QUAKER HILL \ OC AT. HTSl'OR Y ) S E ^ 1 E S IX. Blbert 5* Hkin B tCribute BY REV. WARREN H. WILSON flass F \ 2- J Rnnk .Q 12. ^N J ALBERT JOHN AKIN BORN 1S03, DIED 1903 ALBERT J. AKIN A TRIBUTE REV. WARREN H. WILSON READ AT THE FIFTH ANNUAI, MEETING OF THE QUAKER HIIvI. CONFERENCE, AUGUST THE FOURTEENTH, NINETEEN HUNDRED AND THREE Published by the Quaker Hill Conference Associa- tion, Quaker Hill, New York 1903 Albert John Akin. The death of Albert Akin came upon the community of which he was the first citizen as a great calamity, both because of the personal loss, and because of the other deaths of which it was representative. We think of his death as one in the passing away of a Quaker Hill generation, whose departure means a change of the whole aspect of the community. We will never again see the face of John James Vander- burgh, of David Gould, of Mrs. Bancroft, of David and of Daniel Wing, of Roby Osborn, of Anne Hayes, of Admiral and Mrs. Worden, or of Albert Akin. Their deaths, coming in years not far separated in the annals of this quiet community, have saddened all hearts; and the loss of them all is remembered in the death of Mr. Akin. When the last of those who had sat in the Old Meeting House, before the meeting was divided in 1828, shall have passed away, then will have gone forever a loved and honored generation, a time rich in traditions; and with that passing will have ended the peculiar and unworldly history of Quaker Hill. Whether the spirit and life of the Hill can be carried on to later generations wall depend upon those who are gathered here tonight. They were a generation of ladies and gentlemen; of perfect culture, though bred in a farming community not even assembled into a village; of free and ingenuous char- acter enriched from a choice and treasured history, and possessed of a common spirit; which, although it showed itself in various directions, proved its agreement and unity during these last twenty-five years in the enterprises of which Albert Akin was the patron and promoter. Theirs was a time in which men still cherished their past and that of their fathers. These men and wom- en had seen the generation before them, who believed themselves a peculiar people. They had spoken with those who had known Washington and his heroic officers. They had themselves, from this hilltop, looked upon the development of the Ameri- can nation with the mature and wise inter- est of those occupying choice seats at a great public contest. They were philoso- phers, not all agreeing in one system, but all having looked the great issue quietly in the face. They had all come to conclu- sions. They had all resolved upon a way of life and had the grace to live it. The life of every one of that generation had a meaning and a genius of its own. Of all of them it may be said that they had thought more than the present generation and hurried less. And of the men and women of that time the acknowledged chief was Albert Akin, whose philosophy became a scheme for the good of the community, and his thinking a benefaction for the future. He belonged to no one generation of G the four through whose Hves he lived. He made more friends in the last ten years of his life than perhaps in any pre- ceding decade. He spent his last years planning for generations yet unborn, who should succeed him and his fathers in this immortal community. We celebrate today, by this meeting of the Conference found- ed by him, the hundreth anniversary of his birth. "Albert Akin endowed," said one who knew him, " not a college, not a charitable institution; but he endowed a community." His father, Judge Albro Akin, was a man of mark in his time. At once the leading business man of this community, at that time a commercial center of importance, and Associate Judge for twenty years of the Court of Common Pleas, he commanded a wide influence. He was a man of great force of will, physical vigor and industry. By his first wife, Pauline Vanderburgh, whose father, Col. James Vanderburgh of Beekman. had often entertained Washing- ton, Albro Akin had three children, Albert John the oldest, Almira who married Joshua Jones, and Helen Maria, who mar- ried John W. Taylor of New York. Each of these daughters left descendants. By his second wife, Sarah Merritt, who lived eight years, he had no children. By his third wife, Jemima Thorn Jacacks, he had seven children. Mary, Cornelia, William Henry, Gulielma, Amanda, who married Dr. Chas. Stearns, Anna, who married William H. Ogden and Caroline, who married Adolph Wilm-Beets. Albro Akin died in 1854 and is buried in Pawling Cemetery. He had been the fifth in the direct line of the oldest sons of the oldest sons of his family, from the first John Akin of whom there is record, born in Scotland. One hundred years ago to-day, on August 14th, 1803, there was born on Quaker Hill, to Albro Akin and Pauline Vanderburgh his wife, a son, their first born, whom they named