us $10,000.00. This made a total of 
 $35,000.00 which he has invested in Newberry Col- 
 lege. I have hung a fine portrait of him in our 
 Chapel. The students shout his name in their 
 college yells. In further recognition of what we owe 
 to him we are at work raising a fund of $75,000.00 
 to be called after the name of his sainted wife. 
 
 "I regard Dr. Pearsons as one of the greatest men 
 
 186 
 
OTHER SOUTHERN COLLEGES 
 
 in the country. He is a most remarkable character, 
 and his life is a benediction to Newberry College 
 and other colleges." 
 
 President Carl G. Doney of the West Virginia 
 Wesleyan College located at Buckhannon, gives Dr . 
 Pearsons credit for saving the institution of which 
 he is the head. His words are: 
 
 "Dr. Pearsons has made two gifts to this College: 
 one of $25,000.00 and the other of $10,000.00. The 
 first gift was made during the progress of 'The 
 Twentieth Century Thank-Offering Movement' and 
 was given on condition that this college should 
 secure an additional sum two or three times as great. 
 The second gift of $10,000.00 was made after our main 
 building was consumed by fire February, 1905. No 
 one can adequately estimate the far-reaching good 
 of these benefactions. It would seem that Dr. 
 Pearsons almost literally saved this college. These 
 gifts have encouraged and stimulated the friends of the 
 institution so that they have given for the school more 
 than they would otherwise have done. This college 
 is located in the center of the state and exclusively 
 serves a great constituency. I know of no place in 
 all Christendom where money produces such large 
 results in Christian, scholarly character as it does 
 here. The school is a great center sending out strong 
 men and women to all parts of the state in all lines 
 of activity. West Virginia would be impoverished 
 without the college and the college would have been 
 apparently impossible without Dr. Pearsons." 
 
 President John H. Race of the University of Chat- 
 tanooga, Tennessee, writes under date of November 
 10, 1910: 
 
 187 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 "This Institution, which is a successor to Grant 
 University, recognizes in Doctor Daniel K. Pearsons 
 'The Father of Our Endowment.' His conditional 
 offer of $50,000.00 was made April 1st, 1906. It was 
 given with the understanding that $150,000.00 addi- 
 tional should be secured in cash or bankable notes 
 toward the permanent endowment fund. This con- 
 dition was met. Doctor Pearsons rendered this 
 institution a great service at an opportune period in 
 its history. We are exceedingly grateful to him for 
 his interest in us." 
 
 The University is under Methodist control, has 
 prospered greatly, and is now seeking to add half a 
 million dollars to its endowment. This will place it 
 on its feet. The fact that Dr. Pearsons in 1911 freed 
 the institution from its obligation to pay him a 
 small annuity on a portion of his gifts is an essential 
 addition to its income. He did the same for each 
 one of the eight colleges which up to this time had 
 been sending him an annuity upon the gifts received 
 from him. Dr. Race's letter expresses his personal 
 feeling for the relief which Chattanooga University 
 has received. 
 
 "MARCH 18, 1911. 
 "Dear Doctor Pearsons: 
 
 " Thank you very much, indeed, for your kind letter 
 that has just reached me. It is certainly most gra- 
 cious of you to make the rebate on the annuity pledge. 
 I rejoice with you in being able to pay all your pledges. 
 What a fine service you have rendered this college! 
 
 "If I can 'round up' the present campaign for 
 one-half million dollars we shall then begin to be on 
 a sure foundation. It is a terrific strain. It simply 
 must be done, though. 
 
 188 
 
OTHER SOUTHERN COLLEGES 
 
 "If it is at all within the possible I want to greet 
 you personally on your ninety-first birthday. May 
 heaven's richest blessings be yours. 
 
 With high personal esteem, believe me, 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 (signed) JOHN H. RACE." 
 
 To Dr. Daniel K. Pearsons, Hinsdale, 111. 
 
 Washington and Tusculum College, the oldest 
 college west of the Alleghanies, was founded by the 
 Presbyterians in 1794. It is located at Greenville, 
 East Tennessee, and has made for itself an enviable 
 record. It has sent one hundred and fifty-five men 
 into the ministry and fourteen into the foreign field; 
 it has graduated seventy-nine lawyers and three 
 governors; it has the names of seventeen judges, 
 twenty-eight members of Congress and twenty-two 
 college Presidents on its roll of honor; fifty-three 
 physicans have been trained within its walls, thirteen 
 editors, three railroads presidents and three civil 
 engineers ; it has one Admiral of the United States 
 Navy to its credit, a chaplain in Congress and two 
 hundred and fifty-nine teachers. It has done its 
 work on almost no endowment, in a few buildings, 
 with a small faculty and with charges for tuition 
 even now which seem ridiculously low. Expenses 
 for the year are reported today at a minimum of $100 
 a year and a maximum of $140. Its holdings are ten 
 college buildings, six dwelling-houses, a farm of three 
 hundred and fifty acres and an endowment of only 
 $100,000.00. No wonder that its history and need 
 appealed strongly to a man like Dr. Pearsons who 
 
 189 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 never fails to appreciate good work and large oppor- 
 tunities. 
 
 Under date of November 10, 1910, President C. O. 
 Gray writes: 
 
 "Three years ago Dr. Pearsons offered to give 
 $25,000.00 on endowment, on condition that $100,- 
 000.00 be raised. The amount was raised, and now 
 totals a little over $101,000.00. Dr. Pearsons 
 very kindly and generously sent us his check for 
 $25,000.00. 
 
 "This was the first endowment money our college 
 had ever had, and it had a most stimulating and 
 healthful effect. Nothing in the history of the insti- 
 tution has done it more good. I find it much easier 
 to raise money for the college now, because of this 
 endowment, and I anticipate that we can raise $200- 
 000.00 more endowment next year (as we contem- 
 plate doing) much more easily because of this first 
 amount secured. 
 
 "We are under lasting gratitude to Dr. Pearsons. 
 He was the originator of it all. God bless him." 
 
 Guilford College, located at Guilford, N. C., is a 
 prosperous institution cared for by the Friends or 
 Quakers. Its student body has always been of the 
 finest material. For special reasons Dr. Pearsons 
 has taken a deep interest in its welfare. That inter- 
 est found expression in a generous gift of money. 
 The President of the college, L. L. Hobbs, writes : 
 
 "JANUARY 7, 1911. 
 
 "Dr. Pearsons' gift of $25,000.00 was made in 1905. 
 It was conditioned upon our raising $75,000.00, 
 which we did. The effect was to increase our endow- 
 
 190 
 
OTHER SOUTHERN COLLEGES 
 
 ment at a very needful time. The gift is in memory 
 of Dr. Oliver Woodson Nixon, who was born in 
 Guilford County, North Carolina. I have no doubt 
 Dr. Pearsons' donation stimulated other friends of 
 Guilford and we regard his contribution as most 
 helpful and a great favor to Guilford College." 
 
 Piedmont College, Demorest, Georgia, is one of the 
 youngest colleges of the state. It was established 
 and aided from the first by the American Missionary 
 Association (Congregational) with headquarters in 
 New York. The college now has an endowment of 
 $100,000.00, a few serviceable buildings and a reason- 
 able hope of being able very soon to care for itself. 
 Dr. Pearsons offered to give $25,000.00 toward an 
 endowment as soon as its friends would add $75,- 
 000.00 to this sum. After a somewhat protracted 
 and very strenuous campaign the conditions were met 
 and in October a check was sent for the amount 
 promised. 
 
 Rev. Henry C. Newell, Vice -President and Dean 
 of the College, writes: 
 
 "Concerning our sense of the value of his gift, it 
 may be fair to say that it was worth to us much 
 more than the mere money value, because of the fact 
 that in raising the amount which was required to 
 secure Dr. Pearsons' gift, the College was necessarily 
 brought before the public to an extent which perhaps 
 might not otherwise have been the case in so short a 
 time, and there can be no question but that the con- 
 ditions imposed were a stimulus to giving on the 
 part of other people and to energetic effort on the 
 part of the College authorities." 
 
 191 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 Kingfisher College, Kingfisher, Oklahoma, the 
 only Congregational College in the State, is in the 
 center of a fine agricultural region and is easily 
 accessible to a very large population. Toward the 
 nearly, or quite $200,000.00 endowment of the col- 
 lege, Dr. Pearsons has given $50,000.00, $25,000.00 
 in January, 1905, and $25,000.00 in July, 1907. Each 
 gift was on the condition that it be supplemented by 
 a gift of $75,000.00. The early years of the college 
 under the Presidency of Rev. J. T. House, were years 
 of struggle and self-sacrifice. But the eagerness of 
 the students and the appreciation of the work which 
 the President and Faculty with such inadequate 
 means at command were doing was sufficient reward. 
 
 The outlook was so promising and success already 
 gained so great that Mr. House found the effort to 
 secure something like an adequate endowment less 
 difficult than might have been anticipated. It was 
 the confidence that people had in Dr. Pearsons which 
 led scores and hundreds of people in all sections of the 
 country, and especially in the East, to respond 
 favorably to the appeals of this new college. Nor 
 was Dr. Pearsons mistaken in his estimate of the 
 need of Oklahoma, of just such an institution as King- 
 fisher was designed to be. Rev. Calvin B. Moody, 
 now President, is doing everything in his power to 
 realize the ideals of its founders, and with the aid so 
 freely extended to him from many directions, there 
 is no reason why this college should not be the larg- 
 est and most important in the state. Its influence is 
 felt far to the South, and the fact that some of its 
 
 192 
 
MRS. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
OTHER SOUTHERN COLLEGES 
 
 graduates have been chosen after severe examination 
 to represent the state among the Rhodes Scholars 
 in Oxford, is proof, if any were needed, of the high 
 grade of work its faculty has sought to do. 
 
 Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida, in spite of 
 its youth, has made excellent progress and is now 
 one of the strongest institutions of the state. Under 
 date of April 1, 1911, President Blackman writes: 
 
 "Dr. Pearsons made two prolonged visits at Rollins 
 College, the first during the winter of 1902-03, when 
 he was accompanied by his wife, and the second 
 during the winter of 1906-07. Mrs. Pearsons, alas, 
 was no longer with him on the occasion of this second 
 visit, when he spent four months in my home, his 
 reverence for her memory, the tenderness and grati- 
 tude with which he always spoke of her, and the fine 
 courage with which he bore his grief and loneliness, 
 being very touching. 
 
 "Rollins College was founded in 1885. When Dr. 
 Pearsons first visited it, the college was recovering 
 from the effects of the Great Freeze, which had pros- 
 trated and bewildered the whole state. It had no 
 endowment whatever; it was struggling under a very 
 heavy debt; and its buildings and equipment were 
 inadequate. A new President had recently under- 
 taken the management of its affairs, and was not yet 
 inaugurated. Dr. Pearsons devoted several weeks 
 of study to the college and its field; visiting class- 
 rooms, interviewing trustees, instructors, pupils, 
 janitors, the cook, the people of the village; appearing 
 unannounced in the dining-hall and the kitchen; 
 asking questions, scrutinizing conditions, criticizing 
 this and approving that; and at the meeting of the 
 Board of Trustees held in February, in a note charac- 
 13 193 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 teristically direct and laconic, he agreed to give the 
 institution the sum of $50,000.00, on condition that 
 the further sum of $150,000.00 be raised within a year, 
 the whole amount to constitute an endowment fund, 
 no part of which should ever be expended. The con- 
 ditions which this offer imposed seemed to the trus- 
 tees and friends of the college almost impossible of 
 fulfillment. The proposal, however, was accepted, 
 and on April 5th, at my inauguration as President, 
 Dr. Pearsons made a speech, pungent, humorous, 
 and enthusiastic, in which he suggested that on his 
 eighty-fourth birthday, April 14, 1904, he and his 
 hearers should meet on the Rollins campus to par- 
 take of a plum-pudding containing $200,000.00. 
 
 "Unhappily, Dr. Pearsons was unable to be with us, 
 at the proposed banquet, but the plum-pudding was 
 there, and it contained a considerable sum in excess 
 of the $200,000.00 which it had been proposed to 
 raise. 
 
 "Dr. Pearsons' gift and the threefold greater gift 
 which it elicited, placed the institution on a solid 
 footing. For the first time in its history, it was no 
 longer compelled to live solely 'from hand to mouth,' 
 uncertain whether it was to survive permanently or 
 not. The Endowment Fund provided an income, 
 not sufficient indeed to meet the yearly expenses, but 
 enough to guarantee the future, and make easier the 
 raising of the remaining necessary amounts. It did 
 more than this, it imparted to the trustees and faculty 
 of the college a sense of solidity, of dignity, of per- 
 manency, of strength, and of self-respect, which had 
 been wanting in some measure heretofore; it gave to 
 it a recognized position among the institutions of 
 the state and the country; and it made possible the 
 further financial and material growth which has fol- 
 lowed. Other friends, moved no doubt in some meas- 
 
 194 
 
OTHER SOUTHERN COLLEGES 
 
 ure by Dr. Pearsons' example, came to its aid 
 among them Mr. Andrew Carnegie so that now its 
 endowment fund has increased to nearly a quarter 
 of a million dollars, while four very substantial and 
 beautiful buildings, and other valuable and costly 
 equipment, have been added to the plant. For one 
 use or another, some $420,000.00, including Dr. 
 Pearsons' contribution, have been raised for the col- 
 lege since his offer was made and accepted. 
 
 "It is hardly too much to say that Dr. Pearsons is 
 the savior of the institution. 
 
 "I recall his second visit at Winter Park with even 
 greater interest than the first. For four months I 
 knew him in the daily intimacies of my home, and his 
 vivid and commanding personality, the atmosphere 
 of power, almost genius, which enswathed him, the 
 extraordinary vivacity of his mind, his unfailing 
 optimism, the shrewd opinions on all sorts of subjects 
 which he was wont to express in the raciest of Eng- 
 lish, the memories of a long and eventful life which he 
 loved to recount, his sparkling wit, his tall, spare, 
 unbent form, the ancient hat which adorned his head, 
 indoors and out, his piercing eye, the heavy eyebrows, 
 now scowling, now arched, which were as expressive 
 as his speech, his singular personal habits, and, above 
 all, the tender sympathy which underlay his abrupt 
 and sometimes gruff manner, made on all the house- 
 hold, old and young, an impression which can never 
 be effaced. 
 
 "I shall always think of Dr. Pearsons as a veritable 
 seer, one of the greatest prophets of our day; and I 
 shall love him and cherish his memory as a friend 
 and a comrade." 
 
 105 
 
XIV 
 
 AID FOR COLLEGES ON THE PACIFIC COAST 
 
XIV 
 AID FOR COLLEGES ON THE PACIFIC COAST 
 
 THERE were many reasons for the interest 
 which Dr. Pearsons in the early nineties 
 manifested in Whitman College, Walla Walla, 
 Washington. His friend Dr. O. W. Nixon of the 
 Inter-Ocean had spent many years in what was 
 then the territory of Oregon. He knew the pos- 
 sibilities of the country and believed in its rapid 
 development. He was familiar with the efforts of 
 the missionaries to establish a college in memory of 
 Marcus Whitman, who had been murdered by the 
 Indians, whom he had sought to benefit. He was 
 familiar with the details of the journey which, in the 
 depth of winter, by a route rarely traveled, that 
 heroic missionary made to Washington, D. C., in 
 order to save by testimony he could give, the vast 
 territory of the far Northwest to the country. 
 When the life of Whitman, written by Dr.|Nixon, 
 was put into Dr. Pearsons' hands, he read it with 
 unflagging interest and rose from its perusal with the 
 determination to do everything in his power to secure 
 a worthy memorial to the self-sacrificing missionary. 
 If Dr, Pearsons should have the credit of refound- 
 
 199 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 ing and developing Whitman College, the part which 
 Dr. Nixon had in it must not be overlooked. It was 
 through him that the labors of Miss Virginia Dox, a 
 very gifted young woman, were secured to present 
 its interests wherever in New England she could 
 obtain a hearing. The amount of money which 
 through her came into the treasury of the college was 
 in the aggregate quite large, sufficient in fact to enable 
 the college to carry on its work until an endowment 
 placed it upon a solid financial foundation. But there 
 were years of waiting. The college was far away from 
 those centers of civilization in which givers to educa- 
 tional institutions reside. It was difficult to make 
 them feel the need of a college in a territory so thinly 
 populated. The gifts of Dr. Pearsons, the publica- 
 tion of the Life of Marcus Whitman by Dr. Nixon, 
 the labors of Miss Dox and Rev. Mr. Maile of the 
 Education Society, gradually drew the attention of 
 benevolently inclined persons to the college and led 
 them to listen favorably to appeals on its behalf. 
 The fact that Dr. Pearsons had expressed his confi- 
 dence in it by large gifts awakened confidence in 
 others and rendered the campaigns in its interest suc- 
 cessful. These campaigns were planned and largely 
 directed by Dr. Nixon. But the story of the 
 reestablishment of the College is best told by its 
 enthusiastic President, Rev. S. B. L. Penrose, whose 
 life has been devoted to its interests. 
 
 200 
 
AID FOR COLLEGES 
 
 "THE GIFTS OF DR. PEARSONS TO 
 WHITMAN COLLEGE 
 
 "When I became President of Whitman College in 
 1894, 1 found the institution at death's door. It had 
 a debt of $12,500.00, no endowment, and three 
 wooden buildings on a campus of six acres and a 
 half. Attendance had run down so low that at 
 the opening of the fall term only thirty-four students 
 altogether appeared. A little group of faithful 
 teachers was all that remained to keep the institution 
 alive. In these distressing conditions the one ray of 
 light was an unexpected offer which had been made 
 the previous March by Dr. D. K. Pearsons, who, with- 
 out solicitation on the part of the college, had volun- 
 tarily written, offering $50,000.00 on condition that 
 $150,000.00 would be raised for the endowment of 
 the institution. At the time, this had come like 
 lightning out of a clear sky, but nothing had been 
 done even to acknowledge the offer or any steps taken 
 to meet the conditions of the gift. The first work 
 of my Presidency was to take active steps to meet 
 Dr. Pearsons' conditions, and I may say that the 
 work of doing this, though carried on with great 
 difficulty during the darkest financial period of our 
 country's history, from 1894 to 1896, was of incal- 
 culable benefit to the college, entirely apart from the 
 value of the money itself, which was at last secured. 
 Our first effort was to arouse local people to support- 
 ing Whitman College, for we felt that it was unrea- 
 sonable to ask people elsewhere to give, unless at 
 least one-third of the whole amount was raised locally. 
 We secured over $50,000.00 in local subscriptions 
 before we extended the campaign to the East. Dur- 
 ing the next two years, through the indefatigable and 
 brilliant labors of Miss Virginia Dox and Rev. John L. 
 
 201 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K PEARSONS 
 
 Maile, and the invaluable help of Dr. O. W. Nixon, 
 Editor of the Chicago Inter-Ocean, we formed an 
 army of friends of the College scattered all over the 
 country, whose gifts from small to large put the Col- 
 lege upon a firm financial foundation and guaranteed 
 its permanency. I consider these two benefits to be 
 inseparable from Dr. Pearsons' method of conditional 
 giving, namely, the development of local support 
 and the development of a large number of outside 
 friends and benefactors. 
 
 "But before we had succeeded in meeting his condi- 
 tions Dr. Pearsons had given a characteristic illustra- 
 tion .of his generosity to the College. When I went 
 East for the first time in the fall of 1894 and stopped in 
 Chicago to see the great Dr. Pearsons, my mind was 
 heavy with the burden of the $12,500.00 of indebted- 
 ness which was crushing the college, drawing interest 
 at ten per cent. When I told him that I hoped to 
 find some person in the East who would lend me the 
 money at six per cent in order that we might save 
 the excessive rate of interest, the Doctor at once 
 retorted with what seemed to me shocking brusque- 
 ness, 'You can't do it. Nobody would lend the 
 money on such terms.' Then, after a few moments, 
 when I had expressed my sense of the grave need and 
 my determination to try and secure the loan, he sud- 
 denly said: Til lend you the money. Sit down and 
 make me out a note.' I sat down and made out a 
 note for $12,500.00 at six per cent, signing it with my 
 own name as President of the College. I took the 
 action upon my personal initiative without consulting 
 the Trustees, and years afterward found to my 
 amusement and surprise that Dr. Pearsons had con- 
 sidered my prompt action as creditable to me in 
 being willing to borrow money for the college in my 
 own name, As. I considered my name as worth noth- 
 
 202 
 
AID FOR COLLEGES 
 
 ing from the financial point of view, I viewed the 
 incident as wholly complimentary to Dr. Pearsons' 
 generosity. At the end of the year we sent him a 
 check for the interest, $750.00, which he returned to 
 the Treasurer of the College, and on my marriage 
 presented the unendorsed note to Mrs. Penrose as a 
 wedding present, and thus wiped out the indebted- 
 ness. His method of doing this generous act was 
 characteristically peculiar, but indicated to my mind 
 not only his large-heartedness but also his modesty 
 in apparently concealing the fact that he had given 
 $13,250.00 to the College in this way. 
 
 "His other gifts to the College have indicated his 
 close watch over college development and his readi- 
 ness to respond to its need. In 1899 he gave $50,- 
 000.00 for a Whitman Memorial Building in honor 
 of Dr. and Mrs. Whitman, and this was the first 
 permanent building which the college possessed, the 
 beginning of the new Whitman. In 1902 he again 
 inaugurated a new era in the college development by 
 giving $50,000.00 for endowment, upon condition that 
 we secure funds for a girls' dormitory, which was 
 done. Again in 1909 he gave $50,000.00 for the en- 
 dowment of Pearsons Academy, the preparatory 
 department of the institution which with his consent 
 we had named for him. This was the only gift he 
 made without conditions, a departure from his usual 
 wise custom, and as I took it an indication of his 
 confidence in the way in which the college was devel- 
 oping and the friendships which it had already 
 formed. 
 
