Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/115

 THE BEGINNING OF THE MOVEMENT 89 Immediately after our last annual meeting Divine Providence sent to our help a reinforcement which has been a decisive factor in our success. We mean of course the services of Dr. T. W. Goodspeed, as colaborer with your Corresponding Secretary. With the esteem and confidence of the entire denomination, Dr. Goodspeed has brought to our work a ripe experience, and a knowledge of the fruitful sources of benefaction in this city, in the West, and in the East, such perhaps as no other man in our denomination possesses, in equal measure. With steadfast and contagious cheer and unfaltering per- sistence Dr. Goodspeed has daily wrought with superb skill and with tension of self-mastery never for one hour relaxed. And it is to his clear statement of fact, his candid, courteous, forcible presentations, and his gracious, tactful, sincere, persuasive appeals in public, in private, and through the press, that we owe in chief part our present measure of success. With love born of a common daily life of joy, and sorrow, and prayer, and tears, and dread, and triumph, the most intense that either has ever known; with reverence which intimacy has only deepened, your Corresponding Secretary counts it the gladdest and most grateful privilege his office has hitherto afforded him, to introduce Dr. Goodspeed to the Society at this hour, and invite him to present to the Society and to the denomination that more important portion of the report of your Board which is made possible today so largely by his splendid services. The writer of this historical sketch desires to say that the fore- going remarks were not included in the first draft of the present historical sketch; they are included now only upon the insistence of Mr. Gates. In that part of the report presented by him Mr. Goodspeed gave the amounts subscribed in the different states and territories (excluding Chicago) and foreign countries. After reading the list, he continued: This makes a list of thirty-five states, territories, and foreign countries. .... Thus the North and the South, the East and the West have united to found the new University of Chicago It was this universal interest and this country-wide rally to our support that secured success. The official report of the meeting reads, So far Dr. Goodspeed has been heard with a profound seriousness. There have been sounds of applause now and again, but gratitude too deep for mirth has filled every heart, and as the reading goes on there are many tear-filled eyes and here and there a bowed head. Everyone feels that he speaks the exact truth when he alludes to the almost tragical interest with which the progress of the work during the last two months has been watched. But the