Page:Life of Isaiah V Williamson.djvu/112

94 to start a girls' department of the same institution, he became a member of the committee appointed to received contributions to that end. He was a member, also, of the Board of Trustees of the Union School and Children's Home. These and other official duties were quite likely to have increased his knowledge of the need and intensified his feeling; but to go deeper, they were really varied forms of expression of a feeling that had existed for years, of which one of the latest and most expressive was his study of the House of Refuge conditions and his gift to it of $105,000 during the last year of his life.

There is abundant evidence, also, that boys who were dependent on themselves were always especially on his mind. Mr. Helmbold says that he often revealed his deep interest in them by some sudden exclamation like this: "I see so many boys on the street! I think if they had better opportunities they might make good men!" And to a reporter of the Philadelphia Times he said: "It was seeing boys, ragged and barefooted, playing or lounging about the streets, growing up with no education, no trade, no idea of