 "After sixteen years of close association with Dr. 
 Pearsons I have formed not only a deep affection and 
 admiration for him personally, but a thorough belief 
 in the statesmanlike character of his plan of giving. 
 It would undoubtedly have been easier for us in our 
 
 203 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 dark days to have received $50,000.00 given without 
 conditions, but it would not have meant one-tenth 
 of what it ultimately did mean to the College. We 
 were obliged to struggle heroically for existence, to 
 appeal to our local constituency and to develop 
 friends throughout the United States. An ever- 
 increasing stream of benevolence and bequests has 
 been flowing to Whitman College as a result of that 
 initial campaign. This canny shrewdness on Dr. 
 Pearsons' part has meant, therefore, vastly more 
 than his own gifts, large as they have been. He has 
 given to Whitman College in all $213,250.00, for which 
 the College will be ever grateful. In addition to this 
 amount his friendship has meant much to the college 
 as an expression of his confidence in its development. 
 Many people have given because the institution had, 
 to this degree, his commendation. He had selected 
 it as being located at a strategic point and being 
 destined, by history and tradition, to reach a great 
 future. He spoke of it on many occasions with affec- 
 tion and assurance. When, at our Educational 
 Congress in 1908, a great dinner was given in his 
 honor, the cheering hundreds of banqueters who arose 
 to their feet and waved their napkins as he stood up 
 to speak indicated but faintly the deep sense of grati- 
 tude and admiration which filled their hearts. Whit- 
 man College would, in all probability, be now merely 
 a name if it had not been for the far-seeing eye and 
 the generously helpful hand of Dr. Daniel Kimball 
 Pearsons." 
 
 When on January 1, 1902, President Penrose 
 received a check for fifty thousand dollars on the 
 successful termination of an effort to raise an endow- 
 ment of $200,000.00 in his own name and that of 
 many others he telegraphed Dr. Pearsons .... 
 
 204 
 
AID FOR COLLEGES 
 
 "We are deeply grateful to you. This whole region 
 blesses your name. Trustees, faculty and students 
 unite in one song of thankgiving." 
 
 From time to time other large gifts were made, and 
 an administration building erected. Dr. Pearsons 
 was present at Commencement in 1908 to see what 
 his money had accomplished and to receive the wel- 
 come which awaited him from the officers and instruc- 
 tors in the college, the citizens of Walla Walla and 
 from distinguished men from every part of the new 
 Northwest. It was at that time that endorsement 
 was given to a campaign to secure means to enable 
 the college to furnish the practical and technical 
 education the country needs in addition to that fur- 
 nished in a regular college course. That there will be 
 a new Whitman resting on the foundations already 
 laid, can no more be doubted than that a present 
 Whitman exists. 
 
 PACIFIC UNIVERSITY 
 
 The history of Pacific University, Forest Grove, 
 Oregon, quiet and unpretentious as its life has been, 
 reads like a romance. It is the story of the service 
 and self-sacrifice of heroic men and women. A little 
 more than sixty-three years ago its foundations were 
 laid in faith, when there were few people residing 
 in Oregon, when there was no money in sight for its 
 support, when the journey thither from Boston was 
 via Cape Horn and the Sandwich Islands. 
 
 Mrs. Tabitha Moffet Brown, daughter of a minis- 
 ter in Brimfield, Massachusetts, when nearly seventy, 
 
 205 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 coining to the new region in 1847 with the family of 
 her son, sought and found occupation for herself in 
 providing a school for orphan children, and built a 
 log house for them on a site in what is now Forest 
 Grove. This school afterwards became the Tualtin 
 Academy or the Preparatory Department of the later 
 college. Her efforts attracted the attention, awak- 
 ened the sympathy and secu'red the aid of Harvey 
 Clark who went from Vermont to Oregon, as an inde- 
 pendent missionary to the Indians, who purchased 
 land now the site of Forest Grove and gave two hun- 
 dred acres of it toward an endowment for the college, 
 with other land for scholarships. In 1848 Rev. 
 George H. Atkinson began his work as home mission- 
 ary on the Pacific Coast and entered heartily into 
 the plans for the founding of the new college. More 
 than once he visited the East, and never in vain, on 
 its behalf. From the Education Society he secured 
 a grant of $600 a year toward its support. Sidney 
 Harper Marsh, at 28 years of age, amid much dis- 
 couragement, but with a brave heart, at this early 
 period began his labor for the college. For 25 years 
 he was its devoted president. He was the grandson 
 of Eleazer Wheelock, founder of Dartmouth College, 
 and son of James Marsh, President of the University 
 of Vermont, where he, himself graduated. To his 
 aid in later years came Rev. Cushing Eells, founder 
 of Whitman College, and his brother, the honored 
 and dearly loved Professor Marsh. It is fitting that 
 the noblest building on the campus should be named 
 Marsh Memorial Hall. 
 
AID FOR COLLEGES 
 
 The college has been fortunate in its presidents, 
 no one of whom has held the office from any other 
 motive than that of service. It is fortunate now in 
 the man at its head, Dr. W. F. Ferrin, for twenty 
 years its professor of mathematics, as it was fortunate 
 in his predecessor, Dr. Thomas McClelland, now 
 President of Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois. It 
 was during his administration that Marsh Hall was 
 erected and $150,000.00 added to its endowment. 
 At his suggestion and under his direction more than 
 five hundred persons, members of the National Con- 
 gregational Council held in Portland, spent part of 
 July 9, 1898, at Forest Grove as guests of the college 
 and participants in services connected with its fiftieth 
 anniversary. More than one thousand persons sat 
 down together at the tables, spread under the oaks 
 and firs of the beautiful village, and were bountifully 
 fed by gracious ladies to whose hospitality there were 
 apparently no bounds. 
 
 It was at this gathering that President McClelland 
 held up a check from Dr. Pearsons for $35,000.00 
 the final payment of his pledge of fifty thousand dol- 
 lars toward the endowment at that time completed. 
 An interesting feature of the day was the report of 
 the growth of several small gifts made in early days 
 of the college, which had been carefully invested and 
 reinvested till in a comparatively short time each of 
 them will furnish support for a professor. What can 
 be said of few colleges can be said of Pacific Univer- 
 sity. None of its investments have been lost, and 
 not a dollar has been taken from endowment funds 
 
 207 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 to meet current expenses. Nor has it ever run into 
 debt. 
 
 If its work has been quiet it has been of the highest 
 order. Its graduates have filled important positions 
 wherever they have lived. One of the members of the 
 first class it graduated, Mr. Harvey Scott, one of its 
 staunchest friends, was the founder and till his death 
 editor of The Oregonian, one of the ablest journals 
 published on the Pacific Coast. Standards of scholar- 
 ship have been those of eastern colleges. Growth 
 has been slow, but steady and constant. Christian 
 character has been formed, high ideals cherished 
 under the inspiration of which hundreds of men and 
 women who have enjoyed the advantages of the 
 college have gone out to their work in the world 
 with consciousness of power which has done not a 
 little toward securing that success in life which has 
 come to nearly all of them. It is no matter for sur- 
 prise that Dr. Pearsons should have pride in this 
 small Christian college, humble though it has been 
 content to be, though ambitious to do honest work 
 and to train those entrusting themselves to its care 
 for usefulness in their generation. With such a record 
 behind it no one can doubt that it will have a great 
 and commanding future. 
 
 It is a privilege to have a report of circumstances 
 which led to Dr. Pearsons' gift and of the service 
 which it rendered. Letters which follow from Presi- 
 dent McClelland will be of interest. 
 
 "For the $50,000.00 which Dr. Pearsons gave to 
 Pacific University I can say it came in a most oppor- 
 
 208 
 
AID FOR COLLEGES 
 
 tune time for the college. At the very time his offer 
 was made, February 28, 1894, we were just reaching 
 the worst period of the financial crisis from which the 
 whole country was then suffering. Its depressing 
 effects were especially severe on the Pacific Coast. 
 In the case of the institution our income from 
 invested funds was very largely cut off because 
 of the inability of people to pay the interest due 
 us from loans or the rents from a number of build- 
 ings which we owned in Portland. Just before 
 this crisis I had secured subscriptions for a new and 
 much needed college building, amounting to 
 $17,000.00. In addition to this we had $8,000.00 
 in the bank which had been secured for this 
 purpose. We needed $15,000.00 more to pay 
 for this building according to the plans and 
 estimates secured. Under the financial conditions 
 it was impossible to go further in the way of 
 securing subscriptions and the danger was that we 
 should lose those we had already secured. In this 
 emergency I wrote Dr. Pearsons fully, telling him the 
 exact situation, with comparatively little hope that 
 he would respond favorably. To my surprise and 
 extreme gratification I received from him a letter, 
 a copy of which I am enclosing. I had only asked 
 him for the $15,000.00 to complete the building, but 
 in response to this he made me the larger offer indi- 
 cated in his letter. This offer put new heart into the 
 management and friends of the institution, and al- 
 though the effort to secure the contingent sum of 
 $100,000.00 was difficult and slow on account of the 
 14 209 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K PEARSONS 
 
 financial stringency, his offer of $15,000.00 to com- 
 plete the building saved that project and enabled us 
 to begin preparations for the construction of the build- 
 ing immediately. The securing of subscriptions to 
 complete the $100,000.00 was pushed as rapidly as 
 the financial conditions of the country would admit, 
 and we were finally successful, although the effort cost 
 four years of hard and oftentimes discouraging work. 
 The National Council which met in Portland in July 
 of 1898 adjourned one afternoon, as planned for on 
 the program, and went out to Forest Grove to join us 
 in celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding 
 of the institution. It was a great satisfaction to me 
 to be able to exhibit from the platform a check for 
 $35,000.00 which Dr. Pearsons had sent me just pre- 
 viously to complete his gift of $50,000.00. 
 
 "I think it hardly too much to say that this timely 
 offer of Dr. Pearsons to give to Pacific University 
 $50,000.00 on condition that we should raise an addi- 
 tional $100,000.00 saved the institution and put it on 
 a permanent basis for continuing with greater success 
 the splendid work it had been doing for Oregon and 
 the North Pacific Coast for the previous fifty years." 
 
 " LITHIA SPRINGS, GA., Feb. 28, 1894. 
 "PREST. MCCLELLAND: 
 
 "My rule is to give $50,000.00 to a college if the 
 friends of the college will give $150,000.00. Now 
 I shall make this offer to you: If you will get the 
 friends of Pacific University to give $100,000.00 I 
 will give you $50,000.00, and I will give you one year 
 to collect the $100,000.00: or it would be better to 
 
 210 
 
AID FOR COLLEGES 
 
 make the time shorter, and I will say, as soon as you 
 get yours, I will give mine. 
 
 Truly> D. K PEARSONS." 
 
 (The following was added as a sort of postscript.) 
 
 "PRIVATE 
 
 No. 2. 
 
 " You say that you have $17,000.00 and $8,000.00 
 $25,000.00. Now you go on and build the building 
 and I will send you the $15,000.00 to complete the 
 building. As you say that the $17,000.00 was given 
 recently by your friends, we will call that $17,000.00 
 a part of the $100,000.00 I ask you to get, so that 
 you will have to get $84,000.00 fresh money. 
 
 "I will send you three checks of $5,000.00 each, 
 say one in June, one in July and one in August, or 
 sooner, if you like: but recollect my money is to do 
 the last work on the building." 
 
 At the anniversary gathering President McClelland 
 read a letter received only two days before from Dr. 
 Pearsons. 
 
 "President McClelland: I enclose check for $35,- 
 000.00. I want you to hold this check till the llth of 
 July and then give it to your Treasurer. The $50,- 
 000.00 I have now given you belongs to the Vermont 
 contingency. Atkinson was a schoolmate of mine 
 and Marsh was an old friend. Please give me a full 
 account of your endowment, so that I can file it 
 away with others. I am pleased with your work 
 and hope that you will keep the endowment sacred. 
 You have worked hard to get it, and I hope it will 
 go into perpetuity and do good to the coming 
 generations. Truly, 
 
 D. K. PEARSONS." 
 
 211 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 The following resolution prepared by Dr. W. E. 
 Barton representing the Education Society was read 
 by him at this visit of the Council and was promptly 
 and heartily adopted. 
 
 "Resolved, That the delegates and attendants 
 of the National Council, gathered at Forest Grove 
 on this day when the receipt of a check from Dr. D. K. 
 Pearsons completes the $150,000.00 endowment of 
 Pacific Unversity, desire to express our gratification 
 and that of the churches and schools which we repre- 
 sent, in the success of this protracted and heroic 
 effort, and our thanks to Dr. Pearsons for this worthy 
 and generous gift; and we rejoice with him in the 
 rare privilege which he is enjoying of building his 
 own large effort into so many of the institutions 
 which are to rule the future." 
 
 POMONA COLLEGE, CLAREMONT, CALIFORNIA 
 
 This is the youngest of three colleges which Dr. 
 Pearsons has aided on the Pacific Coast. Its growth 
 has been more rapid than that of either of the other 
 two. This is due to the rapid increase of population 
 in Southern California, and to the character of that 
 population. Its standards of education are of the 
 highly educated communities of the East, so that no 
 institutions of lower rank than those to which they 
 have been accustomed will satisfy them. It is to 
 the credit of a college not yet a quarter of a century 
 old that it to so great a degree has won their confi- 
 dence. This is due to the fact that its professors 
 have been thoroughly educated men and women, 
 and have been willing and happy to render a service 
 
 212 
 
AID FOR COLLEGES 
 
 for which the payment has been very largely in seeing 
 what could be done for young people who but for 
 their service might never enjoy the advantages of a 
 higher education. Its Presidents have been men 
 of rare gifts. President Ferguson was a business 
 man of unusual ability and foresight. He was skill- 
 ful and wise in the selection of his helpers. It was to 
 the great advantage of the college that Dr. George 
 A. Gates, the well-known and for many years the 
 successful President of Iowa College, stood at its 
 head for so long a time. For Rev. Dr. James A. 
 Blaisdell, recently of Beloit College, son of a college 
 professor, brought up in a college atmosphere, yet 
 with not a little experience outside of it, who is 
 now filling the President's chair, the college has every 
 reason to be grateful. In the short time he has been 
 President, he has won hosts of friends for the college 
 and developed a new spirit among students, faculty 
 and trustees. The growth of the college, as the state- 
 ment of Professor Sumner, which follows, indicates, 
 can be hindered only by lack of buildings and endow- 
 ment. That these will come, and before very long 
 there is every reason for believing. In aiding this 
 college Dr. Pearsons feels that he has done some of 
 his best work. It is true here, as in so many other 
 instances, that his gifts have saved the college. It is 
 the wisdom with which he has distributed his money, 
 the timeliness of its gift, its frequent repetition that 
 have rendered it so valuable and stimulating. In 
 the prosperity of no one of his college children has he 
 
 213 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 more reason for rejoicing than in that of his youngest 
 child on the Western Coast. 
 
 In appreciation of what Dr. Pearsons has done for 
 Pomona, President Blaisdell writes: 
 
 "OCT. 19, 1910. 
 
 "Though a new-comer here, it has been impos- 
 sible for me not to appreciate the fact that Dr. 
 Pearsons' gifts have been of the most vital impor- 
 tance to the life of the institution. They have fur- 
 nished absolutely indispensable equipment to the 
 institution and have come at strategic and critical 
 moments. As in so many cases among the colleges, 
 these gifts also have been significant in bringing 
 other gifts and thus of starting tides of helpfulness 
 which, to all human eyes, could not have come with- 
 out his generosity. In my judgment Dr. Pearsons' 
 gifts have been nothing less than epoch making in the 
 history of American education. They have per- 
 petuated and amplified the ministry of the small 
 college in American education. Whatever the out- 
 put of these colleges shall be in future years, it will be 
 in no small sense the result of the life work and serv- 
 ices of Dr. Daniel K. Pearsons." 
 
 The following statement by Professor C. B. Sum- 
 ner, one of the oldest professors in the college and 
 a man whose life has been devoted to its interests, 
 in regard to Dr. D. K. Pearsons' connection with 
 Pomona College is testimony of the first order. 
 
 "An occasional caller at Dr. Pearsons' office could 
 not helping getting some impression of the interest 
 he took in the institutions he had helped. Such a one, 
 if representing some college, soon learned that he had 
 
 214 
 
AID FOR COLLEGES 
 
 sought every possible contributary source of informa- 
 tion and possibly knew more in some directions than 
 the representative. It did not take long to realize, 
 too, how searching and far reaching his questions 
 might be. A representative of Pomona well remem- 
 bers what a sensation it was to him that a man who 
 had never been to Claremont could know so much 
 about the college and the country. 
 
 " It was Pomona's tenth year before Dr. Pearsons 
 gave her his first check. In the first years of the 
 boom in Southern California he had been to Los 
 Angeles and Pasadena, and most likely he was wait- 
 ing to be convinced that the college was not mixed up 
 in a land speculation. He must first be convinced 
 that there was a place for the college, an actual need 
 of it before he was willing to help it. Whoever heard 
 of a hasty or inconsiderate gift of his to any institu- 
 tion! 
 
 "Another marked characteristic of his giving was 
 its strategic value. Undoubtedly his whole scheme 
 of giving was planned with reference to influencing 
 other large givers, and each particular gift was in- 
 tended to call out other gifts to the same object. In 
 spite of the criticisms of his conditional gifts there 
 are few thoughtful persons who will not admit that 
 very often, if not always, they have been productive 
 of a two-fold good, one to the object, the other to 
 givers. 
 
 "But Dr. Pearsons' strategy went still farther. In 
 each particular case, frequently at least, there was 
 something in the time or place or method which 
 
 215 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 indicates a thoughtful reference to its particular 
 effectiveness. This will appear as the gifts to 
 Pomona College are enumerated. 
 
 "The first was in the shape of a $20,000.00 check to 
 help on a State canvass for $75,000.00, which was nec- 
 essary to meet a conditional proposition. It came at 
 a time and in a way greatly to enhance its value. The 
 check was exhibited and wonderfully encouraged and 
 stimulated the friends of the college so that the con- 
 ditions were speedily met. But this was not all. It 
 is not easy to overestimate the full effect of the added 
 confidence given to a struggling institution, squarely 
 meeting the conditions of a large proposition in its 
 favor. The subjective feeling of power may be as it 
 was in the above case, more helpful by far than the 
 object obtained. 
 
 "This strategic gift was soon followed by one 
 equally timely, viz., $25,000.00 for a Science Hall. 
 The money was judiciously spent and the effect was 
 magical. Up to that time only the crudest, most 
 cramped and most inconvenient facilities for scien- 
 tific work had been possible. The new Science Hall, an 
 elegant classical structure of white pressed brick with 
 partitions of steel wire and alpine plaster and all the 
 modern departmental conveniences, lifted the college 
 at once into self respect and made it appeal to a wide 
 class of students. The money was no measure of the 
 good done. 
 
 "Three years later came the proposition from him 
 to give $50,000.00 to endowment, provided the large 
 accumulated indebtedness could be all wiped out. 
 
 216 
 
AID FOR COLLEGES 
 
 "This indebtedness had not been bonded but was 
 scattered hither and thither. A note calling for 
 payment, now from this direction, now from that, 
 kept the college always on the anxious seat. It had 
 become an incubus. Dr. Pearsons' proposition wak- 
 ened the utmost enthusiasm in the Board of Trustees, 
 which quickly spread to the Alumni and amongst 
 the churches. The speedy success of the campaign 
 was a surprise even to the experienced college presi- 
 dents who were on the ground. 
 
 "There followed this movement a period of growth 
 wholly unprecedented even in the phenomenal his- 
 tory of Pomona. The very rapidity of this growth 
 led to a steadily increasing embarrassment which 
 it was difficult for Dr. Pearsons and even for the 
 Trustees to understand. Prosperity was likely to 
 ruin the college. The college is passing through the 
 same experience now, just after having added $300,- 
 000.00 to its assets. The pressure was never greater 
 than it is today, and this increasing embarrassment 
 must inevitably continue until the college has what 
 the Carnegie standard proclaims the least normal 
 endowment viz., one million dollars. The explana- 
 tion is found in part in the college constituency, 
 although the great change in college standards has 
 something to do with it. This constituency is so 
 largely made up of families who have come from 
 Eastern homes in the vicinity and under the influ- 
 ence of the best Eastern educational institutions and 
 such a proportion are graduates that only the best 
 institutions and the highest standards satisfy them. 
 
 217 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 California high schools are reputed the best in the 
 country. These patrons have the spirit of the new 
 country and are willing to endure crudities only for 
 a short time, as a makeshift. Every advance of the 
 college brings in a larger proportion of this class and 
 their demands are inexorable. Then, too, the com- 
 petitive institutions, especially the University of 
 California and Leland Stanford University set the 
 pace for the highest standards. Yielding just as 
 gradually as possible to this imperious demand, the 
 crisis came about three years ago when it was abso- 
 lutely necessary to make another forward movement. 
 The Trustees were led to feel it strongly and Mr. 
 Andrew Carnegie was induced to offer $50,000.00 
 towards a fund of $250,000.00 for buildings and 
 endowment. Dr. Pearsons was in Claremont for the 
 winter at the time, saw the need and promptly sub- 
 scribed to this end the sum of $25,000.00. After 
 studying the situation he felt very strongly the neces- 
 sity of a boys' dormitory, and applied his subscription 
 to that object. The urgency of the need grew upon 
 him day by day until by reason of his insistent pres- 
 sure the dormitory, a reinforced concrete building, 
 fireproof, for the accommodation of about seventy 
 students was ready for occupancy at the commence- 
 ment of the next fall term. Whether the money 
 given, Dr. Pearsons' hearty interest in the campaign, 
 or the dormitory in actual use was the most important 
 factor in that canvass may be doubted. Certain it 
 is that the canvass was completed, partly under 
 President Gates and partly under President Blaisdell, 
 
 218 
 
AID FOR COLLEGES 
 
 netting the College not only $25,000.00 but more than 
 $300,000.00. 
 
