THE SPAVINED GIFT HORSE

Bequests to various institutions, including Colby, on condition that they have no football teams are examples of gifts carrying with them provisos which restrict their usefulness. In this case rejection is easy, but it is often more difficult to balance good against evil. Mr. Wilson, as president of Princeton, fought a hard fight before persuading the trustees to reject a gift offered on condition that certain radical changes be made in the educational methods. Museums of art are often faced with the same difficulty when individuals donate their valuable though heterogeneous collections with the proviso that the whole be kept infect in one room forever. Under such circumstances proper display is usually impossible.

Universities and museums, being generally beggars, cannot generally look the gift horse in the mouth, and are always eager anyway to observe their donors, wishes. But they could often use gifts better, and their gratitude would be deeper and more frequent, if their benefactors would breathe their wishes instead of hammering them into the contract.