Mr. Yale and How He Grew

Elihu Yale is two hundred and ninety-nine years old today, going on three hundred.

The man after whom the famed university was named was born of good but humble stock in Boston. A diligent lad, he soon had amassed a fortune in India by selling while oxford cloth to a firm of New York merchandisers headed by the brothers Brooks.

In 1718 he made a gift of a building to the New Haven educational institution which was to bear his name. He died three years later--but his spirit still lives on today in the school that is his namesake, in Cole Porter sougs, in Nadherny, Jackson, Furse, and Fuche, and in the plaque that commemorates his birthplace in the shadow of the shadow of the Scollay Square subway block.