 "This large sum should be a great relief to a strug- 
 gling college; but as intimated above, it leaves the 
 college still embarrassed. The truth is the officers 
 of the college realized at the outset that the actual 
 need was twice the amount secured, but they were 
 obliged to content themselves for a time with the 
 smaller sum, looking to the future for another for- 
 ward movement. 
 
 "When Dr. Pearsons took up Pomona College it was 
 very weak, having hardly a hundred college students, 
 and less than $100,000.00 endowment, with only two 
 buildings and a small campus. The college constit- 
 uency was poor, mostly in debt and small at best. A 
 strong friend was indispensable to give it a start and 
 tide it over till Southern California should in some 
 measure come to its own. Dr. Pearsons' careful 
 fostering up to the present time has been invaluable. 
 One cannot see how existence would have been pos- 
 sible without it. While his gifts have not been so 
 large as to some other institutions, they have been 
 timely and inspiring. Not yet is the college on a 
 permanent self-sustaining basis, and as intimated, 
 the present demand is more urgent than at any past 
 time. Still there has been great advancement. 
 Students in the college department number three 
 hundred and twenty-six; the productive endowment 
 funds are more than half a million dollars; the campus 
 and parks, while needing a few additions to complete 
 the unity, are spacious, one hundred acres, and of 
 
 219 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 rare fitness, convenience and attractiveness. The 
 nine buildings, all are doing excellent service, several 
 of them are perfect of their kind. The possibilities 
 of growth and the need of expansion are very great. 
 The endowment fund should be doubled. The build- 
 ings, good or bad, are utterly inadequate to funda- 
 mental necessities, with the exception of the Library 
 Building, which is elegant, commanding, up-to-date, 
 and fire-proof; Science Hall is equally satisfactory, 
 but is occupied every hour of the day and evening 
 and insufferably crowded at that. Dormitories for 
 young women and young men, halls for Y. W. C. A. 
 and Y. M. C. A.'s, a gymnasium for young women, a 
 Music Hall and an Art Building are badly needed. 
 
 "Southern California is making rapid progress as 
 the census report shows and the college constituency 
 is increasing and better able to contribute to its funds, 
 but its resources have not yet caught up with the 
 demands and growth of the college. No one familiar 
 with the country questions that the period of such 
 adequacy and the intelligence to devote these re- 
 sources to such a purpose, are in the near future. Dr. 
 Pearsons has certainly hastened the coming of that 
 period and is held in high esteem at Pomona." 
 
 220 
 
XV 
 
 GIFTS TO MISSIONS AND MISSIONARY 
 COLLEGES 
 
XV 
 
 GIFTS TO MISSIONS AND MISSIONARY 
 COLLEGES 
 
 PERHAPS nothing indicates more clearly the 
 wide outlook of Dr. Pearsons and his intelli- 
 gent sympathy with the effort to evangelize 
 the world than his gifts to missions. He became 
 interested in them very early in his business career 
 through his wife, who was an earnest supporter of 
 the Woman's Board of Missions of the Presbyterian 
 Church, and after their removal to Hinsdale, of the 
 Woman's Board of Missions connected with the 
 Congregational churches. As representing his wife 
 and himself, in 1887 he gave the Presbyterian Women 
 twenty thousand dollars of which so much of the 
 income was to be used as would be required to sup- 
 port two missionaries in the fields under the care of 
 the Board, and the remainder as necessities might 
 arise. Through their influence, in part at- least, 
 and with their approval, Miss Julia A. Chapin, a 
 sister of Mrs. Pearsons, who had lived with them for 
 many years, at her death left the Congregational 
 Woman's Board of the Interior more than twenty 
 thousand dollars as an endowment, and when the 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 demand for buildings for Anatolia College in Mar- 
 sovan, Turkey, could no longer be put off, gifts from 
 Dr. and Mrs. Pearsons secured their erection. This 
 was in eighteen ninety-two. As to the timeliness 
 of this gift, officials of the American Board as well 
 as the faculty of the college have given repeated and 
 gratifying testimony. When the Board was hold- 
 ing a special meeting in Chicago in 1905, Dr. Pear- 
 sons sent to Secretary Patton a letter promising the 
 Board fifty thousand dollars toward the endowment 
 of the college. He did this because he knew and 
 admired its President, Rev. Dr. Tracy, and because 
 he felt that any money entrusted to the care of the 
 Board would be wisely invested. He had carefully 
 studied the field from which the college was drawing 
 its students and foresaw the influence which edu- 
 cated Christian men and women would have on the 
 future of Turkey. But he did not dream of its 
 attracting students, as it has done, from Greece or 
 Egypt, or the Soudan or Albania, though he did 
 think its situation favorable for some influence in 
 Russia. What the college with its preparatory 
 department, its theological department and its 
 hospital has accomplished since its opening in 1886 
 under a charter from Massachusetts, and is now 
 accomplishing, is told in the following letter from 
 one of its Professors, the Rev. G. E. White. 
 
 224 
 
GIFTS TO MISSIONS 
 
 " GRINNELL, IOWA, Sept. 29, 1910. 
 
 "Rev. J. L. BARTON, D.D. 
 Sec. A. B. C. F. M., Boston. 
 
 " My dear Mr. Barton: 
 
 "Your favor of the 19th inst. has come to hand, 
 and though we are rather busy in arranging to leave 
 again for Turkey next week, it is a pleasure to respond 
 to your request for an estimate of the value of Dr. 
 Pearsons' great gift to Anatolia College. 
 
 "That gift of $50,000.00 provided about one-fifth 
 of the endowment needed to carry on the institution 
 for its present work. We had about an equal amount 
 in the endowment fund before, and this is aside from 
 the need for buildings, which is being partially pro- 
 vided for at the present time, from other sources. 
 
 "In 22 years, from 1886 to 1908, the College grew 
 from the status of the high school, which was 
 merged into it at the foundation, to the character of 
 a real college, incorporated under the laws of Massa- 
 chusetts, and with its diploma recognized by leading 
 universities and professional schools in the United 
 States and Europe. The original building was 
 repeatedly enlarged to accommodate the growing 
 needs, and Dr. and Mrs. Pearsons gave over $20,000.00 
 to building and other purposes before the great 
 gift to the endowment. The Faculty increased to 
 23 men, of whom 8 were Americans (most of us 
 being missionaries largely occupied with other 
 duties) one Swiss and 14 natives of the country, 
 Armenian or Greek gentlemen. Of these last, 8 
 had taken special post-graduate study to fit them 
 for their positions, having taken their advanced 
 courses in Carleton College, Yale University (both 
 men receiving the degree of Ph. D.), New College, 
 Edinburgh, the University of Berlin, the University 
 
 15 225 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 of Athens, the Imperial Law School, Constantinople, 
 The Royal Conservatory of Music, Stuttgart, and 
 the Academy in Paris. These men together make 
 a strong Faculty, influential among their people 
 outside the college as they are with the students 
 within. 
 
 "During these 22 years 224 young men graduated 
 of whom 17 are now deceased, while 207 survive. 
 There are now 21 preachers, about 10% of the whole 
 number; 52 teachers, about 25%, 48 medical men, 
 about 25% and 86 in business, about 40%. I can 
 count 47 in America, of whom about one-third 
 are settled in business, one-third are the various 
 professions, and one-third are students. Many of 
 these will go back to their native lands later, and 
 each is a force among his people in the old country. 
 Foreign countries have drawn others: England, 6; 
 France, 2; Egypt, 4; the Soudan, 1; Greece, 4; 
 Bulgaria, 1. These are mostly in business, but some 
 are professional men; all seem to keep up an interest 
 in the land of their nativity. Many support students 
 in the college, or support schools among their home 
 communities. Where the people are poor as they 
 are in general in Turkey, and where churches, schools 
 and all the institutions of society are yet to be built 
 up for the most part, as is also the case, one cannot 
 but be glad that there are young men going into 
 business to develop the resources of the country, 
 benefit the impoverished communities, and foot the 
 bills for the improved conditions that are to be. 
 One may be glad, too, that with the ordinary tricky 
 character of business in the Orient a class of capable 
 young men is rising who have high ideals of integrity 
 and honor. The market of Marsovan has the repu- 
 tation of doing more business and more honest busi- 
 ness, than the market of any similar city in the 
 
 226 
 
GIFTS TO MISSIONS 
 
 region, and this is undoubtedly due to the Protestant 
 Church and the college. Besides the graduates 
 classified above, more than 1000 other young men 
 were for a time students in the institution, but left 
 for the usual various reasons without completing 
 the course. 
 
 "Meanwhile on July 24, 1908, the Constitution 
 and New Regime were proclaimed, and now the 
 opportunity before the college was doubled in a day. 
 We had the pleasure of hearing Turks addressing 
 Turkish audiences, express public thanks for the 
 American assistance they had received: thanks for 
 such ideas as those of Liberty, the Emancipation of 
 Women, Progress for the People, Common School 
 Education, and the like. An Ottoman Freedom 
 and Progress Club was organized in our town, as 
 elsewhere, to form and direct public sentiment, and 
 of the administrative council of twelve men, three 
 were graduates of Anatolia College, a fourth had 
 been for some time a student, and a fifth, like some 
 others, was a Protestant. That brought us mis- 
 sionaries into very close relations with that body 
 which more than any other controlled public opinion 
 and events, and we were cordially and frequently 
 invited to attend the Club and share in the discus- 
 sions. 
 
 "Meanwhile the field of the college has been widen- 
 ing. Half of the 29 provinces of the Ottoman Em- 
 pire are habitually represented among the students, 
 and they come from beyond. Greece always sends 
 a small contingent: there are several Albanians: 
 Egypt has a part in the student body: now it is the 
 turn of Russia. Three years ago two students 
 strayed over from across the Black Sea. The next 
 year when they came back they brought six more; 
 this last year there were twenty; and the end is not 
 
 227 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 yet. This year for the first time there is instruction 
 provided in Russian, and it seems there is a great 
 work opening before us for those people who are at 
 our doors to the north, and who are looking about 
 for light and leading. 
 
 "There are some advantages in our location which 
 we have been slow to find out. The Turkish popu- 
 lation of the region is among the best to be found. 
 They are in general well-disposed and friendly. 
 Some have begun to send their sons to the college, 
 and more are considering the question. We have 
 an admirable climate, and fine premises, just on the 
 edge of the city. Back of the campus the moun- 
 tains rise to a height of 6000 feet. The population 
 about are largely of the middle class, being neither 
 very rich, nor sunk in helpless poverty. We have 
 the advantage of being near the Black Sea, yet free 
 from certain disadvantages of an actual coast town 
 in the Levant. There is no institution that could 
 be called a rival near in any direction, while the 
 local communities are making strenuous efforts to 
 improve their institutions in order to retain their 
 constituents. 
 
 "Our students get a good use of the English lan- 
 guage, and take their advanced lessons through 
 this medium. They are in general studious, cour- 
 teous and tractable. They come because they and 
 their parents believe in the moral character of the 
 institution. The Bible is taught as regularly as any 
 other lesson, and receives reverent attention. Preach- 
 ing services are maintained on Sundays, as well as the 
 Sunday school, and the Y. M. C. A. is active and 
 helpful. Most of the students belong by birth to 
 one or another of the Oriental Churches, though 
 from one-fourth to one-third are Protestants. It 
 is only a question of time and method when these 
 
 228 
 
GIFTS TO MISSIONS 
 
 Oriental Churches are to follow the State through 
 a period of Reformation, or they cannot hold their 
 congregations. Many of our young men who can- 
 not bring themselves to break away from their 
 Mother Church, look forward with ardor to the time 
 when they will have an opportunity to share in move- 
 ments for reform from within. 
 
 "College charges are kept as low as possible, 
 $66.00 per year, for tuition, board, lodging, laundry, 
 fuel and bath. Some, however, cannot meet even 
 these low figures, and a Self Help Department is 
 maintained accordingly, whereby about one-third 
 of the students are enabled to earn some part of 
 their school dues. They work in the large carpenter 
 shop, or the book bindery, or wait on table or sweep 
 the floors. The impoverishing or pauperizing of the 
 young men themselves is thus avoided, the dignity 
 of labor maintained, and useful trades are mastered. 
 
 "It would be easy to take individual students, or 
 graduates, and dwell on the meaning of their educa- 
 tion, but space is limited. Here is a college professor, 
 there is a pastor of a large congregation, yonder a 
 pioneer evangelist; one is a doctor, laying the foun- 
 dations of medical science among people who have 
 confused medicine and magic hitherto; another has 
 an American education as a dentist; another is a 
 silk manufacturer; one is in the employ of an Amer- 
 ican wholesale farm implement house; another is a 
 graduate in engineering; another has quietly applied 
 chemistry to the old crude methods of dyeing and 
 is at the same time a leader in all work pertaining 
 to the church. There are failures among our young 
 friends but the percentage of success, as such things 
 are reckoned by the best standards, is remarkably 
 high. The joy of it is, that fraternal effort from 
 America is met fully half way, and that we may 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 cooperate on the basis of the Gospel of Jesus with 
 the best people and the best efforts of the country, 
 where everybody is breaking with his past, and is 
 seeking for something worthy in life. 
 
 "The question is often asked whether the Young 
 Turk Movement can last. The best answer is, that 
 it has passed safely through three periods of stress 
 already. The first was in July, 1908, when the 
 Revolution was effected; the second came in April, 
 1909, when the forces of Reaction were met and over- 
 come; the third was in the Spring of 1910 when 
 Rebellion within, as led by the untutored Albanians, 
 was suppressed. Every day that the New Regime 
 holds is a day to the good. 
 
 "The College Seal and Motto represent the actual 
 scene from the front door, the sun rising over a moun- 
 tain chain, with the words, which are suggested by 
 the name Anatolia, The Morning Cometh. 
 
 "Perhaps I should have dwelt more specifically on 
 what Dr. Pearsons' gift accomplished. But it really 
 fitted into what was already being done, relieved 
 the Board in part and is hardly to be distinguished 
 in its use from the other funds and resources of the 
 College, though of course these funds were swelled 
 by the annual interest from the gift. We are glad 
 such funds are held by the Board for safety of invest- 
 ment, and the interest employed with the other 
 
 resources. . , 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 G. E. WHITE." 
 
 Anatolia College is situated on a plain about 2500 
 feet above sea-level. It is seventy -five miles south 
 of Samsoun, its sea port on the Black Sea, and is 350 
 miles east of Constantinople. It is the only college 
 of high grade in a region of 80,000 square miles and 
 
GIFTS TO MISSIONS 
 
 containing hardly less than ten million people. The 
 population of the city of Marsovan is about 30,000, 
 and yet the expense for board and tuition is less than 
 seventy dollars a year. The department of Self 
 Help renders it possible for any young person anxious 
 for an education to attend the college and meet his 
 expenses. Yet in spite of the low price charged for 
 tuition and board nearly or quite two-thirds of the 
 income of the college is obtained from this source. 
 The growth of the college has been gradual but 
 satisfactory and the outlook leads one to believe 
 that its motto, " The Morning cometh" has been 
 well chosen. 
 
 So well pleased was the Doctor with his gifts to 
 missions that he determined that his last hundred 
 thousand dollars should be set aside for the support 
 of the educational department of the American Board. 
 He had been thinking of doing this for many months, 
 but only a few weeks before the centennial meeting 
 in Boston, decided finally to make the gift. When 
 the telegram to Secretary Barton was read announc- 
 ing his decision, the audience could not restrain its 
 applause. Dr. Barton himself reports the scene and 
 the effect of the gift, in a letter to Dr. Pearsons, 
 which is full of the spirit of the occasion, and is too 
 good to be abbreviated. 
 
 T^ v T> "OCTOBER 17, 1910. 
 
 "DR. D. K. PEARSONS, 
 
 Hinsdale, Illinois. 
 "My dear Dr. Pearsons: 
 
 "We have been so tied up with our Anniversary 
 services that I have been unable to write any letters. 
 
 231 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K PEARSONS 
 
 My correspondence has been by telegram. We did 
 get an opportunity to send you a telegram expressing 
 our great joy and satisfaction at your telegram which 
 came on Monday. Your letter came also in due 
 time and was, of course, presented to the great 
 Assembly. I wish you could have been present 
 and seen them almost raise the roof. The whole 
 audience rose when your telegram was read and 
 sang 'All Hail The Power of Jesus' Name/ It 
 was necessary for them in some way to express the 
 gratitude and appreciation which they felt to you 
 for this great and noble gift to the American Board. 
 It is already opening channels of approach to others, 
 and as I wired you, I believe that we shall be able 
 to match your hundred thousand with twenty other 
 sums of equal amount before many months have 
 passed. You will never know the extent of the 
 influence of this gift, and while it is not conditioned 
 we are going to make that money earn more than 
 any hundred thousand dollars you ever gave. It 
 is a great thing to be the recipient of your last great 
 gift, and I assure you that we appreciate it. The 
 Lord raised you up for one of the greatest services 
 that it has been permitted men to perform in this 
 world ! 
 
 "I want to take violent exception to a statement 
 in your letter that 'On my next birthday I shall 
 close up my work.' Do you suppose that you can 
 ever close up your work? You may give away all 
 that which you have earned, but you will not close 
 up your work ! Your work is going on in the colleges 
 of this country and in the colleges abroad for a thou- 
 sand years and more, multiplying in momentum and 
 power. But more than this your work is going on 
 here in this country. You have established a new 
 principle of giving, set up a new standard, and many 
 
 232 
 
GIFTS TO MISSIONS 
 
 of whom you have never seen and of whom you will 
 never hear, are taking their inspiration from your 
 magnificent example and are giving liberally and 
 with an abandon which they never would have done, 
 had they not had before them your twenty-one 
 years of princely giving. That is your work that 
 is going on and is to go on forever, and you cannot 
 stop it. So please do not think of closing up your 
 work. You cannot do it if you would. You would 
 not do it if you could. 
 
 "How can I find words to express the gratitude 
 which we of the American Board feel that you have 
 thus helped on the education of the growing mind 
 of the East as it is struggling out into the world 
 influence and power! This money will go as far 
 in bringing to those young people of the East the 
 fundamental principles of Western education and 
 Christian civilization as a million dollars would go 
 in this country for the same number. We shall 
 not fail to pray that your life may be greatly pro- 
 longed to see the fruit of the splendid work you have 
 started. 
 
 I remain, 
 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 JAMES L. BARTON." 
 
 In thus putting nearly or quite two hundred 
 thousand dollars, from first to last, into the work of 
 Foreign Missions, without any other conditions than 
 that the income of the money be used for educational 
 purposes and as the officers of the Boards having it 
 in charge shall direct, Dr. Pearsons has shown his 
 confidence in the wisdom of these officers and his 
 belief in the work they are trying to do. Through 
 
 233 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 his last gift he will have a share in the training of 
 young people in nearly every part of the world, and 
 become almost as well known in the mission fields 
 of the American Board as he now is in the United 
 States. 
 
 234 
 
LIST OF COLLEGES AIDED BY DR. PEARSONS 
 
 Anatolia, Marsovan, Turkey. 
 Berea, Ky. 
 
 Bethany, West Virginia. 
 Carleton, Northfield, Minn. 
 Coe, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. 
 Colorado, Colorado Springs, Colo. 
 Deer Lodge, Montana. 
 Doane, Crete, Neb. 
 Drury, Springfield, Mo. 
 Fairmount, Wichita, Kansas. 
 Fargo, N. Dakota. 
 German, Dubuque, Iowa. 
 Grant University, Chattanooga, 
 
 Tenn. 
 
 Guilford, N. C. 
 Hastings, Neb. 
 Huron, S. Dakota. 
 Illinois, Jacksonville, 111. 
 Kingfisher, Okla. 
 Knox, Galesburg, 111, 
 Lake Forest, 111. 
 Lawrence University, Appleton, 
 
 Wis. 
 Marietta, Ohio. 
 
 Marysville, Tenn. 
 
 McKendree, Lebanon, 111. 
 
 Middlebury, Vt. 
 
 Mt. Holyoke, South Hadley, Mass. 
 
 Newberry, S. C. 
 
 Northwestern University, Evans- 
 ton, 111. 
 
 Olivet, Michigan. 
 
 Pacific University, Forest Grove, 
 Oregon. 
 
 Park College, Parkville, Mo. 
 
 Piedmont, Demorest, Ga. 
 
 Pomona, Claremont, Cal. 
 
 Ripon, Wis. 
 
 Rollins, Winter Park, Fla. 
 
 Sheridan, Wyoming, 
 
 Tahoe, Caldwell, Idaho. 
 
 Tabor, Iowa. 
 
 Washington and Tusculum, Wash- 
 ington County, Tenn. 
 
 Washburn, Topeka, Kansas. 
 
 Whitman, Walla Walla, Washing- 
 ton. 
 
 Yankton, S. Dakota. 
 
 THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES AIDED 
 Chicago, 111. McCormick, Chicago, 111. 
 
 SECONDARY SCHOOLS AIDED 
 
 Montpelier Seminary, Vt. 
 Onarga, 111. 
 
 Westminster School, Vt. 
 West Virginia Conference Semi- 
 nary, Buckhannon, W. Va. 
 
 235 
 
XVI 
 
 APPRECIATIVE WORDS 
 
XVI 
 APPRECIATIVE WORDS 
 
 FOR expressions of thanks Dr. Pearsons has 
 never looked. He has not been indifferent to 
 them, has been grateful when they have come, 
 but has not sought them. He has distributed his 
 fortune with a sense of responsibility to "that 
 good Providence" from which he says it came. 
 With the approval of his own conscience and the 
 consciousness that he has carried out, so far as he 
 could, the will of God he has been satisfied. Yet 
 people who have received gifts from his generous 
 hand, and those who are deeply interested in the 
 causes to which he has devoted his fortune, have 
 not failed to express in manifold ways their appre- 
 ciation of the work he has accomplished during a 
 period of more than a score of years. 
 
