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and as great financial difficulties as any of our schools have ever been called to face. We began at the close of an unprecedented boom, in which all values were enormously inflated, and the notions of nearly all men were even still more inflated. While the original proposition included a $50,000 building to be erected and paid for by the people of Lincoln, local pride, and the still prevailing boom ideas, led to the selection of a plan costing $70,000. It was still thought we could realize on some real estate enough over and above the bonus offered to provide for the extra $20,000. But after the contract was let, and the building was in process of construction, it was found that the boom had spent itself, the reaction had set in, the bottom fell out, and everybody wanted to sell and no one wanted to buy. This sudden and unexpected turn in the tide made it more difficult for the Lincoln people to collect or pay their pledges for the building fund, or for the trustees to realize on the real estate set apart for the extra $20,000. Money for building ceased to come in, and local banks refused to advance any more. A crisis of such seriousness was reached that a meeting of the Board of Trustees was hastily called. The greatness of the peril found expression in the. language of the following telegram from Dr. Creighton to Bishop Warren, a member of the board: "We are hanging by the eyelids, be sure and come." When the trustees met and the situation was considered, the emergency, while serious, was not thought to be one arising from the lack of ultimate resources, but a temporary inability to raise the cash needed to finish the building. With 800 lots contiguous to the campus, valued at an average of not less than $300, and several

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thousand dollars worth of lots in Peck's Grove and other parts of the city, over and above the Lincoln pledge of $50,000, it was thought that the emergency could be met by the purchase by the trustees and others of enough of these lots, and giving their notes, secured by these, and thus furnish paper that could be used as collateral security, and on this get the banks to carry them through financially. No doubt was entertained that if we had time we could realize enough cash out of sales of real estate at these boom prices to pay the balance needed over and above Lincoln's $50,000. The emergency was promptly met in this way by Bishop Warren generously offering to secure a loan of $5,000, and also to purchase $5,000 worth of real estate, on condition that the other members of the board make purchases as they were able. This they all did, and the means to finish the building, was thus secured, but at the financial loss of every investor, there never having been a time since, until now, that they could have gotten half what was paid by them for their lots. Nor could the extra lots be sold. The result was that instead of starting out in our career with a building paid for, as contemplated, we were about $25,000 in debt, the one cause of all our subsequent troubles. Like thousands of others at that time, it seemed impossible for the trustees to divest themselves of the notion that the boom prices were to continue forever, and all our plans involving the expenditure of money were made on that basis. When we could and did appraise our lots at an average of $300 per lot, making a total valuation of $240,000, there did not seem to be any demand for rigid economy, but the face of the facts seemed to justify a liberal policy. Hence we at the first fixed the chancellor's

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salary at $3,000, and the other members of the Faculty at about $1,000 to $1,200. It may be safely said that few other Methodist institutions ever started out on such a munificent scale.
   But the tide had turned and was moving in an adverse direction at a rapid rate. It soon became impossible to transform our real estate into productive endowment, as was contemplated, and as might readily have been done but for the unforeseen bursting of the boom and consequent depreciation of our real estate along with all other of like nature, until it became unsalable at any price. A lingering faith in the outcome induced many of the faculty to take our lots in part payment of salaries, but in spite of this generous action, there was an increasing deficit from year to year, which added to the nine per cent interest we were paying on our notes, the debts kept growing, and soon passed the limit of $25,000, as fixed by the charter. In the meanwhile the financial situation throughout the country was growing worse. Banks were breaking in every direction, and many private individuals and firms were going under. Cotner University, of the Christian denomination, established a year after Wesleyan, and about a mile distant, was compelled to go into bankruptcy, and the Episcopal Church deemed it inexpedient to rebuild their school after its loss by fire. The remarkable thing about this whole matter is, not that a debt was contracted, and allowed to grow to alarming proportions, but that under the awful stress of financial storm under which her infancy and youth were passed during the first ten or twelve years of her history, that she weathered the storm, was kept in the field and up to a high grade of efficiency, and the debt kept down to a

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