apprentices, five hundred. To his old servants, he left annuities of
three hundred and five hundred dollars each. A portion of his valuable
estates in Louisiana he bequeathed to the corporation of New Orleans,
for the improvement of that city. Half a million he left for certain
improvements in the city of Philadelphia; and to Pennsylvania, three
hundred thousand dollars for her canals. The whole of the residue of
his property, worth then about six millions of dollars, he devoted to
the construction and endowment of a College for Orphans.

Accustomed all his life to give minute directions to those whom he
selected to execute his designs, he followed the same system in that
part of his will which related to the College. The whole will was
written out three times, and some parts of it more than three. He
strove most earnestly, and so did Mr. Duane, to make every paragraph
so clear that no one could misunderstand it. No candid person,
sincerely desirous to understand his intentions, has ever found it
difficult to do so. He directed that the buildings should be
constructed of the most durable materials, "avoiding useless ornament,
attending chiefly to the strength, convenience, and neatness of the
whole." _That_, at least, is plain. He then proceeded to direct
precisely what materials should be used, and how they should be used;
prescribing the number of buildings, their size, the number and size
of the apartments in each, the thickness of each wall, giving every
detail of construction, as he would have given it to a builder. He
then gave briefer directions as to the management of the institution.
The orphans were to be plainly but wholesomely fed, clothed, and
lodged; instructed in the English branches, in geometry, natural
philosophy, the French and Spanish languages, and whatever else might
be deemed suitable and beneficial to them. "I would have them," says
the will, "taught facts and things, rather than words or signs." At