 The words that follow are taken from letters 
 written at different times, and from resolutions 
 passed by different bodies on various occasions. 
 They are only samples of hundreds, perhaps thou- 
 sands, which might be given. 
 
 Mr. Andrew Carnegie writes: 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 "You cannot say anything too good of Pearsons." 
 Of his charity, its forms and conditions, he adds, 
 "It is the best line of benevolence ever made in 
 America." 
 
 Secretary J. L. Barton of the American Board 
 of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in sending 
 congratulations on Dr. Pearsons' eighty-eighth 
 birthday says, "We appreciate the wonderful 
 things you have done, and are doing. That a man 
 88 years young should have an interest in great 
 movements as you have, is a marvel indeed"; yet 
 no marvel, if we remember that to him every morn- 
 ing the mail was bringing from one hundred to two 
 hundred letters, with information from all parts of 
 the world. 
 
 President J. A. B. Scherer of Newberry College, 
 S. C., a Lutheran, writes: "His gifts are the 
 most profitable investments in the world. He is 
 more deeply interested in the cause of Christian 
 education than any other man I ever saw. He 
 is the happiest old man I ever saw, and his 
 happiness is not a whit sanctimonious. He be- 
 lieves that to turn unprofitable men into profit- 
 able manhood is the best investment in the 
 world. One of the finest things in this strong and 
 noble life is the way in which it has influenced 
 others." 
 
 Similar testimony is borne by President Lewis 
 E. Holden of Wooster University, for a long 
 time the financial agent of Beloit College, and a 
 man to whose enthusiastic, self-denying service 
 
 240 
 
APPRECIATIVE WORDS 
 
 in gathering funds to meet the conditions imposed 
 by Dr. Pearsons, that college is deeply indebted. 
 He writes from Beloit itself, on commencement 
 day, June 11, 1908. . . . "You have certainly 
 done a great work. Your life is going to tell cen- 
 turies after you have gone to your everlasting 
 reward. ... All our hearts go out to you in 
 thanksgiving for what you have so wisely done for 
 our own alma mater." 
 
 President James of the University of Illinois, 
 June 28, 1909, writes: "You have certainly 
 built a great monument to yourself and your family 
 while doing a great service to the people of your 
 country." 
 
 A characteristic letter from the Hon. John Eaton, 
 under date of April 8, 1900, then Commissioner of 
 Education may be given entire. 
 
 "FATHER OF COLLEGES. 
 
 My dear Doctor: Yours of the 7th came duly at 
 hand. I thank you heartily. Would that all the 
 money given to colleges were given with the care 
 that yours is. My 16 years of service as U. S. 
 Commissioner of Education has given me special 
 familiarity with the localities and enterprises which 
 you have aided, and aside from other merits there 
 is a strategic bearing in them which I also admire." 
 
 Following one of his large gifts to Berea College 
 in April, 1899, Governor Bradley of Kentucky, 
 wrote: "I cannot refrain from writing to thank 
 you from the bottom of my heart. Berea is doing 
 
 16 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 a great work among a section of our people which 
 needs the work, and which will respond to it 
 a hundred fold, for the mountain whites have 
 splendid stuff in them." The same month ex- 
 President Roosevelt, then Governor of New York, 
 wrote in similar vein. In fact this gift called 
 forth expressions of grateful appreciation from 
 almost every section of the country. It was 
 about this time that in reviewing the work of Dr. 
 Pearsons an editorial writer in the New York World 
 said, "For a level-headed philanthropist commend 
 me to Dr. Pearsons of Chicago, who not only makes 
 his benefactions to the cause of education during 
 his lifetime, but who lays down the rule that his 
 money is not to go to the rich colleges, which do not 
 need it, but to the poor struggling institutions which 
 are just as valuable as the wealthy schools. Dr. 
 Pearsons is as wise and judicious as he is generous 
 and unselfish." 
 
 In March, 1900, the representatives of South Da- 
 kota in Washington, D. C., sent Dr. Pearsons a 
 letter of hearty thanks for what he had done for 
 Yankton College. 
 
 On receipt of a check for $5,000.00 for Ripon 
 College, Wisconsin, President Merrill wrote, Febru- 
 ary 24, 1900, "I actually believe you have been the 
 wisest large giver I ever knew, or ever heard of. 
 You have made what you have given tell for the 
 most at the very centers of moral and intellectual 
 force, and you have put your money where it will 
 
 242 
 
APPRECIATIVE WORDS 
 
 be working for long generations after we who are 
 now living have passed away." 
 
 At the end of a severe and protracted struggle to 
 meet the conditions upon which Dr. Pearsons gave 
 Drury College, Springfield, Missouri, $25,000.00, 
 Dr. Homer T. Fuller, then President, wrote: 
 "Yours with enclosed check for $25,000.00 was 
 received this morning just before chapel exercises. 
 After these were over I announced the receipt of 
 the sum which was the culmination of our efforts 
 for this endowment. The applause was followed 
 by a rising vote of thanks to you and the college 
 cheer. May God bless you and grant you many 
 years more to see the fruitage of your labors and 
 of your royal benevolence." It was during the 
 Presidency of Dr. Fuller that the foundations of 
 Drury were greatly strengthened and the interest 
 of Dr. Pearsons through him and Dr. Henry Hopkins 
 then of Kansas City, later President of Williams 
 College, Massachusetts, aroused in its behalf. The 
 reception which he and Mrs. Pearsons received on 
 their visit to the college brought forth from the Doc- 
 tor one of his most eloquent and effective addresses 
 and gave him an experience of which he often speaks 
 as one of the happiest and most satisfying of his 
 life. 
 
 It was when on a visit to some of the colleges he 
 had aided, that on April 5, 1902, he stopped over at 
 Springfield, Illinois, and made his way into the 
 State House. He was quickly discovered and taken 
 into the Hall of Representatives and introduced 
 
 243 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 to its members by Speaker Sherman, after which 
 the following resolution was read and unanimously 
 adopted amid great enthusiasm: 
 
 "Whereas we have with us a visitor on the floor 
 of this House this morning, Dr. D. K. Pearsons of 
 Chicago, the distinguished philanthropist and lib- 
 eral patron of education, than whom no other Amer- 
 ican has done greater or more practical work for 
 the advancement of education, particularly in the 
 way of aiding the worthy smaller institutions, whose 
 peculiar province is to make possible the education 
 and training of the young people who struggle 
 against poverty and adverse conditions, and who 
 after heroic struggle make the staunchest warp and 
 woof of the social fabric . . . and 
 
 "Whereas we recognize that in the munificent 
 practical benefactions of Doctor Pearsons a work 
 has been accomplished which will make mightily 
 for the uplifting of humanity for all time to come. 
 
 "Therefore Be it resolved by this House that in 
 appreciation of the great life work of this distin- 
 guished benefactor we honor his presence here this 
 morning by the adoption of this resolution by a 
 rising vote." 
 
 This was quickly done and the Doctor was then 
 conducted to the rostrum by the Chaplain, where 
 among other things in an impromptu but very 
 effective address he said: 
 
 "You have passed a resolution today that does 
 me more good than anything I ever had done for 
 me before. I made my money in the State of Illinois, 
 honestly and squarely. I am using that money while 
 I am alive. I don't want any inheritance tax on 
 
 244 
 
APPRECIATIVE WORDS 
 
 my property when I am gone. I am using the money 
 instead to educate and bring up poor boys and girls. 
 I am for the boy behind the plow. That is the boy 
 I am after. And I say to you gentlemen of this 
 assembly that there is no business a man ever en- 
 gaged in that will compare with the business I am 
 doing, and to be approved by you gives me great 
 satisfaction. 
 
 "Gentlemen, I sincerely and heartily thank you, 
 and I shall keep right on in the way I am doing, 
 lifting up the poor. I never give to the rich. I am 
 for the poor boys and girls. The smartest girl in 
 the curriculum of the colleges I am helping is a day- 
 laborer's daughter, the smartest boy is a teamster's 
 boy. I want to give those boys and girls a chance. 
 Gentlemen, I thank you." 
 
 A letter from Mr. Wallace Butterick, Secretary 
 of the Rockefeller Fund of General Education 
 Board, sets forth in fitting terms the appreciation in 
 which Dr. Pearsons is held by thoughtful men. He 
 writes from New York, under date of April 10, 1911 : 
 
 "I share the high appreciation which all thought- 
 ful people entertain for the character and work of 
 Dr. Pearsons. He has given us a noble example 
 of how best to employ one's means for the promo- 
 tion of the public welfare and the enhancing of 
 personal happiness. I met him one day at Hinsdale, 
 and it seemed to me that I never met a happier man. 
 
 "I believe in State Universities and that they have 
 rendered noble service in many of our states. I 
 believe also in the privately endowed college. The 
 several Christian communions of our country have 
 rendered service of incalculable value in founding 
 and maintaining, as they have done, most of our 
 
 245 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 leading colleges. It is greatly to the honor of Dr. 
 Pearsons that he long ago recognized that fact and 
 has contributed so largely to the prosperity of so 
 many of these institutions." 
 
 That Dr. Pearsons was thankful for the apprecia- 
 tion which these representatives of the state expressed 
 admits of no doubt, for while he never sought public- 
 ity in his gifts, and cared little for notoriety, he 
 would have been more than human not to take 
 pleasure in the approval of his fellow-men. 
 
 As a type of resolutions passed by many of the 
 colleges aided by Dr. Pearsons one adopted by 
 Beloit College on the Doctor's ninetieth birthday, 
 and one that touched him deeply, may here be 
 given. It is dated Beloit, Wisconsin, April 19,1910. 
 
 "The ninetieth birthday of Dr. D. K. Pearsons, 
 celebrated five days ago, is one of those events which 
 erect beacons on the shores of human life, to illumi- 
 nate and guide. It is fitting that we, to whom are 
 committed the interests of an institution which 
 has shared so richly in his gifts, should put on record 
 our appreciation of Dr. Pearsons' wide benefactions 
 and our gratitude for what he has done for Beloit. 
 As we review his extraordinary contributions to the 
 welfare of humanity we are impressed by the fol- 
 lowing elements in his personality and his career. 
 
 "Dr. Pearsons' profound conviction of the impor- 
 tance in a republic of the right training of mind and 
 character. 
 
 "Dr. Pearsons' recognition that the moral and 
 246 
 
APPRECIATIVE WORDS 
 
 religious elements in education are its essential and 
 permanent factors. 
 
 "Dr. Pearsons' catholic spirit, superior to the 
 claims of any sect or denomination. 
 
 "Dr. Pearsons' discovery of making large benefac- 
 tions so conditioned as to stimulate instead of dimin- 
 ishing the efforts of those responsible for an institu- 
 tion, and to multiply instead of lessening the number 
 of its cooperating friends. 'No one man college' 
 has been his consistent attitude. Mr. Carnegie 
 and the General Education Board have acknowledged 
 his wisdom and followed his lead. Dr. Pearsons, 
 it is hardly too much to say, has assured the future 
 of the American college. Concerning it, President 
 Lowell of Harvard says: 'It has a great work to do 
 for American people. For that work Dr. Pearsons 
 has reanimated it and re-impowered it.' 
 
 "Dr. Pearsons has set a new standard and pace of 
 giving, and has been the means of securing from 
 others several times the number of millions which 
 he has himself contributed to the institutions so near 
 his heart, besides stimulating unmeasured gifts to 
 other objects. 
 
 "Dr. Pearsons has been an inspiring genius of 
 Beloit College, and its second founder. By his 
 aid it has been lifted to a commanding position of 
 reputation and influence. When we think back to 
 Beloit, as it was when he first put his strong hand 
 to its helm, and remember his share in its every 
 forward movement, we are deeply impressed with 
 what we owe to his wisdom and his benefactions, 
 
 247 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 the results of which, already so notable will widen 
 with the ages yet to be. 
 
 "Dr. Pearsons' personal qualities have fitted him 
 in eminent degree for leadership in the great cause 
 to which he has devoted himself. Severe, but 
 never unfeeling, critical, but never failing in high 
 enthusiasm; his feet on the ground of hard fact, 
 but his imagination at home in worlds unrealized, 
 scorning pretence, but honoring honest effort, and 
 an almost passionate friend of the struggling poor; 
 of imperious will, but believing in men of will as 
 resolute as his own; abhorring cant and religious 
 pretenses, but loving to discern a Providential 
 guidance in the events of life; as unmoved by en- 
 treaty as is the headland by the wave that beats 
 against it, yet giving himself like the reserves of an 
 army to save a hard fought day, he is greeted as a 
 general in the campaign of more than a score of 
 years, where victory has meant uplift, progress, 
 enlightenment and faith in God and man. 
 
 "It is a marvellous thing that one man's life should 
 have included such opportunities, of such service 
 and such wealth of achievement. May future 
 years bring to our honored friend ever richer results 
 from his benefactions and ever fuller joy. 
 
 "(Signed on behalf of the Board of Trustees of 
 Beloit College, by its President Edward D. Eaton 
 and its Secretary, E. B. Kilbourn.)" 
 
 Gifts to other colleges have been not less timely 
 or valuable than those to Beloit and from them 
 
 248 
 
APPRECIATIVE WORDS 
 
 similar resolutions of appreciation and gratitude 
 have not failed to come. To one who can look back 
 over the years to the conditions described in an 
 earlier chapter, the changes brought about in the 
 state of feeling toward the small Christian college 
 seems well-nigh revolutionary. 
 
 Colleges would have been glad to honor him with 
 titles but for the most part have refrained from 
 heaping them upon him. With the exception of 
 an LL. D. from Rollins College, Florida, no peculiar 
 college distinctions have been conferred upon him. 
 He has been called C. B. (College Builder), C. F. 
 (College Founder), and in these titles he has had 
 real pleasure. In another he would be equally well 
 pleased were there a suitable term for it, Teacher 
 of the Sacredness of Endowments. The three letters 
 T. S. E. would suit him quite as well as the three 
 which indicate that he is Doctor of Laws. 
 
 But no better illustration of the regard which is 
 felt for Dr. Pearsons in or about Chicago and in 
 many other parts of the country, can be given than 
 is furnished by the gathering at Hinsdale Sanitarium, 
 Hinsdale, Illinois, April 14, 1911, in recognition of 
 his ninety -first birthday. The gathering was ar- 
 ranged by Dr. W. E. Barton of Oak Park, in confer- 
 ence with Dr. Paulson of the Sanitarium. Many peo- 
 ple from the village as well as from the city were pres- 
 ent at the informal gathering in the parlors of the 
 Sanitarium which followed the lunch which a few 
 intimate friends had taken as guests of the Doctor. 
 One of the more than eighty telegrams which up to 
 
 249 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 noon of that day had been received, was from John 
 D. Rockefeller, and reads thus: "Dr. D. K. Pear- 
 sons, Hinsdale. I rejoice in all of your good deeds. 
 The world is made better by your beautiful ex- 
 ample of giving so generously of your substance 
 for the benefit of your fellow men. I congratulate 
 you on your ninety-first birthday and wish you 
 many happy returns of the same. The Lord bless 
 you and keep you in health and happiness." There 
 were telegrams from Governor Deneen of Illinois, 
 and many other very distinguished men. The let- 
 ters were full of personal expressions of esteem and 
 affection. Congratulations in one way or another 
 came from the President of every college which 
 had been aided, and from a representative of every 
 association to which he had made gifts. The ad- 
 dresses at the public gathering were necessarily few 
 and brief. Dr. F. A. Noble, so many years pastor 
 of Union Park, Dr. J. C. Armstrong, Secretary of 
 the City Missionary Society, Dr. A. N. Hitchcock, 
 Secretary of the American Board of Commissioners 
 for Foreign Missions, to whom was handed a check 
 for one hundred thousand dollars for the educational 
 work of the Board, Dr. O. S. Davis, President of 
 the Chicago Theological Seminary, President W. G. 
 Frost of Berea College, Kentucky, had part in these 
 exercises, Dr. Simeon Gilbert spoke briefly and ten- 
 derly, and presented a minute which he had pre- 
 pared, and which had been accepted as an expression 
 of the feeling of the members of the Congregational 
 Club, Dr. Paulson, owner and manager of the Sani- 
 
 250 
 
APPRECIATIVE WORDS 
 
 tarium, welcomed the visitors to its hospitality 
 and Rev. E. F. Williams was permitted to say that 
 he counted it one of the chief privileges of his life 
 to have known Dr. Pearsons and to have been hon- 
 ored with his friendship. In introducing the dif- 
 ferent speakers Dr. Barton spoke several times and 
 with great felicity. But the climax came when Dr. 
 Pearsons himself rose to reply and to express his 
 appreciation of the sympathy he had received from 
 such an army of friends, and his gratitude to the 
 Press for the assistance it had given him from the 
 beginning without whose aid he doubted if he could 
 have accomplished his work. He said that he had 
 prepared an address for the public and now that he 
 had completed the task he had set before him, and 
 had no more money to give away, he would retire 
 to private life and enjoy the quiet and repose which 
 he so much needed. The words of farewell which 
 were spoken as one and another took the hand of the 
 venerable philanthropist were tender and affection- 
 ate. Such a day as this is a rare experience in the 
 life of any one, rarer still when it comes after 
 twenty-two years of as strenuous effort rightly to 
 dispose of property as had been put forth in acquir- 
 ing it. 
 
 In his tribute to his wife, Dr. Pearsons said: 
 
 "As I look back on the last twenty-two years, I 
 realize that none of my gifts would have been possi- 
 ble without my wife. It was she who taught me 
 how to make the money and endued me with the 
 spirit of philanthropy. To her I owe everything, 
 
 251 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 and my advice would be to every young man who 
 wants to start on the road to fortune and wealth, to 
 marry." 
 
 The last gift which Dr. Pearsons made was in 
 some respects his best gift. It was the transfer of 
 the house in which he had lived for nearly thirty 
 years, together with the extensive grounds by which 
 it is surrounded, to his fellow-citizens in Hinsdale 
 for a Library. It was his first thought that the 
 house could be used for a library building as its 
 rooms are large and high, and its foundations very 
 strong. In that case the building in which books 
 and pictures and objects of art were stored would 
 have been a perpetual reminder of Dr. and Mrs. 
 Pearsons. But as the house is rather too far from 
 the center of the village for easy access it was deemed 
 best that the property should be sold and its pro- 
 ceeds devoted to library purposes. A suitable build- 
 ing will be erected on a central site and the proceeds 
 obtained from the sale of the Pearsons home used 
 for the library as the committee in charge shall 
 deem best. The gift is highly appreciated by the 
 people of Hinsdale. 
 
 252 
 
XVII 
 RETROSPECT 
 
XVII 
 RETROSPECT 
 
 NO ONE can deny, and Dr. Pearsons himself 
 cannot fail to recognize the fact, that his 
 life has been a peculiar and a very remarkably 
 useful life. Each section of it presents prominent 
 characteristics. Self-denying efforts which devel- 
 oped a strong will were manifest while struggling 
 for an education. The half dozen years of profes- 
 sional life, while full of ambition for success as a 
 physician, an ambition more than gratified, were 
 years in which efforts were made to stimulate the 
 intellectual and moral life of the community in 
 which he lived. Then came the business period, 
 thirty years of it, from 40 to 70 spent in Chicago, in 
 which the one aim was to make money. Since 
 reaching three score and ten the all controlling pur- 
 pose has been wisely to distribute the fortune which 
 an over-ruling Providence had permitted this earn- 
 est business man to acquire. Thus each period of 
 his life has had its ruling purpose. In each period 
 there has been a clear and definite aim from which 
 no deviation has been allowed. If it is with the 
 last period of this life that the public is most f amil- 
 
 255 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 iar, it is worth while to remember that the founda- 
 tions of the character of the man those who know him 
 so much honor, were laid in young manhood, strength- 
 ened in professional and business life and thus made 
 ready for the superstructure which has been reared 
 upon them during these later years. 
 
 Few men, however great their anxiety to do so, 
 have had the privilege granted to Dr. Pearsons, 
 of distributing their fortune in their own lifetime. 
 Still more rare is this privilege when that fortune 
 is counted by millions rather than by thousands, 
 and when as much care is exercised in its distribu- 
 tion as was required for its acquisition. For twenty- 
 two years Dr. Pearsons has devoted himself wholly 
 to a consideration of the needs of the educational 
 field of America. True he has given large sums 
 to objects not generally classed as educational, yet 
 it will be seen when closely scrutinized that even 
 these objects exert an educational influence on the 
 people. This is certainly the case with gifts to the 
 Y. M. C. A., to the Historical Society, the Academy 
 of Science, the Orchestra Association, the Art Insti- 
 tute of Chicago, and to the Presbyterian Hospital 
 to which he has made large contributions and in 
 which he has provided free beds for needy theologi- 
 cal students. 
 
