Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/307

 THE FIRST YEAR 269 with the full knowledge that Mr. Rockefeller was about to give the University a new million. It was with this knowledge safely locked within his mind that he wrote again a few days later : I am sorry you feel sick and tired of your work. You have no reason, except overwork and overexcitement for what you say. You have done at least three times as much as you or anyone else expected. You have the best and most willing Board ever got together. Public expectation, so far from being disappointed, is amazed at what has been accomplished. The man does not live who does not regard you as the fittest of the sons of men for your position. The prospects were never so hopeful as now. The prospects were indeed brilliant with hope to one who had Mr. Gates's knowledge. But to the President, who only knew that the institution was already involved in debt, and unless some- thing happened would be disastrously involved, the prospects were well-nigh hopeless. The cheerful tone of Mr. Gates's letters ought to have been full of meaning for him. But it was not. He had fallen into a mood of black despair. In this mood he wrote on November 29 : I do not think that the last part of your letter is a propos The fact is I am not over-excited or over-tired, but I am discouraged and perhaps disappointed. I try to keep up in public, but the most of my hours are periods of misery. I have not the slightest satisfaction in anything that is being done. I do not mean by this to underestimate the work that others are doing. The Board of Trustees is, as you say, magnificent, and things are moving on fairly well, but I am equally convinced that this is not the work for me to do under all the circumstances, and if there were any honorable way of giving it up, I should drop it immediately. This is not talk, but truth. An editorial note by Mr. Gates accompanying this correspond- ence reads as follows: December 12, 1892. On this date Mr. Rockefeller wrote the pledge of one million dollars, which was sent on December 23, 1892, so that the pledge might reach the University as a Christmas present. President Harper was wholly unconscious of what was coming when he wrote again to Mr. Gates December 13 : I am compelled to think that the work here is too much for me. Some other man will have to take hold in one form or another. Almost immediately after this final expression of despair Mr. Gates informed President Harper as to what was about to come.