John because there liad been a John Akin from the first generation, and Albert after Albert Gallatin, at that time Secre- tary of the Treasury of the United States, and a friend of his father. Oa the thirteenth of last January died Albert John Akin, in his hundreth year, leaving no children. I do not know that he left an enemy, though he had not failed to offend more than one person in his long and aggressive life. It is his high honor that the deepest grief for his passing away was felt among those w^ho earned his wages; and among the poor, who universally hon- ored him. He lived to receive the affec- tion and respect of his neighbors and to value it above almost any other tribute. He was to have been here to-day, and earnestly desired to live at least till this Summer. We were to have honored him with an elaborate review of his century, and with tributes from eloquent and loving voices who would gladly have spoken upon the themes and ideals he loved to hear dis- cussed. It would have been a day of ora- tions, tableaus, of calm review and far- 8 sighted prophecy. But he is not here. We can only pay tribute in silence to him and his time. The occasion is a greater one than if he had been aliye; but our com- memoration of it must be diminished in submission to the stronger hand of death. One hundred years he lived. And his century was the one of all the centuries in which he would have most desired to live, the most changeful and momentous of all the centuries this gray old world has seen. Not since the invention of fire, says Alfred Russell Wallace, has the w^orld and the life of man gone through such changes as it experienced in the Nineteenth Century. Between 1803 and 1903 the manner of life of the civilized man took on a new aspect altogether. The saddle and the stage coach were exchanged for the railway car- riage and the trolley car and the Pullman sleeper. The pen was succeeded b}^ the t^^pe- writer, the scythe and flail by the reaper, planter and all the machinery of the farm. Horse-speed was succeeded by the telegraph ; and the telephone cancels many of the fac- tors of distance. It was an age of travel and exploration of new^ worlds, of the ap- plication both of steam and electricity to use and to work, all to the acceleration of the progress of man. The ideas as to man- kind upon which the eighteenth century had theorized were by the Nineteenth Cen- tury made actual, in the effect of the inven- tive mind upon the w^hole life of mankind. Albert Akin lived through all this change and sympathized with it. He took part in it, not as an original mind, inventing or discovering, but as a seer, understanding and interpreting truly, and profiting by what he saw; preparing all the time the means whereby the coming era might be made serviceable to his own well beloved community at Quaker Hill. At his birth the United States were seven- teen in number; at his death, forty-eight. He was born the year in which the Louisi- ana territories were added to the United States, and he expended his greatest energy in investments, in enterprises which have had to do with the opening of the great West to trade. The foundation of his for- tune was laid in westward reaching rail- ways. He reaped some of his greatest gains from transcontinental roads which embody at once the expansion and consoli- dation of the nation; which in his life-time multiplied ten-fold in men, and fifteen-fold in acres. Mr. Akin was all his life an invalid. Since his twenty- fifth year he had to take drugs and medicines dail3^ When he was thirty he retired from business to the Hill, and later travelled, to restore his health. When he was fifty he walked with crutch or cane. At sixty he did not expect to live a year. At eighty he had lost the use of his lower limbs, and was condemned for a generation to use a wheel-chair. After he was ninety-five he broke his leg, and again the next year repeated the accident. But both fractures mended soundly. He died slowly, the splendid constitution resisting step by step the in-roads of disease. To the last day of his illness, he retained the 10 strong virile tone of his voice, and in his last delirium spoke like a young man. His brain was the last of him to die, remaining clear long after almost every organ was gone into dissolution. He was an amazement of physicians. He was a confusion of temperance reform- ers. As one said, "He had used tobacco for seventy-five years, brandy all his life, and morphine for the last twenty-five years." At his marriage he ceased to smoke and then often carried a cigar in his mouth, which he did not light for seventy years. Yet he was always temperate, and refused to increase the amount of any nar- cotics used. His strong will forbade, and his peculiar constitution seemed not to re- quire, the stimulus of enlarged doses. Spare and slender in build, abstemious in habits, active in mind and body, fond of the out door life, he reminded one of