 For a man who gives conscientiously, with a sense 
 of responsibility to God, in comparatively small 
 sums, and under conditions designed in part to test 
 the worthiness of the object to receive aid, the dis- 
 tribution of a fortune of several millions calls for a 
 
 256 
 
RETROSPECT 
 
 great deal of wisdom. The difficulty is in placing 
 money where it will really do the most good, where 
 it is most needed, even if the results hoped for be 
 long in appearing. That Dr. Pearsons has recog- 
 nized this difficulty and has successfully met it, 
 not many will deny. That some colleges, and 
 objects of charity worthy in themselves, have been 
 refused aid is true. But the refusal has come from 
 no prejudice against them, but from the conviction 
 that money would be better invested elsewhere. 
 To set aside these appeals, made as they have been 
 by some of the most eminent men in the country, 
 has called for a firmness of will not many possess. 
 To give wisely is a science. The principles of this 
 science can be applied only after careful study, 
 prolonged meditation, much correspondence, and 
 not a little travel. Dr. Pearsons has never given 
 hastily. Nor has he spared himself the labor, men- 
 tal and physical which almost daily requests for 
 aid have made necessary. His years of philan- 
 thropy have been his busiest years. More difficult 
 problems have been presented to him for solution 
 since he began to dispense his fortune, than in all 
 the years of his previous life. The conditions on 
 which his gifts have been made have called for care- 
 ful thought in nearly every instance. Not infre- 
 quently the time granted for their fulfillment has 
 been extended, and sometimes efforts have been 
 made at his suggestion through the press and by 
 individuals to create a public sentiment in favor of 
 meeting these conditions. Patience, persistency, 
 17 257 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 courage, hopefulness, have not been wanting on 
 the part of the giver, when he saw that without these 
 qualities his conditions would not be met. The 
 pledges he made he looked upon as debts which it 
 would be a privilege to pay. A good example of 
 his desire to have his conditions met is furnished in 
 the history of Montpelier Conference Seminary. 
 
 Gifts have never been made for the sake of noto- 
 riety. If Dr. Pearsons has been willing that the 
 public should know how much he has given, and 
 under what conditions, it has been from the con- 
 viction that men and women of wealth would learn 
 through these reports what he was doing, and might 
 be led to follow his example, and while yet living, 
 invest some of their money where it cannot fail to 
 be permanently useful. Testimony has come to 
 him again and again that in this respect his wishes 
 have been met. The gifts of Dr. Pearsons have all 
 had reference to the future as well as to the present. 
 A feeble college in a field already occupied, or under 
 unfortunate management has appealed to him in 
 vain. In fashionable or money-making institutions 
 he has taken no interest. But no matter how small 
 the college, if it has been wisely managed, is well 
 located, has a Christian atmosphere and a reasonable 
 promise of growth, he has willingly aided. For in 
 such colleges, strong, manly, patriotic, Christian 
 character can be developed. Absolutely tolerant, 
 one might say, almost indifferent so far as denomi- 
 nation is concerned, Dr. Pearsons has not felt 
 himself at liberty to aid a college where the Bible 
 
 258 
 
RETROSPECT 
 
 finds no place in the curriculum, or where the pro- 
 fessors fail to inculcate the principles of the New 
 Testament in their classrooms. 
 
 A glance at the list will show the wisdom with 
 which he has made his gifts to colleges. Three on 
 the western coast, Whitman, Pacific University, 
 Pomona, are making their influence felt in the three 
 great states of Washington, Oregon and California. 
 Mark well the location of the colleges aided in the 
 Middle West, in the region between the Rockies 
 and embracing Oklahoma. Special reasons have 
 called for help for a college in Michigan, one in 
 Ohio, one in Massachusetts, and for two institutions 
 in the giver's native state, Vermont. In the South, 
 institutions in the Carolinas, Western Virginia, 
 Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida have 
 profited from his benevolence. In every instance 
 these gifts have met pressing necessities, and nearly 
 always, have not only saved the college, but given 
 it an impulse which has proved to be the beginning 
 of a new era in its history. To scatter gifts thus 
 widely, in proper sums, under conditions which 
 could be met and which when met would prove as 
 valuable as the money secured, has called for execu- 
 tive or administrative ability of the highest order. 
 
 It may be asked, if at the beginning of his philan- 
 thropic career, Dr. Pearsons had in mind the wide, 
 all-embracing plan he has since followed. To this 
 question a negative answer must be returned. Dr. 
 Pearsons did not at first realize the importance of 
 the work he had begun. Its importance grew upon 
 
 259 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 him year by year. Year by year his knowledge of 
 the value of Christian colleges to the country in- 
 creased till he finally saw that they had filled a great 
 place in its educational system, and that with the 
 aid he could give them and secure for them, their 
 power for good would in the future be far greater 
 than in the past. But this knowledge came grad- 
 ually. It came to him as it would come to any 
 other man with an open mind. He gave to a single 
 college, not knowing that he would ever give to 
 another college. He gave because he saw that his 
 gift was indispensable, and would do good. Then 
 he saw another college as needy and with promise 
 of usefulness as great as the one he had just assisted. 
 Thus the field of benevolence opened before him 
 till it extended from ocean to ocean, and from the 
 far North to the extreme South. 
 
 With a mind free from prejudice and a heart full 
 of sympathy for the poor and ignorant everywhere, 
 it was only natural that somewhat early in his 
 benevolent life his attention should be called to the 
 mission field, and that because of the interest which 
 Mrs. Pearsons had in foreign work, he himself should 
 be led to consider its claims. It is doubtful, indeed, 
 if he has ever felt more satisfaction in any other gift 
 he has made than in the large sums he has sent to 
 Anatolia College in Turkey. Once aroused, his 
 interest in the Christian training of the youth in 
 Mission Schools could not fail to increase, till it 
 culminated in the last great gift in his power to 
 make, a hundred thousand dollars for the support 
 
 260 
 
RETROSPECT 
 
 of the institutions of learning under the care of the 
 American Board of Foreign Missions. He now feels 
 that through these gifts he is doing something to 
 banish ignorance and develop Christian character 
 in the far East as well as in the United States of 
 America. 
 
 Following such a plan of benevolence as his, it 
 would have been impossible to prevent an expansion 
 of outlook year by year. Constant reading, exten- 
 sive travel in many countries, association with 
 broad-minded, well-informed, consecrated persons 
 have given Dr. Pearsons a knowledge of the educa- 
 tional needs of his own and of other lands wider 
 and more exact than most of his friends suspect. 
 His habit of asking questions of those who are able 
 to answer them intelligently, a strong memory, great 
 keenness in detecting fraud or self-interest on the 
 part of a visitor, have brought him a fund of informa- 
 tion from which he has always been able to draw, 
 and of which he has never failed to make good use. 
 
 Yet he says he would not care to go back twenty 
 years and dispense another fortune as large as the 
 one he has now dispensed. These years have been 
 his busiest years, but they have been the happiest 
 years of his life. Were he to live them over, he 
 could not exercise more care in giving than he has 
 done. He doubts if on the whole he could give to 
 better advantage. He sees great fields of need, 
 rare opportunities for the investment of money in 
 the promotion of Christian education, but he feels 
 that his special mission has been accomplished. 
 
 261 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 Others must take up his work, enlarge it, perfect 
 it. As a pioneer he has led the way. If the fields are 
 white unto the harvest and the laborers few, he 
 believes the laborers will increase and that the 
 time is not far distant when every poor boy and 
 girl who has the wish will find it possible to obtain 
 such an education as may be required for the great- 
 est usefulness in life. 
 
 At his advanced age Dr. Pearsons misses the 
 friends of earlier years. Sometimes the days are 
 lonely. For more than five years he has mourned 
 the loss of the counsellor and friend who for nearly 
 sixty years walked by his side. Her society was 
 a perpetual solace. Her advice was always welcome, 
 and to her husband's mind infallible. Others, too, 
 whom he loved to meet and with whom he delighted 
 to talk, have gone. Those to whom the knowledge 
 of what he has done, would have brought comfort 
 and happiness, are no longer here. A very lonely 
 man is left? far from it. The thought of more 
 than fifty institutions with fully a thousand teachers 
 in them and many thousands of students, constantly 
 discharging their daily duties, brings with it abun- 
 dant cheer. The life of these institutions is to con- 
 tinue, he says to himself, after his has reached its 
 limit, their influence for good is to have no end. 
 Sleepless nights are full of precious memories. A 
 vivid and well-trained imagination creates inspiring 
 visions of the future. Now that his task has been 
 accomplished he looks back over his life, thinks of 
 it as if his life were the life of another, is amazed 
 
DR. D. K. PEARSONS AT NINETY 
 
RETROSPECT 
 
 oftentimes at what he has been permitted to do, 
 declares himself the happiest of men, and wishes 
 that every rich man might know as he knows, the 
 joy there is in giving. 
 
 Dr. Pearsons has always taken the part of the 
 common people. He has lived near them in thought 
 and affection. In all his gifts he has sought their 
 interest. He has sympathized with men of wealth 
 also. His associations in business have been with 
 them chiefly. He has admired their enterprise and 
 looked upon their gains as legitimate. With Social- 
 ists he has had no sympathy nor with reformers whose 
 amunition for attack upon those more fortunate 
 than themselves in the possession of this world's 
 goods, has been drawn from jealousy and misap- 
 prehension, and who have not hesitated to accuse 
 them of almost every crime of which one can con- 
 ceive, yet his constant aim has been to minister to 
 the welfare of the people of the poorer classes. On 
 the basis of justice and merit he has sought to render 
 it possible for poor boys and girls to obtain an educa- 
 tion equal to that open to the children of the rich, 
 or the well-to-do. With people who work with 
 their hands or live on small salaries he has been in 
 hearty sympathy. He has lived and felt as if he 
 were a laboring man himself. To the poor whites 
 he once said, "I was a poor white myself, as poor as 
 any one of you." But with wealth as such he has 
 had no quarrel, only with its use. By his own exam- 
 ple he has shown the world how he believes it may be 
 honestly acquired and in what way its possessor 
 
 263 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 may employ it for the good of mankind. In no 
 case would he have so much given as to remove or 
 lessen the necessities of toil and self-sacrifice on the 
 part of those who receive, but in such a way as to 
 render it possible for them to become fellow- workers 
 with the man who has entrusted a portion of his 
 wealth to their keeping. It is in the laboring classes 
 that he has seen the promise of the continued pros- 
 perity of the Republic. From them are to come 
 the Lincolns and the Garfields of the future, as well 
 as the patriotic citizens who are the hope of the 
 country. And they are to be taught in such schools 
 as Berea, Drury, Park, Piedmont, Rollins, Guilford 
 and Middlebury, to say nothing of the other schools 
 he has aided. In his daily meditation, he has put 
 himself by the side of poor young men and women 
 in these schools, made them his companions, felt 
 the weight of their burdens on his own shoulders, 
 sought to encourage them in their ambitions and 
 to assure them of victory in their struggle with 
 ignorance and poverty. 
 
 As a Christian man Dr. Pearsons has not felt 
 inclined to make any very large gifts to any but 
 Christian institutions. He has not cared for denom- 
 inationalism. With a broad, tolerant, genuinely 
 Christian spirit he has been satisfied. A steady 
 attendant at church services, either at a Congrega- 
 tional or a Presbyterian Church, in full sympathy 
 with their methods of benevolence, he has yet felt 
 that his money could be used to better advantage 
 if confined for the most part to the educational 
 
 264 
 
RETROSPECT 
 
 field than if expended under the direction of church 
 boards. In work among the poorer classes in cities 
 like Chicago he has had genuine interest. To the 
 Chicago City Missionary Society he has given more 
 than two hundred thousand dollars because he has 
 believed in the churches established by it, in the 
 Sunday schools and other organizations growing 
 out of these churches as agencies for the develop- 
 ment of moral character for the lessening of tempta- 
 tion, the diminution of crime, the developing of good 
 citizenship and stimulating youth to make the best 
 possible use of their opportunities. 
 
 In all that he has done he has felt as if God were 
 with him and were guiding him. He has felt that 
 his responsibility was to God, not to men, and while 
 not indifferent to what men might think of him, 
 has yet sought to do what he has believed God has 
 wished him to do, what under his blessing would 
 best promote the interests of his kingdom and fit 
 men to live in that kingdom. He has believed that 
 a man can be what he desires to be, that God has 
 given him endowments and opportunities to use, 
 and that if in early life, a person is brought under 
 proper influences he will, in all probability, become 
 a patriotic Christian man, a blessing to his genera- 
 tion and to his country. But the moving impulse 
 of this life must be Christian, or the chances of its 
 usefulness in society are greatly lessened. Hence 
 the emphasis which he has laid upon Christian 
 training, upon principle, duty and the example^ of 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 265 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 Although in his ninety-second year and with 
 growing infirmities of the flesh, Dr. Pearsons is 
 young in thought and full of confidence in the future. 
 There has never been anything like pessimism in 
 his nature. In early life he determined to succeed. 
 In his professional career he allowed no thoughts 
 of failure to hinder his progress. 
 
 As a business man, where others predicted failure 
 or hard times, he saw prosperity and rarely or never 
 failed to reach it. Experience has taught him that 
 men can be trusted; for this reason he has been 
 willing to put large sums of money into the hands of 
 others to invest for work to be done after he shall 
 have passed away. With a breadth of vision and 
 a spirit of toleration that few men so old as he mani- 
 fest, like one of the old prophets, though with more 
 confidence than they sometimes exhibited in their 
 countrymen, he sees the world continually becom- 
 ing better, as class after class of well-trained youth 
 pass out from under the influence of teachers in the 
 Christian schools which he has done so much to 
 establish and perpetuate. If he has loved money 
 it has not been because he cared to exercise the 
 power which its possession sometimes gives, nor 
 because he has taken pleasure in the luxuries it 
 could furnish him, or the woman who stood by his 
 side in his strenuous years, and who encouraged 
 him as he began the distribution of his wealth, but 
 because he saw and felt that God had given him 
 the privilege of wealth that he might employ it for 
 the benefit of those to whom it had not come. In 
 
 266 
 
RETROSPECT 
 
 long wakeful nights he thinks over the history of 
 the institutions, whose financial distress he allevi- 
 ated and in whose prosperity he has so large a share, 
 and looking into the future he thinks of the contri- 
 butions which the men and women educated in 
 these institutions will make to the welfare of the 
 generations in which they may live and of the grati- 
 tude many of them will feel toward the man who, 
 far back in the history of their college or seminary, 
 preserved its life and gave it an impulse which has 
 made it a power for good in the country and the 
 world. A lonely man he cannot be, for bis mind 
 is filled with precious memories, and with a feeling 
 of satisfaction over the use he has made of his fac- 
 ulties, and of the fortune which the use of these facul- 
 ties had given him. He is a happy man because he 
 has thought not of himself alone or chiefly, but of 
 the children of the unfortunate, the immigrant, the 
 belated mountaineer, the day-laborer, and has made 
 it possible for them to obtain an education; a happy 
 man, too, because of his faith that in a few years 
 more he will be again with the wife of his youth, and 
 with her review his life on earth and enter into the 
 service open to them both in heaven. 
 
 Dr. Pearsons has lived in his own age. He has 
 never been full of praise for old times or neglectful 
 of present duties. He has done with his might 
 whatever his hands have found to do. He has 
 believed that the days in which he has been living 
 were the best for him and for his generation and has 
 had complete confidence in a future better than the 
 
 267 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 present. But he has done his work in sympathy 
 with his time and has entered into all the enter- 
 prises of that time with enthusiam and hope. He 
 has grown in mental power with his time, and having 
 had a share in the developments in every direction 
 of the century in which he has lived, has shown the 
 effect of these developments in his own enlarged 
 visions and in sympathies which encircle the world. 
 With all that has been wrought through the discov- 
 ery of steam, or electricity as applied to transporta- 
 tion and the mechanical arts, he has been made 
 familiar. Nor has he allowed himself to doubt that 
 progress will be as marked in all that concerns the 
 physical welfare of men as well in the twentieth 
 century as in the century which has closed. With 
 the improvements in surgery and in the treatment 
 and prevention of disease he has kept in touch. 
 Unlike some nonagenarians he has had no prejudice 
 against the new education or rather the new methods 
 employed in education. If he has believed in the 
 old, he has not been unwilling to accept the new 
 wherever the new has shown itself to be better 
 than the old. Living in the spirit of his time he 
 has kept himself young in spite of increasing years. 
 With the press he has been in hearty sympathy. 
 Not indifferent to its faults he has found it a con- 
 stant helper. He has welcomed its representatives. 
 He has talked with them freely. They have never 
 disabused his confidence, have treated him with 
 unfailing courtesy, and not infrequently have aided 
 him in creating a sentiment in a given community 
 
 268 
 
RETROSPECT 
 
 which has brought success in the effort to meet the 
 conditions which his gifts imposed. They have met 
 the criticisms which some who would avoid personal 
 responsibility have expressed of the conditions upon 
 which his gifts have depended. Personally indif- 
 ferent to criticism, he has yet known that the 
 complete success of that method of giving which 
 he has deemed the wisest could not be secured 
 without the help of the press. For the courtesy 
 it has extended to him he has not failed to express 
 his thanks. 
 
 Who shall say that a life like this is not worth 
 living? That in each one of its distinct and widely 
 differing periods it has not been a useful life, bring- 
 ing gains to its possessor, happiness and comfort to 
 others? These last years spent in considering the 
 needs of others, and in striving to meet them in such 
 ways as will be effective now and in the future, how 
 rich they have been through the joy of giving and 
 the consciousness of rendering assistance to self- 
 sacrificing men and women who consecrate them- 
 selves to the work of training youth for high and 
 useful positions in society. 
 
 Enjoying a life prolonged by divine favor more 
 than two decades beyond the ordinary threescore 
 and ten, these last years have been rich years, for 
 they have witnessed the execution of plans dimly 
 formed in early manhood but requiring time and 
 experience for their realization. "Tins ONE THING 
 I DO," forgetting the strenuous efforts put forth in 
 the getting of money, he has made efforts not a 
 
 269 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 whit less strenuous in putting it where it will pro- 
 duce fruit in well-developed character in the youth 
 of our own time and of years to come. With eye 
 undimmed, interest in the present unabated, in the 
 tenth decade of his earthly life, having invested his 
 millions where he believes they will do the most good 
 in making Christian patriots, Dr. Pearsons awaits 
 calmly, and with full confidence in the promises of 
 the Christian religion, the time of his departure. 
 Yet he loves life and is in no hurry to leave it. 
 
 Those who know him best pray sincerely that he 
 may abide with them till he has celebrated his 
 hundredth birthday, their teacher and example in 
 the principles of a true and far-reaching system of 
 benevolence, a friend whose advice is always help- 
 ful, and whose companionship is as inspiring as it 
 is delightful. 
 
 270 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 A. 
 
 Academy, Paris, 226. 
 
 Aetna Life Insurance Company, 
 
 22, 45. 
 
 Alfred the Great, 170. 
 Allerton, S. W., 50. 
 American Board, 224, 231-234, 
 
 250. 
 American Missionary Association, 
 
 191. 
 
 Amherst College, 9. 
 Anatolia College, 58, 224-234, 260. 
 Andrews, S. W., 117. 
 Appleton, Wis., 16, 152. 
 Armour, P. D., 31. 
 Armstrong, J. C., 81, 250. 
 Arnold, I. N., 27. 
 Ashland, Wis., 153. 
 Athens, University of, 226. 
 Atkinson, G. H., 206, 211. 
 A very, T. M., 29. 
 
 B. 
 
 Bacon, Asa, 71. 
 
 Barrows, J. H., 72. 
 
 Barton, J. L., 225, 231-233, 240, 
 
 251. 
 
 Barton, W. E., 174-175, 212, 249. 
 Battle Creek, Mich., 281. 
 Beecher, Jerome, 29, 50. 
 Beidler, Jacob, 29. 
 Beloit College, 12, 62, 131-141, 
 
 161, 240, 246-248, 283-285, 296- 
 
 297. 
 
 Beloit, Wis., 11, 241. 
 Berea College, 167-180, 241, 264, 
 
 290, 302. 
 
 Berea, Ky., 58, 95, 167, 250. 
 
 Berlin, University of, 225. 
 
 Bishop, Pres., 120. 
 
 Blackman, Pres., 193-195. 
 
 Blair, C. M., 29, 49. 
 
 Blaisdell, J. A., 141, 213-214, 218. 
 
 Blatchford, E. W., 27, 29. 
 
 Boardman, Prof., 76. 
 
 Boon, Pres., 151. 
 
 Boone, L. D., 29. 
 
 Booth, Henry, 37-38. 
 
 Boston, Mass., 7, 15, 205. 
 
 Bowen Bros., 28. 
 
 Bradford Academy, 6. 
 
 Bradford, Vt., 3, 6. 
 
 Bradley, Gov., 179, 241. 
 
 Braun and Company, 73. 
 
 Briggs, J. B., 53. 
 
 Brigham Hall., Mary, 126. 
 
 Brookline, Mass., 7. 
 
 Bross, William, 29, 32. 
 
 Brown, Mrs. T. B., 205-206. 
 
 Brutus, 16. 
 
 Buckhannon, W. Va., 187. 
 
 Burritt, Elihu, 9. 
 
 Butterick, Wallace. 245. 
 
 C. 
 
 Cabot Institute, 9. 
 California, University of, 218. 
 Carleton College, 152, 225. 
 Carnegie, Andrew, 94, 118, 149, 
 
 195, 217-218, 239-240, 247. 
 Carnegie Hall, 169. 
 Carpenter, Philo, 29. 
 Carter, William H., 37-38. 
 Cedar Rapids, la., 146. 
 Chamberlain, Prof., 134. 
 
 18 
 
 273 
 
INDEX 
 
 Chapin, Deacon Giles, 9. 
 
 Chapin, E. H., 9. 
 
 Chapin Hall, Beloit, 135, 137. 
 
 Chapin Hall, Evanston, 102. 
 
 Chapin, Julia A., 57, 102, 223. 
 
 Chapin, Marietta A., 9, see also 
 Pearsons, Marietta Chapin. 
 
 Chapin, Prof., 141. 
 
 Chattanooga, Tenn., 187. 
 
 Chattanooga, Tenn., University 
 of, 187-189. 
 
 Chicopee, Mass., 8-10 15, 57. 
 
 Chicago, 111., 3, 12, 15, 17, 20, 22- 
 23; Art Institute, 73-74; busi- 
 ness life in, 37-64; City Mis- 
 sionary Society, 79-81, 83, 265; 
 in 1860, 27-34; institutions, 
 gifts to, 67-85, 111, 131, Times, 
 30; Theological Seminary, 76- 
 79; Tribune, 30; University of, 
 50; Y. M. C. A., 68-71. 
 
