Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/355

 THE SECOND ERA OF BUILDING 311 in our hands. We appreciate highly the liberality with which you have from the beginning encouraged the broadening conception of this great work, and we desire to bear testimony to the breadth of the views which you have always expressed in relation to its aim and its scope. We shall endeavor so to admin- ister the trust committed to us as to fulfil your highest hopes and expectations. An address by the President of the University followed, in which he said: We have been witnesses of a great act This is the latest act of a long series, and, very naturally, as this act has been performed, my mind has been carried back through these five years of serious and laborious struggle to that moment when, with words perhaps still fewer in number, and with a spirit which, at all events, seemed, if possible, more gracious, Mr. Yerkes took the initial step in an undertaking, the name and fame of which have gone around the world. On Tuesday morning, October 4, 1892, when the doors of the University had been open only three days, Mr. Yerkes consented to purchase for the University the forty-inch objective. Under date of December 5, 1892, he wrote as follows: "It was with much satisfaction I learned from you that a lens for a large telescope could be purchased immediately; and I informed you that I would purchase the lens and have it finished; that I would also pay for the frame and mountings of the telescope, so that the two together would make a perfect telescope, to be the largest in the world, namely, with an objective disk of forty inches clear. You gave me figures which you supposed the telescope would cost ; and I readily agreed to invest that much money in the under- taking. Since then I have felt it proper that the telescope should have a home, to be paid for by me; and I have concluded to add to my gift an Observatory necessary to contain the instrument. I have already authorized you to arrange with the owners of the glass for the transfer of their rights in it to the University. I have made a contract with Alvan G. Clark & Sons for finishing the glass. I have also agreed upon the price, and have every- thing ready for the signing of the contract with Messrs. Warner & Swasey for the frame and mountings." From that day to the present moment, the work of making plans for mountings and buildings, the work of negotiation for location, and the work of actual construction has gone on slowly, to be sure, but without interruption In our thought of the gift as a whole we must not lose sight of the several parts which together constitute it. There was first of all the forty-inch objec- tive, the greatest and last work of its maker, Alvan G. Clark. We see before us the equatorial mounting of the objective, which, with the ninety-foot dome above us, and the rising floor on which we sit are evidences of the skill and thorough workmanship of the builders, Messrs. Warner & Swasey. The