the recent Pope Leo XIII., who begged in his last illness for work to do, " because he was so weak, and the cure for weakness is activity." Both in Albert Akin and in Jane Williams, his wife, the principle was illustrated of the sustaining power there is for frail bodies in strength of will ; and of the long life there is for those who are de- termined. They lived long because they had a strong hold on life and work. They died, not of disease, nor for any other reason than that the physical machine wore out at a vital point. The events of Mr. Akin's life are not merely personal, but form almost a history 11 of the Hill, and are to some degree a nar- rative of the progress of the times. He was born to the privileges of an aristocrat. There were aristocrats then in the land. He came of a land-owning family, in this state which from the first was controlled by great landholders. His father furnished him with a common school education, com- pleted in academies in South East and in Red Hook. At twenty one, after two years spent in gaining business experience, he entered commercial life, with small capital, having Percival Seaman as partner. But the venture was not permanent. Mr. Akin's health failed, and he returned to his father's home. Thirty years of age found him farming two hundred acres again on this Hill, from which thereafter he never moved his residence for long. To the time of his death he proclaimed his faith in Quaker Hill climate for all fleshly ills, and cited his health and that of Mrs. Akin in proof of his claims which were certainly large. At the age of thirty-two he married Jane Williams of New York. It was a perfect union, of kindred spirits, devoted to one another and supplementing one another. Those who knew them both declared that in the success which attended Mrs. Akin's enterprises from the time of his marriage to the time of his death, his wife was a leading factor. To all observers she was a perfect wife, and to her husband she was all human society. I would not be a true recorder of Mr. Akin's life if I did not mention some of the hard things of his 12 character. He was not always gentle ; he was frequently imperious and harsh to those nearest him ; he was not too scrup- ulous in following his own interest in bus- iness. I mention these to put over against them his almost romantic attachment to his wife, and his care for her and fondness of her all the days of their sixty-five years together. Jane Williams Akin was content to be Albert Akin's wife. She was ambitious for him, and gave the whole of her mind and soul to the advancement and success of her husband in business ; in which success her influence is chiefly seen. She must have been a beautiful woman in her youth and she was a fine and high-bred lady in old age. And the heart of her husband trusted in her. The real beginning of Albert Akin's bus- iness Hfe was made on Quaker Hill in the thirties when he began to gather up the money of the neighborhood, upon loans, and invest it with his own in railroads. The lines from Albany to Schenectady, which later became a link in the New York Central's chain of railroads, first interested him ; and seeing the profit there was in such investment, he continued to borrow at a low per cent the money his neighbors made in raising fat cattle and hemp and in making hats, and to invest it at larger in- terest in railroads. The Harlem Railroad had in those years advanced as far as Croton Falls ; and there is a tradition of a man who with the aid of a fast team of horses drove from Quaker 13 Hill to that road in the morning, took train to the City, and came back to the Hill the same day, accomplishing the seeming im- possible. This railway had to face the danger of loss of its charter, unless it com- plete its lines to a northern point by a cer- tain date. Mr. Akin was one of the men enlisted in its interest. He secured money for the work of completion. Ties for the railway he distributed along the proposed line. Availing himself of a promise made by the head of the road, he created the station and village of Pawling, by hauling a house across the fiat then known as "Goose- town", with twenty yoke of oxen, to serve as an eating-house and station. Later, he was interested in the opening of a hotel in the village which soon grew up around the station. The Pawling National Bank was founded by his leadership, and he was for many years its President, giving to the institution a high character in harmony with his own conservative methods in finance. Mr. Akin was during his long life in this place very often made the trustee or ex- ecutor of estates. Men recognized both his integrity and his perfect business judg- ment ; and it was his boast that no moneys thus intrusted to him were ever unprofit- ably invested. He thus had to do at differ- ent times with the Kirby, Morgan, Merritt and other estates. Albert Akin was twenty-five years old when the oblong meeting was