 Cincinnati, O., 167. 
 
 Claremont, Cal., 212, 215, 218. 
 
 Clark, Alonzo, 8. 
 
 Clark, Harvey, 206. 
 
 Clark, Senator, 94. 
 
 Clarkson, R. H., 30. 
 
 Cobb, S. B.. 50. 
 
 Collyer, Robert, 29. 
 
 Colorado College, 148-150, 286. 
 
 Colorado Springs, Colo., 148-149. 
 
 Constantinople, 230. 
 
 Converse, J. H., 94. 
 
 Coe College, 146. 
 
 Coolbaugh, W. F., 29. 
 
 Cragin, Pres., 156. 
 
 Culver, H. Z., 29. 
 
 Curtiss, Prof., 76. 
 
 Cushing, A. M., 3. 
 
 Cutter, Calvin, 15, 152. 
 
 D. 
 
 Dartmouth College, 6, 206. 
 Davis, N. S., 29. 
 Davis, O. S., 77, 250 
 Deer Lodge, Mont., 151. 
 Deering, William, 31. 
 Demorest, Ga., 191. 
 
 Deneen, Gov., 107, 250. 
 
 Doane College, 147. 
 
 Doane, J. W., 29 
 
 Dolliver, Senator, 5. 
 
 Doney, C. G., 187. 
 
 Douglass, Camp, 28. 
 
 Dox, Virginia, 200-201. 
 
 Drury College, 159-163, 243, 264, 
 
 285. 
 Dunne, Father, 30. 
 
 E. 
 
 Eaton Brothers, 93. 
 
 Eaton, E. D., 132-239, 248. 
 
 Eaton, Hon. John, 241. 
 
 Eddy, T. M., 29. 
 
 Education Society, 212. 
 
 Eells, Cushing, 206. 
 
 Elgin, 111., 11. 
 
 Emerson Hall, Beloit, 136, 138- 
 
 139. 
 
 Emerson, Prof., 136, 138-139, 141. 
 Europe, 11. 
 
 Evanston, 111., 3-4, 101-102. 
 Evarts, W. M., 33. 
 Everts, W. W., 29. 
 
 F. 
 
 Fairlee, Vt., 4. 
 
 Fairmount College, 147-148. 
 
 Faneuil Hall, 7. 
 
 Fargo College, 156-158. 
 
 Fargo, N. D., 156. 
 
 Farwell, C. B., 29. 
 
 Farwell, J. V., 29, 68. 
 
 Fee, John G., 167. 
 
 Ferguson, Pres., 213. 
 
 Ferrin, W. F., 207. 
 
 Field, Marshall, 28, 31. 
 
 Fifield, Dr., 173. 
 
 Finney, Julia V., 151. 
 
 Fisk, Prof., 76. 
 
 Fisk University, 168. 
 
 Forest Grove, Oreg., 205-207, 210, 
 
 212. 
 Fort Dodge, la., 5. 
 
 274 
 
INDEX 
 
 French, Pres., 154. 
 
 French, W. M. R., 73. 
 
 Frost, Pres., 106. 
 
 Frost, W. G., 170, 172-176, 179- 
 
 180, 250. 
 
 Fuller, H. T., 159, 243. 
 Fuller, M. W., 29. 
 
 G. 
 
 Galesburg, 111., 207. 
 
 Gates, G. A., 213, 218. 
 
 George, J. H., 163. 
 
 Gilbert, Simeon, 173, 250. 
 
 Grand Prairie Seminary, 105-106. 
 
 Grant University, 188. 
 
 Gray, C. O., 190. 
 
 Gray, W. B. D., 155. 
 
 Greeley, Horace, 9. 
 
 Greenville, East Tenn., 189. 
 
 Griggs, S. C., 32. 
 
 Guilford College, 190-191, 264. 
 
 Guilford, N. C., 190. 
 
 Holden, L. E., 140, 240. 
 Holyoke, Mass., 4. 
 Hopkins, Henry, 243. 
 House, J. T., 192. 
 Howard Hall, 174. 
 Hoyne, Thomas, 55. 
 Hubbard, G. S., 27, 29. 
 Humphrey, Z. M., 29-30. 
 Hurd, Henry, 37-38. 
 Huron College, 153. 
 Huron, S. D., 153-154. 
 Hutchinson, 73-74. 
 
 I. 
 
 Idaho, College of, 151. 
 Illinois Central R. R., 20, 42. 
 Illinois College, 106. 
 Illinois, University of, 241. 
 Imperial Law School, Constanti- 
 nople, 226. 
 Ingram Hall, 152. 
 Iowa College, 213 
 
 H. 
 
 Hale, W. E., 135, 139. 
 
 Halsey, J. J., 104. 
 
 Hamill, E. A., 49, 71-72. 
 
 Harlan, Justice, 169. 
 
 Harmon, J. F., 106-107. 
 
 Harms, J. H., 183-187. 
 
 Hartford, Conn., 22, 45. 
 
 Harvard Law School, 4. 
 
 Harvey, T. W., 29. 
 
 Hassam, Childe, 73. 
 
 Hastings College, 146. 
 
 "Hawks, Pa," 10. 
 
 Heath, Mayor, 53-55. 
 
 Heinze, F. A., 94. 
 
 Higgins, V. H., 29. 
 
 Hinsdale, 111., 38, 56-58, 67, 95, 
 
 245, 249, 252. 
 Hinsdale Sanitarium, 249. 
 Hitchcock, A. N., 250. 
 Hitchcock, Pres., 9. 
 Hobbs, L. L., 190-191. 
 Hoge, Mrs. M. D., 33. 
 
 J. 
 
 James, Pres., 241. 
 Janesville, Wis., 11, 17, 131. 
 Jones, D. A., 49. 
 Judd, N. B., 29. 
 
 K. 
 
 Kansas City, Mo., 146, 243. 
 Kennedy, J. S., 175. 
 Kent, Aratus, 43, 67. 
 Kilbourn, E. B., 248. 
 King, Tuthill, 32. 
 Kingfisher College, 192-193. 
 Kingfisher, Okla., 192. 
 Knox College, 108-112, 207. 
 
 Lake Forest University, 102-105. 
 Lancaster, Pres., 116. 
 
 275 
 
INDEX 
 
 Lawrence University, 16, 152. 
 
 Lebanon, 111., 106. 
 
 Leiter, L. Z., 28. 
 
 Leland Stanford University, 218. 
 
 Lexington, Ky., 169. 
 
 Lincoln, 32-33, 169-170. 
 
 Lincoln Institute, 169. 
 
 Livermore, Mrs. Mary, 33. 
 
 Los Angeles, Cal., 215. 
 
 Louisville and Nashville R. R., 
 
 167. 
 
 Louisville, Ky., 169. 
 Low, Seth, 169. 
 Lowell, Pres., 247. 
 Lyon, Mary, 9-10, 39, 125. 
 
 M. 
 
 Maile, J. L., 200, 202. 
 
 Manual Labor School, 7. 
 
 Marietta College, 117-118. 
 
 Marsh, James, 206. 
 
 Marsh Memorial Hall, 206-207. 
 
 Marsh, Professor, 206, 211. 
 
 Marsh, S. H., 206. 
 
 Marsovan, Turkey, 224, 226, 231. 
 
 McAfee, L. M., 145. 
 
 McCagg, Ezra, 27. 
 
 McClelland, Pres., 111-112, 207- 
 
 211. 
 
 McClure, J. G. K, 75, 103, 105. 
 McCormick, C. H., 29, 31. 
 McCormick, Mrs., 94. 
 McCormick Theological Seminary, 
 
 75. 
 
 McCrea, S. H., 53. 
 McKendree College, 106-108. 
 Medill, Joseph, 30. 
 Merrill, Pres., 153, 242. 
 Messer, L. W., 68, 70. 
 Michigan, Lake, 15. 
 Michigan, University of, 116. 
 Middlebury College, 122-124, 264. 
 Mills, W. W., 117. 
 Mitchell, Arthur, 52. 
 Montana. College of, 151. 
 Montpelier Conference Seminary, 
 
 6, 119-122, 258. 
 Moody, C. B., 192. 
 
 Merrill Act, vii, 90. 
 Mt, Holyoke College, 10, 124-127, 
 291-293, 301, 305. 
 
 N. 
 
 Nashville, Tenn., 16, 168. 
 Newberry College, 183-186, 240. 
 Newberry, S. C., 183. 
 Newberry, W. L., 27. 
 Newbury Seminary, 6, 120. 
 New College, Edinburgh, 225. 
 Newell, H. C., 191. 
 New Haven, Conn., 3. 
 New York City, 3, 8. 
 Nixon, O. W., 191, 199-200. 
 Noble, F. A., 250. 
 Northfield, Minn., 152. 
 Northland College, 153. 
 Northwestern University, 101. 
 
 O. 
 
 Oak Park, 111., 175. 
 Ogden, M. D., 27. 
 Ogden, W. B., 27. 
 Olivet College, 115, 283. 
 Onarga, 111., 105. 
 Osborne, Tenn., 179. 
 
 P. 
 
 Pacific University, 205-212, 286. 
 Page, Peter, 28. 
 Palmer, Potter, 28. 
 Park College, 145, 264. 
 Parker, Theodore, 9. 
 Parkville, Mo., 145. 
 Pasadena, Cal., 172, 215. 
 Patterson, R. W., 29, 108. 
 Patton, C. H., 224. 
 Patton, W. W., 29. 
 Paulson, Dr., 249-250. 
 Pearley, George E., 158. 
 Pearsons, Arthur, 3. 
 Pearsons, Charles, 3. 
 Pearsons, Elizabeth, 3. 
 
 276 
 
INDEX 
 
 Pearsons, Daniel Kimball, birth 
 and ancestry, 3-6; early life and 
 education, 6-8; 95; marriage, 9; 
 practise in Chicopee, 8-10; 
 decision to go West, 10; gifts to 
 Beloit, 11-12; preparation for 
 life in Chicago, 15-21; lectures, 
 15-18; land agent, 19-23; life in 
 Chicago, 37-64; personal appear- 
 ance, 40; alderman, 53 56; 
 advice to young men, 62-63; 
 principles of giving, 83-85; 
 gifts to denominational col- 
 leges, 89-97; to 111. institutions, 
 101-112; 115-127; to Beloit, 
 131-141; to other Western Col- 
 leges, 145-163; to Berea, 167- 
 180; to other Southern Colleges, 
 183-195; to Pacific Coast, 199- 
 220; to Missions, 223-234; ap- 
 preciations of, 239-252; retro- 
 spect, 255-270; addresses etc.; 
 Appendix, 281-304; Greeting of 
 Congregational Club, 305-308. 
 
 Pearsons, George, 4-5. 
 
 Pearsons, H. A., 45. 
 
 Pearsons, Hall, Mrs. John A., 4. 
 
 Pearsons, Hannah P., 5-6. 
 
 Pearsons, John, 5-6. 
 
 Pearsons, J. A., 3-4. 
 
 Pearsons, Marietta C., 10, 23-24, 
 42, 56, 57, 74, 80, 95, 160, 193, 
 243, 251, 300, 305, 308. (See 
 also Chapin, M. A., and Pear- 
 sons, D. K.) 
 
 Pearsons-Taft Land Credit Co., 45. 
 
 Pearsons, W. B. C., 4. 
 
 Peck, J. W., 32. 
 
 Penrose, S. B. L., 200-205. 
 
 Penrose, Mrs. S. B. L., 203. 
 
 Perry, Pres., 147. 
 
 Piedmont College, 191, 264. 
 
 Plantz, Pres., 152. 
 
 Pomona College, 212-220. 
 
 Porter, Prof., 141. 
 
 Portland, Ore., 210. 
 
 Presbyterian Church, Chicago, 
 First, 32, 42, 43, 52, 67-68, 72. 
 
 Presbyterian Hospital, 49, 71, 256. 
 
 Putnam, Israel, 6. 
 
 R. 
 
 Race, J. H., 187-189. 
 
 Railroad Mission, 42, 67. 
 
 Rammelskamp, Pres., 106. 
 
 Rankin, W. A., 105. 
 
 Rawlins, Mr., 176. 
 
 Raymond, R. W., 29. 
 
 Ripon College, 152, 242. 
 
 Ripon, Wis., 152, 153. 
 
 Rochelle, 111., 19-20. 
 
 Rockefeller, J. D., 250. 
 
 Rogers, J. A., 178-179. 
 
 Rollins College, 193-195, 249, 264. 
 
 Roosevelt, ex-Pres., 179, 242. 
 
 Rosenberg, Jacob, 50, 53. 
 
 Ross, J. P., 49, 71. 
 
 Royal Conservatory of Music, 
 
 Stuttgart, 226. 
 Ryder, W. H., 29. 
 
 S. 
 
 St. Louis, Mo., 107. 
 
 Samsoun, Turkey, 230. 
 
 Saulsbury, Prof., 134. 
 
 Savage, G. S. F., 76. 
 
 Scammon, J. W., 32. 
 
 Scherer, J. A. B., 184, 240. 
 
 Schuttler, Peter, 29. 
 
 Scott, Harvey, 208. 
 
 Scott, Prof., 76. 
 
 Seward, W. H., 33. 
 
 Sheldon, E. H., 27. 
 
 Sherman, Speaker, 244. 
 
 Sherwood, Mr., 52, 67. 
 
 Skinner, Judge M., 27. 
 
 Slocum, Pres., 149. 
 
 Smith, Dr. J. B. C., 9. 
 
 Smith, George, 29. 
 
 Smith, Solomon, 29, 49. 
 
 South Hadley, Mass., 9. 
 
 South Side City Railway System, 
 
 44-45, 50. 
 
 Sperry, Pres., 115-117. 
 Springfield, 111., 243. 
 Springfield, Mass., 3, 19. 
 Springfield, Mo., 162, 243. 
 Stephenson, Isaac, 152. 
 
 277 
 
INDEX 
 
 Stickney, E. H., 157-158. 
 Stone, Mrs. Valeria, 89. 
 Storrs, E. A., 29. 
 Story, W. F., 30. 
 Stowell, Mr. and Mrs., 136. 
 Strong, J. W., 152. 
 Sturgis, Solomon, 20. 
 Sullivan, Michael, 20. 
 Sumner, C. B., 213-220. 
 Swift, G. A., SI, 52, 67. 
 
 T. 
 
 Tabor College, 146. 
 Taft, O. B., 45. 
 Taft, Pres., 169. 
 Thayer, H. E., 148. 
 Thomas, J. M., 122-124. 
 Thurston, 10. 
 Tiffany, I. H., 29. 
 Topeka, Kans., 147. 
 Tracy, Pres., 224. 
 Troy, N. Y., 9, 124. 
 Tualtin Academy, 206. 
 
 V. 
 
 Vermont Central R. R., 5. 
 Vermont, Society of the Sons of, 
 
 51, 63. 
 Vermont, University of, 206. 
 
 Washburn College, 147. 
 
 Washburn, E. B., 27. 
 
 Washington and Tusculum Col- 
 lege, 189-190. 
 
 Washington, D. C., 199, 242. 
 
 Wesleyan College, W. Va., 187. 
 
 Wheeler, E. P., 153. 
 
 Wheelock, Eleazar, 206. 
 
 White, G. E., 224. 
 
 Whitman College, 199-205, 287- 
 289. 
 
 Whitman, Marcus, 199, 203. 
 
 W 7 hitman, Memorial Building, 203. 
 
 Whitman, Mrs. Marcus, 203. 
 
 Wichita, Kans., 147-148. 
 
 Willard's Seminary, Miss., 9, 124. 
 ' Williams College, 243. 
 
 Williams, E. F., 251. 
 
 Williston, A. L., 125. 
 
 Wilson, Gov. Woodrow, 169-170. 
 
 Wilson, Gov., 169. 
 
 Winter Park, Fla., 193, 195. 
 
 Woman's Board of Foreign Mis- 
 sions, 58, 223. 
 
 Woman's Educational Aid Asso- 
 ciation, 101-102. 
 
 Woman's Foreign Missionary 
 Board, Presbyterian, 76, 223. 
 
 Woodstock, 111., 178. 
 
 Woodstock, Vt., 8. 
 
 Woolley, Pres., 126. 
 
 Wooster University, 240. 
 
 Worcester, Mass., 7. 
 
 W. 
 
 Walla Walla, Wash., 199, 205. 
 Ward, Rev. Joseph, 154. 
 Ward, Mrs. Joseph, 155. 
 Warren, Pres., 155-156. 
 
 Y. 
 
 Yale University, 225. 
 
 Yankton College, 154-156. 
 
 Yankton, S. D., 154. 
 
 Y. M. C. A., Chicago, 68-71, 256. 
 
 278 
 
APPENDICES 
 
APPENDIX 1 
 
 A LESSON IN PRACTICAL PHILANTHROPY 
 
 AN ADRESS DELIVERED BY DR. D. K. PEARSONS BEFORE 
 THE Civic -PHILANTHROPIC CONFERENCE AT BATTLE 
 CREEK, MICH., OCTOBER 18-23, 1898. 
 
 I shall talk to you tonight in plain language. I am about to 
 say some things that I have never before mentioned in the pres- 
 ence of an audience. In other words, I propose to be very frank, 
 very plain. My subject is: 
 
 "WHAT TO Do WITH MONEY How TO USE IT" 
 
 In order to illustrate my subject so that you may clearly 
 understand it, I shall introduce several object lessons. I am 
 going to take you on a long journey to see the places where we 
 make use of money. I shall also bring in a little history incident 
 to the places we are to visit. I shall be under the necessity of 
 frequently using the pronoun "I." An old man has the right to 
 make himself the hero of every story he tells. In the young 
 man this would not be admissible, but an old man, approaching 
 fourscore years, has a right to tell what he has done. I like to 
 hear old men tell what they have done, and I am going to tell 
 you what I have done, for a particular object; not because I am 
 proud of it or vain about it, neither do I pose as a benevolent 
 man remember that. I am a thrifty and frugal old man. I 
 have labored nearly eighty years to make money, and I have 
 made it, and honestly, too. 
 
 The statement may seem very strange to you, that I do not 
 
 281 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 pose as a benevolent man. I have no benevolence in me, not 
 a particle. I am the most economical, close-fisted man you ever 
 put your eyes on. You can see it in my face it is there. I do 
 not think I ever foolishly spent twenty dollars in my life. I never 
 went to a theater but once in my life, and then I was ashamed of 
 myself. I never went to a horse-race, or a football game, or a 
 baseball game, over which our students all over the country are 
 making such consummate fools of themselves, and by allowing 
 which the presidents and faculties are making idiots of them- 
 selves. 
 
 I am doing all that I am doing on business principles. After 
 working hard and practising rigid economy for seventy years 
 to lay up money, I said to myself: "What am I going to do with 
 this? I can not carry it out of the world in my dead hands. 
 Coffins were not made to carry money in. I have got to leave it ; 
 that's the way to look at it. Now, what shall I do with it?" 
 
 I looked around Chicago, and helped to build a hospital; 
 helped two theological seminaries with three or four hundred 
 thousand dollars; helped the Young Men's Christian Association 
 and the City Missionary Society, and other institutions. But 
 that did not satisfy me. I wanted to help the poor boys and 
 girls of our country. I wanted to lay up something for them to 
 live on while getting an education. I had been deprived of a 
 college education through poverty, and I wanted to fix it so that 
 these boys and girls, the sons and daughters of wage-earners, 
 could have the privilege of a college close to them, so that they 
 could get a liberal education. 
 
 For this purpose I turned my attention to sixteen different 
 colleges. I did not start a single one, and I never will; we have 
 enough of them. All we need to do is to build up what we have. 
 There are but two places in America where they have need of a 
 college today, one is Montana and the other is Oklahoma, and 
 sometime they will have them, too. We want to make the colleges 
 we have better; give them an endowment, so that they can 
 enlarge their curriculum, pay their teachers, and meet the exi- 
 gencies of the time. 
 
 282 
 
APPENDIX 1 
 
 So I looked around, and traveled some, too. Mind you, this 
 was business, no benevolence in it at all. What shall I do with 
 that money? Find places for it where it will elevate, where it 
 will be used for God and humanity. 
 
 OLIVET COLLEGE 
 
 Now I will take you on the journeys that I made. Let us 
 begin right here in Michigan. I received a letter from President 
 Sperry of Olivet College, twelve pages long. Sperry is a good 
 fellow what did he say? That letter was a declaration in equity; 
 it was a regular "leader." It ran about as follows: 
 
 "You came into Michigan a few years ago, and bought 16,000 
 acres of timber land, and you paid for it. You took that mag- 
 nificent pine timber out of Michigan, and converted it into money, 
 and you left nothing behind but the bare, white, sand dunes, 
 that will produce only such things as choke-cherries. Timber 
 will never grow there again. Now in equity return some of that 
 money to Michigan." 
 
 I replied: "You raise $75,000 in Michigan, you can not go 
 all over the world to raise it, but raise it here in Michigan, and 
 I will give you $25,000," and he said, "It is a bargain." 
 
 He was in my office the other day, and said he had it all except 
 $20,000. Thus Olivet College is about to stand up $100,000 
 better off; and with this endowment the efficiency of the college 
 will be greatly increased. Nothing will give me more pleasure 
 than to make out that check for $25,000 for President Sperry. 
 
 BELOIT COLLEGE 
 
 But before we start out on our long journey, let me, by way of 
 reminiscence, mention one incident from personal experience. 
 In 1851 my wife and I took our first trip to the West. Our des- 
 tination was Janes ville, Wis. We passed through Michigan on 
 a strap rail, and traveled to Elgin, 111., which was the terminus 
 of the railroad, and there we took a muck wagon to our desti- 
 nation, passing through Beloit. We traveled through cold and 
 
 283 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 mud, rich mud, too, but on reaching Beloit found there was 
 a river. Our horses had to swim the river, and we had to stand 
 on the seats to get over. We stopped at a little wooden tavern 
 to rest. Beloit was but a small hamlet then. When we started 
 on for Janesville, one of those big, burly fellows who always 
 get into a new country, climbed into the wagon for a ride. 
 
