A fact long lost sight of is that George Washington himself, the "Father of his Country" was also among the first of its great benefactors to the cause of higher education. Quite recently attention has been directed to the following clause in his last will and testament:

"It has always been a source of serious regret with me to see the youth of the United States sent to foreign countries for the purpose of education, often before their minds were formed, or they had imbibed any adequate ideas of the happiness of their own. My mind has not been able to contemplate any plan more likely to affect the measure than the establishment of a university in a central part of the United States, to which the youths of fortune and talent from all parts thereof may be sent for the completion of education, and where they may be enabled to free themselves in a proper degree from those local prejudices and habitual jealousies, which, when carried to excess, are never-failing sources of disquietude to the public mind and pregnant of mischievous consequences to this country. Under these impressions:

"Item - I give and bequeath, in perpetuity, the fifty shares which I hold in the Potomac Company, toward the endowment of a university; and, until such seminary is established, and the funds arising on these shares shall be required for its support, my further will and desire is that the profit accruing therefrom shall, whenever the dividends are made, be laid out in purchasing stock in the Bank of Columbia, or some other bank, at the discretion of my executors, or by the Treasurer of the United States for the time being, until a sum adequate to the accomplishment of the object is obtained; of which I have not the smallest doubt before many years pass away, even if no aid or encouragement is given by the legislative authority, or from any other source."

This noble bequest has been absorbed, it appears, into Uncle Sam's capacious treasury, and at five per cent compound interest would now amount to about five million dollars. It is therefore entirely fitting that our Senators should be urging, after a lapse of ninety-three years, its employment in pursuance of the testator's will on behalf of the youth of his well-beloved country.