Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/308

270 A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO This unique Christmas gift, the fourth of Mr. Rockefeller's donations, reached President Harper December 2 5, and was reported to the Trustees two days later. The letter was dated December 23, 1892, and read as follows: I will give to the University of Chicago one thousand five per cent bonds of the par value of one million dollars, principal and interest payable in gold. The principal of this fund is to remain forever a further endowment for the University; the income to be used only for the payment of instructors. I reserve the right to designate, at my option, the instruction to which the income shall be applied. I will deliver these bonds December 2, 1893. It will be observed that the bonds were to be delivered nearly a year after the date on which they were promised. They would, in other words, not begin to produce an income for eleven months. The reason for this is plain, when it is remembered that in making his last preceding contribution of a million dollars in February of this same year, 1892, Mr. Rockefeller had given securities which began to yield income from December i, 1891, and had done this with the understanding that he was thus providing fully for the expenses of 1892-93. As it turned out the current expenses and other initial expenditures had assumed such proportions that in comparison the income might almost be called a negligible amount. While, therefore, this great promise of a million dollars one year after date marked an immense advance in the University's pros- pective resources, it gave no present help. To say that the need of speedy help was urgent would be ludicrously short of the truth. It was imperative. The good ship was not stranded, but it was headed straight for the rocks. Now was the time for going out again and raising another million dollars in Chicago. It was the President's confidence that Mr. Rockefeller would continue his gifts and that Chicago, which had given one million dollars in response to a gift of that amount from the Founder, would do it again in response to another gift of a million, that had seemed to him to justify the scale on which the University was organized. Unhappily, so far as Chicago was concerned, the assurance was not well founded. A happy concurrence of circumstances had made possible the raising of the million dollars in ninety days in 1892. The same thing, which President Harper had pictured to