 As we drove along, we saw a brick building going up, and I 
 asked the man, "What are they doing here?" "Why, there are 
 some Yankee cranks building a college," he answered. That 
 rather hit me. When they call me a Yankee, I take off my hat 
 and bow; and when they call me an old Puritan, I make three 
 bows. On the way to Janesville that man cursed everything that 
 was good, and I stood up for Christian education the best I knew 
 how. When we got to Janesville, I shook my fist in his face, 
 and said, "Old fellow, I am going West, and in a few years I am 
 going to get rich, and when I do, I am going to help lift up these 
 colleges that these 'Yankee cranks' are building up." I had 
 my eye on Beloit at that time. 
 
 Time went on, and my seventy years rolled by, and nine years 
 ago I began. The first proposition I made to Beloit College 
 was this: "I will give you $100,000 if you will raise $100,000." 
 (I make everybody work a little, and that is the right way to 
 do it.) In six weeks they raised that $100,000, and I had to 
 draw my check. I was so well pleased, and the institution was 
 such a grand character-building institution, that I went to work 
 and built them a science hall, the finest in the West. It cost 
 me $60,000 in cash. But I wasn't quite satisfied with that 
 so the next year, seeing that the boys had to pay from $3.50 
 to $4 for their board, I built them a dormitory costing $25,000. 
 Now the boys can live on $1.50 a week. I wasn't quite satisfied 
 with that, for they were good fellows. So I said, "Look here; 
 you haven't got quite money enough; you want more endowment 
 you want better professors. Now you raise $150,000 and I 
 will give you another $50,000." So last commencement Presi- 
 dent Eaton stepped in and said, "Here is $150,000 cash, not 
 Kansas mortgages, no sand dunes, no swamp lands, but 
 
 284 
 
APPENDIX 1 
 
 cash." So I gave him my check for $50,000, and that closed 
 that deal. 
 
 They established coeducation, and that pleased me. They 
 were going to have the girls come in, but they had no cage to 
 put them in. I said, "Get to work and build the finest building 
 you can for seventy-five girls, and be sure you get a good many 
 Mary Lyons and Frances Willards among them." So I gave 
 them $30,000 for a beautiful dormitory, and it is now occupied 
 by sixty-five young ladies. That was a very pleasant thing to 
 do, and I am rather proud of it. You needn't tell me I am a good 
 fellow I know I am. 
 
 Nine years ago there were about sixty students in Beloit College 
 and about one hundred in the academy; now they have more than 
 eighty in the freshman class, and more than two hundred each 
 in the college and the academy. That is the difference between 
 the situation then and now. 
 
 DRUBY COLLEGE 
 
 Now, let us go down into Missouri. There is a college down 
 there called Drury College, situated in Springfield, in the Ozark 
 Mountains. Missouri was a slave state a few years ago, and they 
 were not awake to the subject of education. They have waked up 
 now. Drury College was started by a missionary named Drury 
 from Olivet. They struggled along for a few years, in debt, 
 begging, their teachers not paid, and all that. I said to them 
 "You raise $150,000 for endowment (I make all do something) 
 and I will add $50,000 to that sum." They went to work, and 
 raised it quite readily. Now, the college is full to overflowing. 
 So I told them the other day: "You go to work now and put up 
 a college building. Build a good one, with some rooms for the 
 sciences separate from the others. Build it to cost $50,000. 
 You put in $25,000, and I will cover it with another $25,000." 
 The president is working on the proposition now. 
 
 285 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 COLORADO SPRINGS COLLEGE 
 
 Now let us travel one thousand miles to Colorado Springs. 
 About thirty years ago I camped one summer with the Ute In- 
 dians, where there was nothing but a little hamlet. A missionary 
 started an academy and college there, and he worked and dug 
 and toiled, but they didn't get along well. By and by there 
 came along the right fellow, a bright, smart young fellow by the 
 name of Slocum, and I had a confidence in that young man. I 
 believed that he could make that college worth something. I 
 said to him, "Slocum, you raise $150,000, and I will pay you 
 $50,000 down." He thought a while, and finally said he couldn't 
 do it. There were rich men all around there twelve million- 
 aires on one street in Colorado Springs! What are they saving 
 their money for? Saving it to ruin their boys and girls, and carry 
 them to destruction. I said to them, "Work three years if neces- 
 sary, to raise $150,000." 
 
 They sent me a bound book, and in that book there were 1,000 
 names, the names of all the individuals who had contributed 
 toward that $150,000. I have it now. I always require such 
 a list. And then I required from the three best business men of 
 Colorado Springs evidence that they had raised the $150,000, 
 and had the money in hand. No getting around it. Everybody 
 must come right up to the business mark. Now what have 
 they? They have a crowd of students. They come three hun- 
 dred miles with their packs on their backs from the mountains 
 and the plains, and they crowd in there, eager for an education 
 and they get it. 
 
 PACIFIC UNIVERSITY 
 
 Now, let us go about six hundred miles farther. Let us go 
 to the Pacific coast, about twenty miles from Portland, to a 
 place called Forest Grove, where George Atkinson, an old school- 
 mate of mine in Vermont, went fifty years ago. He traveled 
 around by Cape Horn, and was six months in getting there. As 
 
 286 
 
APPENDIX 1 
 
 soon as he was properly settled, he started an academy, and in 
 a few years a college, and that has had the same trouble all the 
 way through, in debt, teachers not paid, people sick of being 
 begged for the college. I wrote to President McLelland and said, 
 "In memory of George Atkinson, my old schoolmate, and in 
 memory of Mr. Marsh, who was president for many years, and 
 died there, I will give you $50,000 if you will raise $100,000." 
 They undertook to erect a college building, and they got it about 
 so far and then stopped. I said, "How much money will it take 
 to complete that building?" They replied, "$15,000." I 
 sent them a check for $15,000, and they put that building in fine 
 shape. They held a jubilee in July, and I have a detailed ac- 
 count of what took place there. They are about the happiest 
 people on the face of the earth. 
 
 Now is that not a good way to use money? If you can find 
 any better, I should like to have you tell me about it. But we 
 must hasten on. 
 
 WHITMAN COLLEGE 
 
 Let us go three hundred miles east, and we come to Walla 
 Walla. What is the history of that college? Marcus Whitman, 
 one of the greatest missionaries and one of the noblest men that 
 ever walked the earth, went there in 1842 with his wife. Theirs 
 was the first wagon that ever crossed the mountains. They 
 settled there among the Indians. He had an Indian school, 
 and it was prosperous and flourishing. It was no man's land 
 at that time. No one knew whether the British or the Americans 
 owned it. There was a magnificent empire up there, compris- 
 ing Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, and that shrewd and patri- 
 otic Marcus Whitman saw that it was a country of great value, 
 with its mighty forests, its fertile plains, its lofty mountains, its 
 mineral treasures. 
 
 In the dead of whiter he, with his pack-mule and guide, traveled 
 four thousand miles to Washington, D. C. When he got there, 
 his hands and face were frosted, but his head was all right. He 
 went before President Tyler, and found that Webster was about 
 
 287 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 trading the whole country off for some fisheries off the coast of 
 Nova Scotia. 
 
 Whitman said: "I am not here for office; I am here to tell you 
 that that is a magnificent country, and it belongs to the United 
 States, and we must hold it." 
 
 "Oh," replied Webster, "it can never be settled; there is not 
 even a wagon trail." 
 
 "I have taken a wagon over the mountains, and I took my wife 
 along with me, so I know what I am talking about. I came here 
 for the purpose of saving that country," said Whitman. 
 
 The next spring he took more than one thousand people from 
 St. Louis, Mo., and Illinois, and one thousand cattle with him 
 over the mountains, to settle in that beautiful country. 
 
 The enemies of civilization were jealous of that smart man, 
 and they incited the Indians to kill him. They did kill him, 
 but he left another good missionary behind a man by the 
 name of Eels. The best monument to be erected to Marcus 
 Whitman was to build a college in his name, and such a college 
 was built, costing $16,000, a very ordinary building. 
 
 After struggling along for a few years, they were completely 
 stranded mortgaged for $15,000. I had written them that I 
 would give them $50,000 if they would raise $150,000. They 
 did not make a move. A man came into my office one day, and 
 said his name was Penrose, the president of Whitman College. 
 He said they were $13,500 in debt, and that there was a mortgage 
 on the building, and that he didn't see how it was possible for 
 them to raise $150,000. "And," said he, "we can't live without 
 it." I then sat down and wrote a check for $13,500. "Now," 
 said I, "send that out and pay the teachers and clean it all up." 
 
 That was four years ago last June. They had then about 
 forty pupils. Now what are they doing? They have ten capa- 
 ble young men who are professors. They have one young man, 
 a professor of elocution and oratory, who eight years ago was a 
 sheep-herder on the plains of Utah. His father and mother were 
 Mormons. He came to Illinois and educated himself, and took 
 the first prize in the interstate oratorical contest, a $100 prize. 
 
APPENDIX 1 
 
 You will also be glad to know that they have the $200,000 
 endowment, and are getting seven per cent, for it there. They 
 have gathered in about two hundred and fifty young men and 
 women, some from Idaho and some from Montana. Yet they 
 are poor, they must be educated, and they must have a home 
 where they can live very cheaply. I believe students can live, 
 with a good dormitory, on a dollar and a half a week, or about 
 that amount. Yet they need more buildings. The good people 
 of Washington built a monument of granite to Marcus Whitman 
 on the ground where they buried him. Now I propose to build a 
 monument. I shall put up a building 180 feet long and 60 feet 
 wide, and two stories high, with all the appliances and appur- 
 tenances of a first-class college, as a monument to Marcus Whit- 
 man. Now, do not suppose I am going to build that building 
 without those rich fellows out there doing something. They 
 have got to contribute. The condition is that they must build 
 the dormitory for these poor boys who come in from the moun- 
 tains and plains, where they can live cheaply, and they must 
 do this before I begin the monument. And they will do it, for 
 they have noble men and women in that fair State, and it is going 
 to add five per cent, of value to every acre of property to have 
 that monument right there in the center of Walla Walla. Now, 
 do you suppose I am going to let those rich old fellows hug their 
 money, and let the poor boys and girls starve while acquiring 
 an education? No; they must do their part and become the 
 constituency of the college. 
 
 I should like to say a great deal more about Whitman College. 
 I like it. I like it because it is educating a class of boys and girls 
 who could not be educated without it. They could not get the 
 money to go off to college, so they need it right there. These boys 
 and girls are going to be the bone and sinew of America by and by. 
 
 If you would know more of this old Christian hero, Marcus 
 Whitman, and the grand work he did for the cause of Christian- 
 ity and patriotism, read Dr. Nixon's book, "How Marcus Whit- 
 man Saved Oregon." It will incite and encourage young Ameri- 
 cans along the best lines of thought. 
 
 19 289 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K PEARSONS 
 
 BEREA COLLEGE 
 
 Now let us go down to Berea, Ky., among the foothills of the 
 Cumberland Mountains. In this region of the South there are 
 five or six million mountain whites, of Scotch-Irish blood, grand, 
 good blood, noble men and women, although ignorant, with large 
 families of children growing up in ignorance and idleness. Berea 
 College was started many years ago. I went down there to the 
 commencement four years ago, and was never so much interested 
 in all my life; I will guarantee that there were three thousand 
 horses hitched on the campus, and five thousand people there 
 from the mountains. They are mountain whites I am a moun- 
 tain white, and I was once as poor as they are, and as ignorant. 
 I am from the mountains away up in Vermont, where they have 
 to shovel snow about five months in the year. 
 
 When I announced that I would give them $50,000 if they would 
 raise $150,000, I never saw anything like it. Those old moun- 
 taineers wept, they were so happy. 
 
 There is something to these hardy old mountaineers. Do you 
 know that they turned the tide of battle in the Civil War? 
 They stood like a wall of adamant, in the midst of the conflict 
 between the North and the South, and all their sympathy and 
 bravery were on the side of the North. Do you know that the 
 men who planted the flag on Lookout Mountain were these 
 very mountaineers? They were. They are brave people. 
 
 SCHOOLS IN THE SOUTH 
 
 I took a trip last winter to Asheville, N. C., and looked over the 
 educational situation in the South. I want to tell you something, 
 and I would tell Mason if he were here. The colored people 
 of the South today are better cared for in the matter of edu- 
 cation than are the mountain whites. They have excellent 
 schools, and they are making great progress. And now I will 
 tell you one thing more, and that is that during the next twenty 
 years you will hear appeals for the mountain whites of Kentucky 
 
 290 
 
APPENDIX 1 
 
 and Virginia ringing out from the pulpit and the press. They 
 deserve an education. They deserve much from us for whom 
 they have done so much. This is a subject that is going to be 
 agitated for the next twenty years, and I am going to do all I 
 can for those brave mountaineers. 
 
 But let us not lose sight of that endowment for Berea College. 
 I got a letter from President Frost the other day, and he said 
 "I now have within $20,000 of the $150,000." He is going to get 
 that, and I am going to give him a check for $50,000 about the 
 1st of January. He is going to get it, because those old anti- 
 slavery men are not all dead, and they have money to put in 
 that very institution that is equally for the mountain whites 
 and the blacks together. 
 
 MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE 
 
 Let us now journey to the northeast a thousand miles. I am 
 only going to speak of one more of the sixteen colleges in which 
 I am personally interested. These are samples, and the rest are 
 like them. 
 
 We are now to stop at a beautiful place, Mount Holyoke, 
 Mass. Here was founded the first female college ever erected 
 in this country, one that has done more good and had a wider 
 influence in the world than any other like institution under the 
 sun. Holyoke has circled the globe with women's colleges. 
 
 About a hundred years ago, Mary Lyon was born in an obscure 
 town in Western Massachusetts, of poor parents. Most men and 
 women of worth and influence come from poor parents, from 
 wage-earners, from poverty. Poverty is a blessing in disguise. 
 Standing here today, I am thankful that I was born in poverty, 
 and that I had to hustle, while the chilly winds of adversity blew 
 around me. 
 
 Hustle that is what makes men. It is not pampering them. 
 Take two dogs that are brothers, and put one in a rich man's 
 family, where he has a soft cushion to lie on, and is fed highly 
 seasoned food. That dog grows up a great big lumber-headed 
 dog with a cirrhotic liver. The other dog is given to a poor 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 boy over in Podunk. There are a lot of boys in that family, 
 and every boy gives the dog a kick. That dog grows up a splen- 
 did dog, with good muscle and a good eye, and is able to take 
 care of himself. Now bring him alongside of his brother raised 
 in luxury, and he will lick him. That dog raised in Podunk 
 can lick a dozen dogs like his brother. The pampered dog is good 
 for nothing, while the dog that had to fight for an existence is 
 a splendid specimen. 
 
 Just so it is with boys. Put two boys in equally different 
 environments, and one will turn out smart, for he has had to 
 hustle; while the other, if he is fed well and coddled, may be a 
 good-natured fellow, but that is about all. 
 
 You might ask the question, "Are there not too many colleges, 
 too many men going to college?" No, there are not too many 
 colleges, nor too many men going to college, nor too many women 
 either. 
 
 Mary Lyon's parents died, and she was left alone. She then 
 did housework for her brother, who lived on a farm. She spun 
 and wove and made coverlets and sold them, and got enough 
 to go to Ashfield Academy. That girl had visions, but she 
 was not visionary not a bit of it. She saw through the mist 
 and clouds that overhung the grandest country in the world, 
 and the noblest people in the world. The mist was that a female 
 should not be educated. I knew Mary Lyon; I saw her at work 
 laying the first foundation of her magnificent institution. I 
 once asked an old man why he did not help Mary Lyon. "Why," 
 said the old man, "it is of no use sending girls to college, it will 
 spoil them for servants; they won't be worth a cent for servants 
 if they go to school." 
 
 That darkness, that mist, hung over New England like a pall, 
 and Mary Lyon was the heroine who could look through it and 
 see the stars beyond. This century has not produced another 
 woman like Mary Lyon. There have been many great women, 
 but Mary Lyon stood far above them all. What did she want? 
 She wanted an institution where the daughters of poor men could 
 get an education on a very small amount of money. She went to 
 
 292 
 
APPENDIX 1 
 
 work. She begged the lumber and the brick. She went among 
 the farmers. I was practising medicine within five miles of her, 
 and I used to meet her in her travels around, and sometimes 
 she was disheartened, and although I was poor as Job's turkey 
 then, I said to myself: "If I ever get anything ahead in the world, 
 the first thing I take up will be such work as Mary Lyon is doing." 
 
 Mary Lyon is dead, but the college she founded still lives. 
 They were without any endowment four years ago, and I wrote 
 them, "I will give you $50,000 if you will raise $150,000," and 
 they went to work and got half of it. Two years ago last 
 September that building that Mary Lyon built to accommodate 
 four hundred girls took fire and burned up, turning the girls 
 into the street. Out of those four hundred girls only five went 
 home. The farmers and the people there said, "We will take 
 care of you," and they did take care of them, and they kept the 
 school intact. 
 
 That building was consumed, and while its embers were still 
 red -hot, I telegraphed to Williston, the Treasurer: "Fifty thou- 
 sand dollars to build up Mount Holyoke." What a turn that was ! 
 They had sunk into despair and despondency ,when all at once 
 light flashed upon them. That was the old institution founded 
 by Mary Lyon, and it has risen again. Now, Holyoke has five 
 of the finest dormitories in the country, and the most magnifi- 
 cent administration building as a memorial of Mary Lyon. I 
 got a letter today from the treasurer, saying, "We are now 
 going to have, in addition to the building, a new gymnasium." 
 At the last commencement I sent my check, and they have now 
 $200,000. They are going to be the best and the grandest 
 institution in this country. 
 
 I have tried to illustrate my subject, "What to Do with 
 Money." I have given you a few pages of personal history to 
 show you what one man of long experience believes is the right 
 way to use money. I have faith in this method of doing good. 
 I shall continue to prove my faith by my works. I hope many 
 will do likewise. 
 
 293 
 
APPENDIX 2 
 
 ADDRESS TO THE PUBLIC BY DR. D. K. PEARSONS, 
 ON HIS NINETY-FIRST BIRTHDAY 
 
 From The Tribune of April 15, 1911 
 
 It has seemed to some of my friends that I ought not to retire 
 from activity without publishing some statement of the work I 
 have attempted and my purpose henceforth. 
 
 One year ago, on my ninetieth birthday, I made or renewed 
 conditional pledges aggregating approximately $300,000, limited 
 in time to one year. At that time I made a statement that these 
 were my last pledges, and that when they were fully paid I should 
 retire from the field of public service and seek that quiet which has 
 been denied me in recent years. 
 
 The conditions of my gifts have practically all been met. I 
 lie down to sleep tonight, free from debt. I owe no man any- 
 thing, and no college, institution, or individual has any outstand- 
 ing claim against me. This is a great relief, and it is to be per- 
 manent. Henceforth I make no pledges and no gifts. I have 
 given practically $5,000,000 to various charities. These gifts 
 resulted in the raising of at least $10,000,000 more. This is the 
 end. 
 
 HAS No MORE MONEY TO GIVE AWAY 
 
 I wish to make this very emphatic. I want all my friends to 
 help me to make it perfectly plain. I will receive no more solici- 
 tors and will read no more letters soliciting gifts. What money I 
 now have is fully provided for. I have no more money to give 
 away. 
 
 294 
 
APPENDIX 2 
 
 I must ask relief and insist upon it. This is the announcement 
 I wish to make upon my ninety-first birthday. 
 
 The promises which I made a year ago I have kept. I 
 have no more money to be given away. Please stop writing 
 me letters which I cannot read nor answer. They burden 
 me, and must disappoint the writers. 
 
 But I cannot terminate so active and interesting a career without 
 a further word concerning the experiences of these ninety-one 
 years, and especially the last twenty-two, which have been devo- 
 ted exclusively to what my friends have been pleased to call 
 ' ' philanthropies . ' ' 
 
 I used to deny that I was a philanthropist. I was accustomed 
 to say that I had no benevolence in me. But if philanthropy 
 means loving one's fellow-men, then perhaps I am entitled to the 
 term. But I still maintain that if I had chosen my course with a 
 simple view to selfish pleasure, I could not have chosen better 
 than I did, for these twenty-two years have been years of constant 
 joy. I had a good time making my money, but have had a better 
 time spending it. 
 
 NEVER CARED TO WASTE MONEY 
 
 I have never denied myself anything that I have needed or 
 greatly cared for. If I have been criticised, it has been because 
 I did not spend money for things I did not want. I have had all 
 the food I needed and all the clothes that I could wear. I have 
 had a good home, good books, and every reasonable comfort. 
 
 I never cared for theaters. I never went to but one, and then I 
 was ashamed of myself. I never went to a horse race or a foot- 
 ball game. I have not cared to waste my money on things that 
 would only increase my responsibility and cause me discomfort. 
 I have not cared to hoard money for people to quarrel over after 
 I was dead. 
 
 If I had chosen selfishly I could have chosen nothing more 
 pleasant than that which I have chosen. This is what I have 
 meant when I have said I am not a philanthropist. This was my 
 meaning when I called myself a close-fisted old man. 
 
 295 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 And yet I want to make a confession. This course which I 
 chose for myself has been an education to me. I did not map it all 
 out in advance. I blundered into it, and I must say with some 
 satisfaction that I have blundered to very good advantage. 
 