disrupted, and the sympathies of his family w^ere with the dominant party which retained the 14 meeting house. I have never learned that he had at that time any interest in rehgious matters. From that time until the found- ing of Akin Hall, in 1880, there succeeds a period of fifty years which a student of Quaker Hill's history has called "The Dark Age." Nothing seems to have hap- pened of local moment. One of the rare reminiscences I have been able to glean is a sweet story, told me by Anne Hayes, of the social events of an informal character, in the years succeeding Albert Akin's mar- riage. He used to drive about and collect the young people — by which expression were designated, then as now, all under fifty — and convey the ladies to the Akin homestead, where they would sew and talk all the afternoon. Then at night their swains would collect, husbands and lovers and men of all degrees, and the evening would be spent in delightful fashion, never to be forgotten by those present. In the meetings of this sort Albert and Jane Akin were the leaders in the thirties and I sup- pose in the forties. The history of the Hill in that time, except as it is told in Mrs. Wanzer's sketch of her father's life and in Mrs. Steam's paper to-morrow, is all but un- recorded. I have been told that Mr. Akin's health necessitated his retirement to the Hill from more active business about 1880. At any rate he was thenalmost eighty years of age; and no doubt he spent his summers here, and as much more of his time as he could. Then came the founding of Akin Hall, of Mizzen-top Hotel, and the employment 15 of Mr. Ryder as minister, or as he was called, the "Agent." In the creation of the Akin Hall Association Mr. Akin was undoubtedly inspired in chief part by Mr. Cyrus Swan, who had been closely associ- ated with Matthew Vassar, and with Vassar College in Poughkeepsie. For more than a decade after that foundation Mr. Swan was his attorney and active ad- viser. The plans and details of the organ- ization of the Hall are in general those sug- gested by Mr. Swan, and he w^as the his- torian of the events attending its inaugura- tion. Mr. Akin's life is not one of great events, nor of many critical occasions. It is simply the long life of a careful, patient, live man. The greatest thing one may say of him was that he always was alive, till the day of his death. He never became old: but he did, according to that excellent distinction, become older each year, be- cause he was always young. He delighted in the young, preferred their company, and gave them favor which he denied to the old. It was the joy of his late years to think that he had gained some of the affec- tion of those who were 3^oung in years, or at least in spirit. In all the years he lived on the Hill he had to do with every movement and was in touch with every person on the Hill. He made himself a party to every public interest. When the building of the Hotel was suggested, he put himself at the head of the movement, invested the most money in it, and later obtaining entire control, 16 deeded it to his Akin Hall foundation. When the library enterprise was broached, which has grown into Akin Free Library, he organized and incorporated the institu- tion required, endowed it generously ; later reorganized it, upon legal advice ; thus accepting ideas from Admiral Worden, William B. Wlieeler, Cyrus Swan, Judge Barnard, and others of his neighbors and contributing his own patient and unflagging executive faculty. When it was thought best, in 1892, to continue the church ser- vices through the winter under the leader- ship of Mrs. Wheeler and later of Miss Monohan, and the growth of the Sunday school and permanent congregation seemed to require the employment of a resident pastor, Mr. Akin acquiesced ; at first as a follower, but steadily and increasingly as a leader, he identified himself more and more every year until his death, with the reli- gious life of Akin Hall and Christ's Church. He was a good leader, for he confessed himself a follower in the enterprise which he was in a position absolutely to control. He eagerly availed himself of the sugges- tions of others, took a quiet and lowly place with entire dignity, and exerted without arbitrariness a determining influ- ence. The glory of Albert Akin's life is not that to any great degree he originated the changes of his century in the world outside and in Quaker Hill. It is that he understood them, welcomed them and knew how to make use of them. He was an optimist. He was a believer in the 17 future, because an observer of the present. He was something of a seer. Probably no remark of his life was better representa- tive of his way of thinking than his reply to those who advised against the action of the Pawling Bank, which under his Presi- dency invested during the Civil War in Government bonds to the amount of twice its capital. "But, Mr. Akin," they said, ' ' What if we should get