STRINGS TO PURSES

The trouble which can be caused by legacies with strings attached to them is illustrated rather more amusingly than usual in last night's Transcript. The inspiration for the article in question is the state of affairs in Widener Library. Here, it appears, there is a considerable sum of money set aside for the purchase of books in French, dealing with the exact sciences, and nothing else. There are also funds for the acquisition of books on Siam, California, and for volumes once owned by Coleridge, and annotated by him. This money can not be spent for anything other than the particular field mentioned by the donor, whether more important purchases are to be made or not.

Unfortunately, the sort of legacy which demands such special application is not limited to the library. There are numerous examples in other departments of the University. The Anthropology department is forced to do without even the simplest supplies for its students, while the Physics department can furnish each of twenty Freshman with an instrument valued at eighty dollars. Besides such minor cases, there are classic monstrosities like the Engineering School, which has been laboring for years in a morass of difficulties originating in the will which endowed it.

In practice, the demands on the funds of a large institution are constantly changing, and must be handled by persons familiar with the situation, not by the inflexible provisions of a will. Furthermore the dispensation of such funds is often a task beyond the ken of a layman. The man with a casual interest in a subject, desiring to leave a sum to the students of that subject, is not necessarily a good judge of the manner of expenditure. A sincere and equitable bequest, in short, should be drawn up in one of two ways: it should either have been gone over by an expert in the field to which it is to be devoted, or its dispensation should be left to the recipient.