 VALUABLE LESSONS LEARNED 
 
 I do not regret any of the blunders I have made, but these 
 twenty-two years have been years of growth in method, years in 
 which I have learned valuable lessons in the distribution of 
 wealth. I do not want to live them over. I do not want my 
 money back to give it away again. 
 
 But I have learned a great deal which I did not know when I 
 began. I am something more of a philanthropist now than I was 
 when I began. I have a better understanding of the use of 
 these gifts and a better idea of the use which they will be to the 
 world. 
 
 My friends used to talk to me about the good I was doing, and 
 I laughed at them and said: 
 
 "I am just an economical old man investing my money in the 
 most careful way I know how." 
 
 But I have begun to think my friends were right. I see in the 
 more than forty colleges which I have helped a wider range of 
 usefulness than I ever dreamed of when I began this work. 
 
 RECALLS THE PIONEER DAYS 
 
 I did not begin with a ready made plan. In 1851 my wife and 
 I took our first trip to the west. Our destination was Janesville. 
 Wis., and we passed through Elgin, which was then the terminus 
 of the railroad. From there we took wagons to our destination, 
 passing through Beloit. We passed through a good deal of mud, 
 and it was rich mud. When we reached Beloit we had to ford the 
 Rock River, and our horses swam the river. We had to stand up 
 on the seats to keep our feet from getting wet. We stopped at a 
 little tavern to rest. Beloit was a small hamlet. 
 
 When we started on a big burly fellow climbed into the wagon 
 
 296 
 
APPENDIX 2 
 
 for a ride. I noticed a brick building going up and asked him 
 
 what was being done. He answered: 
 
 "There are some Yankee cranks building a college/* 
 
 That interested me, for I was just out of New England and a 
 
 thorough Yankee and proud of it. If anybody calls me a Yankee, 
 
 I take off my hat and bow. If he calls me an "old Puritan" I 
 
 make three bows. 
 
 RECORDS AN EARLY Vow 
 
 On the way to Janesville that man cursed everything that was 
 good. I tried to argue with him and to stand up for a Christian 
 education the best I knew how. When we got to Janesville I 
 shook my fist in his face and I said: "Young man, I am going 
 west, and I am going to get rich, and when I do I am coming back 
 to lift up these colleges that Yankee cranks are founding." 
 
 I prospered in the new country to which I had come. I gave up 
 for a time my vision of being a philanthropist, and devoted myself 
 to getting money. Other men trusted me with their investments 
 and the money I invested for them proved profitable for them and 
 for me. For a great many years my money was tied up in active 
 business propositions. I lived modestly, but well. I drove hard 
 bargains, but I never drove a dishonest one. 
 
 On the approach of my seventieth birthday my eye was not 
 dim nor my natural force abated. I retired from active business 
 life. I placed my investments where they would require little of 
 my time or attention; all the time I remembered my talk with the 
 man about the little college in Beloit. 
 
 A former resident of Beloit was a relative of my wife and I 
 started there. I went to Beloit College on commencement day. 
 Not many people knew me. I sat on the platform. I never had 
 been regarded as a speechmaker, but the time came for me to 
 make a speech. I stood up and said: "I will give Beloit college 
 $100,000 if the college will raise $100,000 additional." That was 
 the beginning of my oratory and it was a success. 
 
 297 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 RAISING DOLLAR FOR DOLLAR 
 
 Then I found out this : That colleges could raise more than dol- 
 lar for dollar, and that it was to their advantage to do it. Gener- 
 ally they could raise three dollars for one, among their friends. 
 People often asked me: "Why do you not give your money out- 
 right? Why do you compel colleges to raise money to meet your 
 pledges?" My answer is, "Because I have tried that way and 
 it works well." 
 
 In the first place it tests the college and shows whether it has 
 any natural constituency of its own. In the next place it rallies 
 its friends to the support of the college, and it makes for it new 
 friends. In the third place, it keeps my gift from stopping some 
 other man's gift, and compels the other gift to be made. Finally, 
 it multiplies my gift by two, or three, or four. 
 
 It has made my $5,000,000 yield $15,000,000. It makes three 
 blades of grass grow where there had been one. I have not 
 always insisted on the same proportion. Sometimes I have 
 accepted dollar for dollar. 
 
 Other times I have taken two to one, and still more frequently 
 three to one. Repeatedly I have offered $50,000 to a college if 
 it would raise $150,000 additional. Sometimes they have thought 
 me a little hard-hearted in the conditions I made, but I thought I 
 was doing right. I compelled them to make friends, and com- 
 pelled their friends to prove their friendship. 
 
 EYE ON COLLEGE FINANCES 
 
 I did more than this. I kept a financial report of practically 
 every college in the country. I studied these reports. I knew 
 which colleges had been careless in the investment of their endow- 
 ments. I knew which colleges had borrowed from one fund to 
 help out another. When they came to me for help I told them 
 they had been dishonest. 
 
 I talked to them in plain language. They did not like it very 
 well, but they went home and adopted a new system of book* 
 
 298 
 
APPENDIX 2 
 
 keeping. They separated their current expense money from their 
 endowment money. They employed competent auditors to go 
 over their accounts. They used new balance sheets, with certifi- 
 cates sworn to by good public accountants. 
 
 I compelled them to become business-like. I believe this thing 
 itself was a larger gift to the colleges than all the money I could 
 give them. The day of hit or miss bookkeeping in college offices 
 has gone by, and I was able to push it a little as it was going. 
 
 Naturally they thought me hard-hearted in all this. Some- 
 times they said that I was not very ladylike in my language to 
 them. If a board of trustees took endowment to pay current 
 expenses, and then sent a committee to me to ask me to make it 
 up, and I told them they ought to be in jail, they thought I was 
 not very ladylike. 
 
 SHOW CLEAN BALANCE SHEETS 
 
 But they hustled around among their friends and got money to 
 replace what had been taken, and started in a new method. And 
 a year or two later they would come to me and show a clean 
 balance sheet: then I would say: 
 
 " Gentlemen, you have done very well. Your funds are in good 
 condition, but you need more. I will give $50,000 if you will raise 
 $150,000 more." 
 
 Then they would go out and raise it, and when they had got it 
 raised they would go out and invest it. 
 
 The average board of trustees is a safer, more business-like body 
 than it was twenty-two years ago. The average college treasurer 
 is a much more business-like man. I know this, for I have 
 watched it, and in part I have caused it. I simply made up my 
 mind not to give my money where it was going to be frittered 
 away. And this policy bore fruit. 
 
 I have given some money to educational work through the 
 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. I 
 began this through the interest of my wife in this work. The 
 first guests we had in our home were some Chinese from a Sunday- 
 
 299 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 school class in which she was interested. The first foreign mis- 
 sion gift that we made was to Dr. Tracy of Turkey for his college. 
 
 HELPING FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 I have not felt called upon to give money to the general work 
 of foreign missions. My field has been the field of education. 
 But when the American board undertook to raise $2,000,000 for 
 endowment of its foreign missionary colleges, I believed that to 
 be directly in line with my work. I believed that whatever 
 money I gave there would be well invested and rightly used. 
 One of the things I am going to do now is to give $100,000 to 
 this cause. It is a gift that I am proud to make. 
 
 I have given $1,000,000 to the city of Chicago. That is where 
 I made my money. But Chicago does not need money for small 
 colleges, so I have given money to the City Missionary Society, 
 the Young Men's Christian Association, and Chicago Theological 
 Seminary, to the Presbyterian Hospital, and other agencies which 
 I believe to be most nearly in line with the work I have tried to do. 
 
 The man who is to give away money must choose the field in 
 which he is to do it. If I had had a thousand times as much as I 
 had I could not have answered all the requests that have been 
 made of me. 
 
 PAYS TRIBUTE TO MRS. PEARSONS 
 
 I have no criticism to pass on any one else who chooses a differ- 
 ent method, but I believed that my own money would go farthest 
 and do most good if I invested it in the young manhood and 
 young womanhood of our country. So my wife and I chose 
 twenty-two years ago to invest in Christian education. 
 
 For eighteen years I had her companionship and constant help. 
 In the last four years I have continued this work which she and 
 I so long enjoyed together. The choice we made was a beautiful 
 one, and a happy one. I cannot tell how much joy there has been 
 in it for us both. I can only be glad that we were led to do as 
 we have done. 
 
 300 
 
APPENDIX 2 
 
 I have not said much about the spirit which has been behind 
 these gifts. I am a plain business man, and I talk in plain lan- 
 guage, the language of commerce and of common sense. But I 
 want to say more earnestly than I have ever said before that I 
 believe I have been guided in this work. I do not think it has 
 all been of my own choosing or planning. 
 
 NEVER HAS BEEN A HYPOCRITE 
 
 Whatever people have said of me they have never called me an 
 old hypocrite. I do not care to say more than I am now saying 
 about the spirit which has guided these gifts, but I should be false 
 to myself if I said less than this. 
 
 I have never been a sectarian. For good reasons considerable 
 of my work has been done for Congregational institutions, and 
 next to that Presbyterians claim my interest. But I have done 
 this in no sectarian spirit. Among the colleges that I have 
 helped are Methodist, Baptist, Quaker, and nonsectarian insti- 
 tutions. 
 
 But I have emphasized the Christian idea, because I believe 
 that education is of little value without character, and may be 
 even harmful. I have tried to make my gifts a contribution to 
 the work of God and the welfare of mankind. 
 
 I got some idea of the value of Christian education in my early 
 association with Mary Lyon, the founder of Mount Holyoke Col- 
 lege. That noble woman used to come to my house and when I 
 began the practise of medicine I was near her college. I have 
 been able to befriend it since. I gave it a building and some 
 money for endowment. I do not believe there is in New England, 
 or in all the country for that matter, a better college for women 
 than Mount Holyoke. It stands in my mind for an ideal of Chris- 
 tian womanhood, and I believe in Christian womanhood, and 
 Christian manhood. 
 
 Some of my gifts seem to me almost to have been taken out of 
 the sphere of my own planning. There is one of them that I 
 think of which seems to me to have been a direct inspiration. I 
 refer to the $50,000 which I gave to establish the water works for 
 
 301 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 Berea college. That was the most beautiful gift I ever made. 
 When I think of the way that came about and all the good that 
 has been done I consider that gift an inspiration. 
 
 I have the greatest joy in my colleges. They are my children. 
 They are my only children. They are good children and growing 
 children. No father was ever more proud of his family than I 
 am of these colleges. I have nurtured them, loved them, scolded 
 them sometimes, but I have watched them with more affection 
 than they have always realized. And they are my joy and crown. 
 I have no more money for them, but all the affection which I ever 
 had for them I still treasure. 
 
 I like to think of them, from old Vermont, where I was born, 
 across the continent to Pacific University in Oregon, and all the 
 way from Ashland, in the pine woods of Wisconsin, to Rollins in 
 Florida, and to Pomona in southern California. Their names are 
 precious to me, and their prosperity brings me great joy. 
 
 PRAISE FOR THE NEWSPAPERS 
 
 I wish I could send greeting on this birthday to all my friends 
 near and far. I should like to answer all the letters and send mes- 
 sages to all the institutions which send their greetings to me. I 
 cannot send individual messages to all of them, but I send a hearty 
 word of appreciation through the medium of the public press. 
 
 I want to say a word to the newspapers. They have always 
 been my friends. They have advertised my efforts, and have 
 encouraged colleges to meet my conditions. In some cases the 
 effort would entirely have failed if it had not been for the hearty 
 support of the press. I have not sought newspaper notoriety. 
 I have been careless what they have said about my methods, but 
 I want at this time to express my appreciation of the courtesy 
 and helpfulness of the press throughout the country. 
 
 I hope that I shall live to be 100. The conditions of my general 
 health are such that that does not seem impossible. But I cannot 
 live nine more years as strenuous as the last have been. I have 
 lived in the joy of achievement, and with the strain of sympathy 
 with the institutions I have been helping. 
 
 302 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 LOOKS BACK WITH THANKFULNESS 
 
 I have taken upon myself more of their burden than they could 
 realize. I cannot do this longer. What time may remain for me 
 must be spent in quiet. What money I have is fully provided for. 
 I look back with great thankfulness over the ninety-one years of 
 my life, and especially over the last twenty-two. 
 
 If these years seem remarkable to my friends, they seem noth- 
 ing less than wonderful to me. 
 
 I send this final message to the colleges I have helped. Guard 
 faithfully your endowment funds. Use careful business methods 
 in placing the funds of the college. But even more carefully 
 guard your students. Keep them from harm, for the hope of the 
 country is in the young people you are training. 
 
 I should like to give a word of advice also to prosperous men. 
 Do not put off your benefactions till you are too old to enjoy 
 them. Do not leave your money to people to quarrel over. Do 
 not shorten your lives by extravagances. Find some good thing 
 which ought to be done, and begin to do it. 
 
 Take that field of philanthropy and make it your own. Put in 
 your work in such a way that you come to be known as a friend 
 of the cause to which you give your efforts. And the experiences 
 that that course will bring will cause you greater joy than any 
 other in life. 
 
 303 
 
APPENDIX 3 
 
 NINETY-FIRST BIRTHDAY: GREETING OF THE CHI- 
 CAGO CONGREGATIONAL CLUB TO DOCTOR 
 D. K. PEARSONS APRIL 14, 1911 
 
 WRITTEN BY REV. DR. SIMEON GILBERT 
 
 April 14 has come to be a cherished red-letter day with us, as 
 well as with you; and we, the members of our Congregational 
 Club, are all of one mind and one heart tonight as we turn to 
 think of you. And, as you must already know, our thought is 
 full of love, of admiration, of gratefulness as we offer heartfelt 
 congratulation on this your Ninety-first birthday. 
 
 Ninety-one years; and what years they have been these years 
 of discoveries and inventions, modern miracles at which all men 
 wonder, necessitating perpetual crises, evolutions and revolutions 
 so many of them taking place within the measure of your own life ! 
 No doubt you have reached the period where there is no resent- 
 ment at having Shakespeare's word applied to you : 
 
 "Oh, sir, you are old, 
 Nature in you stands at the very verge of her confine." 
 
 Even sunsets, it is said you know, "do take a sober coloring 
 from an eye that hath kept watch o'er man's mortality"; but 
 what we are thinking is of the gracious quality, the meaning, the 
 culminating issues and beneficent outcome of this long life that 
 has been given you. And so we unite in thanking God for what 
 during all these years, he has been doing for you, and has been 
 doing through you, for our country and the world. Surely it 
 were not possible, now, to think of it all, the acute timeliness, the 
 largeness, the varied scope and self-perpetuating beneficence of 
 all this sagacious planning and doing, and doing and giving on 
 behalf of these near-fifty Colleges which you so fondly love to 
 
 304 
 
APPENDIX 3 
 
 speak of as "my children," without having wakened in one's 
 mind a feeling akin to awe, as if somehow taken up into partner- 
 ship with God himself. 
 
 It was a beginning of good fortune for you as some of us also 
 have fine reasons for believing that you were given birth and 
 early training up in Vermont. Fortunate, too, perhaps, that 
 you were not allowed to stay there too long! Then how often, 
 oh, how often you must have blessed the good Hand of Provi- 
 dence which led you, while in your early prime, down the valley 
 of the Connecticut, loveliest of river valleys, in sight of old 
 Mount Tom and the classic Mount Holyoke, and opened the way 
 for you to the gracious home of Deacon Chap in, and, quite as 
 important, to that of Miss Chapin foreordained to be evermore 
 the good genius of your own home, the chiefest boon in your life. 
 Moreover, of like far-reaching good fortune was it that there, as 
 you drove your Doctor's gig up and down among those pictur- 
 esque hills and valleys you came to know also, that inspired woman, 
 one of the most prophetic spirits of her time, Mary Lyon; and that 
 just at the time when she was not only founding and making 
 Mt. Holyoke Seminary, but was beginning to make that great 
 new epoch in modern educational history for women, the world 
 over. And we suspect that nobody ever learned a greater lesson 
 from that inspired educator and college builder, than did the 
 young doctor in his gig, as he began dreaming for himself the 
 new scheme of life; and ever after was not disobedient to the far- 
 vision. Of course little enough, at the time, did he know what 
 it all meant. At any rate, he had been confronted by his "Burn- 
 ing Bush" in the desert, and began to heed the imperativeness of 
 the Inner Voice. 
 
 And now, as from this happy point of view you look back over 
 the long way in which you have been so graciously led, how timely 
 it must seem to you, the time when you were led to come west, to 
 come here to Chicago. Not a day too soon, nor a day too late. 
 It was exactly the time for you, in your way, to make here your 
 fortune, as we call it. 
 
 Then, when some twenty-five years later, now some twenty- 
 
 305 
 
LIFE OF DR. D. K PEARSONS 
 
 two years ago, the same gracious Hand struck the hour, the 
 moment for the grand, new task to be taken up, there was, as we 
 love to recall, no paltering, no divided counsels. And today, as 
 we glance over this last and most unique period in your life, the 
 great educational and college-building era of it, there seems to 
 us nothing more strikingly worthy of note, than its supreme 
 timeliness. 
 
 It was a just remark of Professor Dexter of Yale, that if the 
 founding of Harvard College had been delayed twenty-five years, 
 the whole course of New England history would have been differ- 
 ent. No doubt of it. But here we have in mind not one college, 
 but fifty such cobperant factors in American life; colleges which 
 had indeed been founded some years before, but which, by reason 
 of the scantiness and extreme uncertainty of their provisions and 
 equipment, were utterly inadequate to cope with the new educa- 
 tional conditions and necessities. 
 
 Think of it, how tremendously different the case of the higher 
 educational problem in our country would have been today, had 
 not somebody in the all-seeing Providence of God been raised up 
 to take the timely initiative, and with contagious consecration 
 and courage set going this majestic educational movement. The 
 very stones would have cried out. 
 
 Let those of us realize it who can, the sinister drift in American 
 character and life had the man chosen of God for this new-century 
 educational movement been disobedient to the heavenly vision; 
 had he, instead of consecrating himself to his mission, been only 
 half-hearted about it and in some paltering evasion trifled with it 
 and sought to bargain with his conscience in putting off the mat- 
 ter, and putting it over to the "dead hand" of some last will and 
 testament, which might or might not have been made good. 
 
 What if all these half-a-hundred Colleges, east and west, north 
 and south, Beloit and Berea, Carleton and Colorado, and the 
 rest, and, especially, our own Chicago Theological Seminary 
 in its way the sacred capital of them all had been in shiftless 
 abandonment left in their poverty and utter inadequacy of endow- 
 ment and support to drag along at a poor dying rate their losing 
 
 306 
 
APPENDIX 3 
 
 competition with the non-Christian schools; where would we be 
 today? 
 
 Nor in this connection should mention be omitted either of 
 certain beginnings of large educational endowments through the 
 American Board in mission lands, or of gifts made to vital inter- 
 ests in our own City, including besides the Chicago Theological 
 Seminary, the McCormick Theological Seminary, the Presby- 
 terian Hospital, the Art Institute, the Young Men's Christian 
 Association, and specially the Chicago City Missionary Society; 
 gifts amounting to over a million dollars, all in addition to the 
 four or five millions given elsewhere all destined to have effects 
 of incalculable importance, "ages on ages telling." 
 
 Never, never will men of the illumined apprehension fail to 
 appreciate the "thrice and four times" valued gifts thus early 
 made, when most they were needed. 
 
 And then, one other thing; it must be a satisfaction to you, 
 Dr. Pearsons, as it is to us, to think of the number of other more 
 or less illustrious educational givers, some of them with indeed 
 many times more millions than you have been entrusted with 
 who have graciously acknowledged their indebtedness to you, 
 your precedent, example and way of making your gifts; the con- 
 ditioning way, which has won so many thousands of others into 
 the same widening and inspiring fellowship of educationalists and 
 timely helpers. 
 
 There is a Scripture, you know, which speaks of a time when 
 one should chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight. 
 Unspeakable is the felicity of our own time when one individual, 
 starting in the nick of time, may be worth a thousand men; when 
 one may touch a button and set enormous systems of activity into 
 correlated motion and power; when one may pitch the tune and 
 thousands of voices shall roll on the glorious symphony. 
 
 Let Homer sing as he may in deathless verse of proud Troy 
 and the heroes and battles that surge about its falling walls; let 
 the Latin Poet more prophetic in his spirit sing of "arms and the 
 man" and celebrate the far-visioned epic of the kingdom that 
 was to be, the "kingdom bounded by the ocean, the fame of it by 
 
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LIFE OF DR. D. K. PEARSONS 
 
 the stars." But this new educational epoch, which is so directly 
 to help on "the happy history," not for our America only but for 
 all the world, this will call for a new kind of epic for its fitting 
 celebration, should some one ever appear competent for its 
 portrayal. 
 
 Meanwhile, our dear Dr. Pearsons, grateful as we are to him 
 who is the giver of every perfect gift and of all good giving, be 
 assured that we all join with profound affection in thanking you 
 for all that you these so many years have been doing, and in 
 fervent prayer and hope that this later portion of your life may be 
 enriched with the divinest comforting and good cheer, and that 
 the continuing history and ever-increasing output of these fifty 
 Colleges and of this our Seminary may more and more illuminate 
 the wisdom of what has been so opportunely and worthily done 
 for them. 
 
 In that mystical Scripture of one of the Prophets, reference, you 
 remember, is made to a "window opened in heaven"; exactly 
 what is meant by it we may not know, but in view of the ineffable 
 satisfactions and strange gladness of spirit in this Christly busi- 
 ness for others, which you you and she who was, and still is, 
 your wisest and closest partner in it all have experienced, do we 
 not seem to see at least a glimpse of its meaning? A window 
 opened in Heaven. 
 
 ( SIMEON GILBERT. 
 
 Signed COMMITTEE OF THE CLUB < OZORA S. DAVIS. 
 
 ( THOMAS C. MCMILLAN. 
 
 308 
 
UJIO! 
 
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