whipped by the Confederates?" "But we won't get whipped," said Mr. Akin, "and if we should, our money would be worth nothing to us without a government." In such faith and optimism Albert Akin laid the foundations of his fortune ; and the issue has so far justified his insight into the times. If it be said that he was a materialist, so was his century a matter-of-fact century. He was a practical religious man, and he was gratified to note in his old age, with an exaggeration of statement characteristic of him, that the visionaries who call them- selves spiritual were not doing very well, and to express his triumphant belief that his ideas for the future were practical, were prevailing over others and would conquer in the end. If it be said that he loved money, I will say, instead of disputing the state- ment, as I might well do, that the nine- teenth century was a time in which money, the elastic, democratic leveller of powers and pretensions, came to its place and its era. I have called Albert Akin a seer; and he saw aright in looking into the times as money-loving. 18 It would however have been small honor to have been a seer, and merely to have profited by his insight into the times. We praise him because he sympathized with the literary and religious spirit of the times, as w^ell as the financial. Twenty years ago he laid the foundations of a library, of a church and of a school on this Hill, upon which the superstructure has been only in part built. One observes in that endow- ment, generously and increasingly sup- ported, the same spirit as animates Andrew Carnegie. In his religious ideas the same principles of union and simplicity which have appeared in the work of every real leader of the times, from Philips Brooks to Dwight ly. Moody. This insight of Mr. Akin's was exem- plified in his ability to work with others, in fact in his always working with others. In speaking of his founding the library, the church and the Conference, I am not forgetting but commemorating the fact that he took this action with his neighbors, that it was initiated by them and taken up by him ; but I recall that he never claim.ed the honor of initiating, he only upheld. After the novelty had passed aw'ay from enter- prises for others, he was still at work sup- porting, administering and nourishing. In this too he took great joy. It passed into a vSaying that when he could no longer manage the Hotel he would die. He was content to administer, grateful for original ideas, and for pioneer action ; and was able to seize upon it and make it available. This came out in the formation of the 19 Hotel project, which he recounted as the result of a conversation between himself, Admiral Worden and Mr. William B. Wheeler. The problem was to provide for the entertainment of summer guests here on the Hill ; the outcome was the Mizzen- top Hotel, named by the Admiral, in- fluenced strongly from the first by Mr. Wheeler, owned later by Mr. Akin alone and deeded to Akin Hall Association be- fore his death. Another illustration was the movement in the community in 1895 to provide a house for the minister, who was in course of living in four houses in two years. The ladies of the Hill determined that there should be a Manse, and in one summer raised five hundred dollars for it, chiefly by a Fair held on the grounds of Mr. Wheeler. Mr. Akin was much exercised by this and anxious as to its effect upon the Akin Hall project, which provided for a stone house in the stone library for the minister. Finally he stepped forth, pro- posed, upon Mr. Wheeler's suggestion, the erection of the present manse, a frame .structure ; declared his intention of chang- ing his plans for the library accordingly, asked the minister to hand in his sugges- tions as to the architecture of the Manse, and upon plans sketched by William Osborn, went about building it at once. The ladies, being deprived thus of a great task and burden, spent their fund in fur- nishing the house. Precisely of the same sort was the start of the Akin Hall I^ibrary. The residents 20 of the Hill, about 1880, assembled and de- cided to raise money for a library, and did so, creating in two summers, by great bazaars, a fund of a thousand dollars. Mr. Akin was, however, the sustainer of that which others originated. This Quaker Hill Conference was indeed founded by Mr. Akin, and on this wise. The idea was born in 1893 in Miss Mona- han's house, and had long been cherished by her. It was kept until a suitable time, and proposed b}^ the present writer in the winter of 1899, to those at that time present on the Hill. From them was re- ceived enough encouragement, in the form of promises of money and entertainment to warrant a further consideration of the proposal. iVt the second discussion Miss Teale was present and Miss Cornelia Tay- lor. Miss Teale suggested that Miss Mon- ahan be allowed to entertain all the guests at Hill Hope. Miss Ta^-lor reported later that