and yielding an annual income of about $1,020. Of this amount, that derived from the gift of Mr. Peabody, say $800, is divided in equal parts to the uses of the Library and Publication Committees, leaving for the general purposes of the Society only about the sum of $220. This with the yearly dues of members and a small amount at present received for the use of a portion of the basement floor, is all that the Society has to depend on for the care and preservation of the building and furniture, for fuel, lights, salaries and other general expenses. This is not sufficient for our needs.

"Whenever exigencies of any sort have arisen requiring expenditure of sums beyond those of ordinary routine, we have been compelled to appeal to the liberality of our members for special contributions. Only recently, before concluding to undertake the long-urged publication of the Magazine, the Council, realizing the probable drain on the Society's resources to maintain the publication at the outstart, deemed it necessary to appeal to the members to make up by subscription, a guarantee fund sufficient to insure its continuance for at least three years, by which time it may be reasonably believed that the work should become self-sustaining.

"At an earlier date, when the provision of a fire-proof room was made by the State a condition precedent to delivering to our protecting care the remaining valuable Colonial Archives which had escaped the effects of time and neglect, to which they had been previously exposed, the members were called on to provide for the cost of its construction, which was beyond the means available to the Society.

"On another occasion, when through means of our correspondence, the fact was established that the papers of the Lords Baltimore, long lost to view and supposed to have been destroyed, were still in existence in England, at least in part, and might perhaps be obtained at a price, it was recognized that the only way to secure them was to send abroad a messenger competent to recognize their character, and if found genuine, to close with the party who held them. To effect this was hopelessly beyond the Society's resources, and to the personally solicited contributions of individuals, not in every case members of the Society, we are indebted

for the mass of Calvert Papers, which now form so interesting and valuable a portion of the possessions of the Society.

"If we recall what was done by the pioneers of the Society, we may find some stimulus for an effort to place ourselves in a more independent position.

"It is more than sixty years ago that about twenty gentlemen organized the Society and located its meeting rooms on the second floor of the then Post Office building, which stood on the northeast corner of North and Fayette Streets, a site now occupied by the City Hall. They were soon joined by so large a number of cultivated people that the necessity for larger accommodations and a home of their own was at one realized. In connection with the Library Company of Baltimore, soon after merged in this Society, such energetic and effective measures were adopted that individual subscriptions to the amount of about $45,000 were secured for the construction and furnishing of the building we now occupy, which was placed in possession of the Society in less than five years from the date of its organization, as a free gift and free of debt. It has so remained, supported and maintained by the annual dues of the members, and may so continue for some time to come. But this building is now old. Improvements are necessary. Ordinary expenses are increasing, whilst our small fixed income is diminishing through shrinkage in the rate of interest. There should be a large increase in the number of members, our roll instead of 450 ought to be increased largely. It does not seem unreasonable to look forward to an active list of 800 members.

"If sixty years ago a few energetic men were able to arouse such interest and raise forty-five thousand dollars for the establishment of our home, we ought to be able, when the city has increased six-fold in population and still more in wealth, to treble our membership, and should find it not impossible to secure an endowment, sufficient not only for present needs, but ample for at least another generation.

"What we greatly need is a new location. When this building was erected it was in the literary, and I might say the social centre of the city. If entertainments, lectures or exhibitions were held here, and they were of frequent occurrence, there was

no personal inconvenience involved in attendance upon them. Now by the growth and development of the city we are left so remote from the residential sections that attendance requires an effort which many are not willing to make, despite the attractive programme, which the Committee of Addresses so frequently presents. For this reason exhibitions and social gatherings seem quite beyond hope of successful accomplishment and are consequently not attempted.

"We should combine with our effort for increased membership a strong movement directed to the raising of a sufficient fund to replace the Athenæum with a fire-proof structure in a location readily accessible, and with due regard to the present and future literary centre of the city. In such a structure there should be adequate provision for securely displaying the rarities in the Society's Collections, which are now necessarily buried from sight in the depths of our fire-proof vault, and so seldom seen even by their custodian as to be almost forgotten.

"If our needs be made clearly known I feel sure than an adequate response will not be wanting. In the past the Society has had the benefit of but two gifts to its fund. The first, that of Mr. Peabody, who made in his life-time as a tribute to a work in which many of his personal friends and fellow-citizens were concerned, and in which he himself took a lively interest.

"The other was a bequest by the late J. Henry Stickney, long a valued member of the Society, whose portrait hangs on our walls and whose memory will ever be cherished among us.

"May we not hope that our members will arouse a more extended interest on the part of our fellow-citizens in the work we have pursued in the past, and which is still being faithfully followed, to make the records of the name and fame of Maryland as honorably conspicuous as that of anyone of her sister States? And may we not bring a largely increased number of our fellow-citizens throughout the State to understand that our work deserves the assistance which their co-operation as active members would give, and that they can leave nowhere a more lasting memorial of their beneficence than in the form of a bequest to the Maryland Historical Society?"

LIST OF MEMBERS OF

THE MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

HONORARY MEMBERS.

CRAIGHILL, GEN. WILLIAM PRICE, U. S. A., Retired,