A GENEROUS WOMAN.

Bruce Herald, Volume XXXXIV, Issue 62, 9 July 1908, Page 6

A GENEROUS WOMAN.

A few days ago the personality of the late Mrs John llylands, of Manchester, who died last month and left property to the value of three and ahalf millions, was recorded. When her husband died he left her possessed of two millions sterling, and during the twenty years of nor widowhood she nearly doubled it, and that not by hoarding it up but by wise administration. She will bo missed. Her benofactions reached a wide circlo, how wide only a very few will over know., No real case of distress ever appealed to her m vain, and when, upon inquiry, close and searching, it was found deserving generous help was immediately recorded. Every Christmas her large house near Manchester was turned into a huge store and far and wide were sent boxes, etc., to Christian ministers, their wives and children living in the small towns and villages of England, and not blessed with largo incomes. She was a fast friend of struggling artists and literary men. Many a man of brains but of no wealth has to thank this simple-minded Christian woman for clearing the difficulties out of his way. And yet for years she was sufferer from a most distressing and painful physical ailment which her wealth could only relieve and not cure. In the end it proved to be cancer. Never a day came or went but she toiled unceasingly to shape her ideals. The greatest of all her schemes was the building and founding of a magnificent library in Manchester to perpetuato and bear the name of her husband, John llylands, cotton merchant and manufacturer, it cost her well on to half a million before a single book was placed on the shelves, and is said to be one of the most perfect of the nineteenth century. Her next step was to purchase from the late Lord Spencer the Althorp Library at a cost of £250,000, comprising 40,000 volumes, and since then, year in and year out, she has added priceless pieces of literature to its shelves, until at her death the library contained 110,000 books. It is estimated that she spent not less than one million sterling on this project alone. It is said to be one of the moßt artistic and solid buildings in England, without a bit of shoddy work irt it. When the time for opening it drew near .it was urged upon her that the King or Lord Kosebery should be asked to perforin the ceremony, but her mind on the question was already made up and her choice fell upon her personal friend, Dr Fairburn, Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford, a Congregational institution. It is to her everlasting honor that she never once sought social distinctions or titles—she has died as she lived, in quiet unobtrusiveness, but her works will live. She deserved to rank with such great Englishwomen as Florence Nightingale and Baroness Burdett Coutts, women whose names belong to the Empire. To see or know any of these woman was an education, and one realised how great a woman can be and how rich the Empire is that can produce them.