she had presented the project to Mr. Akin and he had promised to supply all the money that we might need. These two generous promises, iDcing kept to the full, with larger gifts every year, the Con- ference has been made an assured success. It must not be forgotten that it first took root in the generous interest of many of the neighbors of its founder. I conceive that in mentioning this power and habit of Mr. Akin's by which he ap- propriated the ideas of others, organized them and made them practical, I am, in- stead of detracting from his credit, adding to it. A man can be honored only for 21 what he is, and Mr. Akin was an adminis- trator. It is enough to say that without his loyal management most of the work of which he was the leader would never have been done or at least never have been continued. He might well have had as his motto, these words upon the arms of William of Orange, "I will maintain." Mr. Akin gave those with w^hom he was associated large liberty and expected them to use it, holding them responsible for suc- cess or failure. To each of the men in his employ he gave broad discretionary powers and to the head of every one of the enter- prises with which he was concerned he gave the same liberal range of initiative. He was an ideal trustee for a church, for he gave the minister, so long as the church should be largely successful, entire liberty of action, and generous support. He was a good proprietor for a hotel, for he acted upon the judgement of his manager. He was a good owner of an estate for he gave his farmer a fairly free hand. It was very seldom that he failed to support his subordinates in such a position, and then in some small matter only. Two instances of this loyalty to his associates may be cited. The first is the fact that, inasmuch as the minister at Akin Hall was usually a tem- perance man, and an advocate of aggres- sive methods against the illegal sale of in- toxicants, Mr. Akin, who was neither in belief nor practice an abstainer, gave hearty and generous support to the cause of local option in the town of Pawling. The other was the creation and manag- 22 meut of the golf links on the Hill. The game of golf was hardly one in which a nonagenarian with no use of his legs could be expected to be interested, but the laying out of the links had only to be proposed by Mr. Howe and it was done. Done by Mr. Akin, and carried on by him year after year with undiminished interest, and generous loyalty. It is true it was a matter of business, but there are men whose years are less than ninety who can- not see a bu.siness opportunity of this sort. This centenarian who in a hundred years amassed a fortune gave younger men les- sons in his last decade in boldness and en- terprise, and in respect for the judgment of others besides himself. He was not an inventor, not a promoter, but he was a seer — by no means the least thing a man may be on this earth. To know facts, to live by them, to give one's self to them, and to have the courage to make all the sacrifices and brave all the risks in- volved in facts — these and more are in- volved in being able to see facts. Seers are few on earth, because men, in order to see, must also do and dare and venture, alwa^^s along true lines : and they who will not, and do not, they see not. In the midst of a generation of snobs and cow- ards and time-servers, talking cant and be- lieving lies and worshipping painted ikons, Albert Akin saw things as they were, for the best part of one hundred years : and of all those about him he was master. In his own family and neighborhood he was king. 23 When Mr. Akin was about sixty years of age, he bought a residence in New York, and went there to Hve in the winters. He had as a neighbor a Quaker preacher named Wright, who was accustomed to come to Oblong Meeting in the course of the year. With him Mr. Akin had many conversations on matters of duty and wor- ship, and became engaged with him and others in the foundation of the Societ}^ for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, as well as in other charitable enterprises. He began also to attend the Oblong Meeting in the summers, though the Sun- day meetings were not at that time largely attended. He would sit through the meet- ing however ; and it is characteristic of the impression that he made upon men's minds that his friends slyly hinted, in re- gard to his habit of talking to himself, that during the long silence he was thinking more of Wall Street than of the silent men and gray walls around him. Later, when his residence was at Fifty- sixth Street he became the fast friend and devoted admirer of Dr. John Hall, who used often to call upon him. For years Mr. Akin was carried into Dr. Hall's Church ; but after Dr. Hall died, and even before, he had ceased from that cus- tom. The growth of the church on Quaker Hill , under the leadership of Mr. and Mrs. WilHam B. Wheeler and Miss Margaret B. Monahan took strong hold on Mr. Akin's heart, and exerted over no one a more vital influence than on this old man. The influ- 24 ence of Miss Monahan's character and leadership in good works was very great in his last years. Like every other resident of Quaker Hill he was interested in Hill Hope and eagerly absorbed its spirit. Approaching the topic of the religious life of this strong man, I am aware that there are who would think such a man es- sentially irreligious. I am not in position to label men for eternity, and am happily excused from judging their souls. I was the pastor however of Christ Church when Mr. Akin applied for membership in it, and may be permitted to record the events and impressions as they occurred. Mr. Akin was a devout worshipper, and fer- vently^ interested in a sermon. His views were rather those that regard religion as a kingdom than as a private possession; he thought more of the social than of the per- sonal aspects of Christianit}'. He believed in that religion which draws people together, and therefore rejoiced to see Akin Hall full of people. He used to come at the time the first children arrived for the Sun- day-School and to w^ait till the last wor- shipper had departed from church. He saw and heard ever^^thing though almost blind and deaf; and he was disappointed if people did not greet him. He often sent his faithful Michael Gillen to ask one or another, " Why don't you come and speak tome?" He loved his neighbors and de- lighted in their approval of the enterprise he had founded. In this he w^as perfectly democratic, and seemed as much pleased at the presence in church of a remote farmer, 25 as at the attendance of a man from Fifth Avenue. More so in fact, for he reaHzed that the farmer would make the church his home and the millionaire made it only a chapel of ease. He took great interest in the formation of a church here in 1895; a^'one and have gained with the years of Mr. Akin's fostering the momentum W'hicli will carry them far. These institutions are here. They are grounded in the affec- tions of the neighborhood. The}- mean the most to every resident on the Hill, of all the things outside of their own houses. They would not be permitted to die, be- cause the communit}^ loves them: Mr. Akin ordered his benevolence during his life so carefully by the popular demand, and so obediently followed the leadings of providence and of human usefulness, that at his death the group of institutions which go b}' his name, Library, Church, Confer- ence, Hotel, are all in full activity. It is eas}^ for them to be made to live, and it would go against the will of the whole Quaker Hill family for any one of them to die. They are founded upon vital needs, and have taken hold on popular as well as upon select approval. They will live. God grant to them each and all the success that he ferv^ently desired for them. I said at the beginning that Albert Akin was an aristocrat. In the strict as well as the true sense of that word, he was in- deed an aristocrat. He was born to a position of means and leisure. What the time of his birth offered of influence and 33 wealth and land, as well as fair educa- tion, he had. He took during his life the only line of action for an aristocrat. He stood in the only relation possible for a man who would rule his fellows as their better. He did not forget that " Noblesse Oblige." The responsibilities of wealth and influence he never failed to use. He lived simply himself, and forbade ostenta- tion in his family ; but he made his money work. He thought for the mass of men, had his philosophy of life for them, and he had his broad and generous plans for them. In his will and in Akin Hall he provided for their helping ; and during his life, for twenty years, he made that insti- tution his care and pride, doing for it what he did for no other interest. He gave not only in the way some do, leaving at his death what he could not carry with him ; but during his life he gave as generously as the institution required, and till the end he was never hesitant about his gifts to this institution which was to carry on his work. This it is to be an aristocrat ; to serve others, and thus to rule them. To think for them, and to think better than they can ; to plan for them, and to have the better foresight than they have ; and to govern them by benefits conferred so wisely and with such dignity that they feel no condescension, and resent no intrusion. This was the only kind of aristocrat the Nineteenth Century would endure. I am sure also, from my knowledge of his neighbors' hearts, that he was followed to the grave with the affection of all who 34 knew him. Like the true aristocrat, and benefactor of men, his well-doing and lead- ership, though not attended with any arts of seeking public favor, brought him at his death the love of the poor. They whom the poor love are sure of the blessing and reward that God has for them who love him. 35