What this cost the company’s president during the following months of enormous expenditure, when construction bills for material and labor had to be met if the work was to go on, can hardly be estimated. The year from August, 1892, to August, 1893, was a time of incredible strain for the man at the helm. The writer vividly remembers a chance meeting with Mr. Higinbotham in July, 1893. Although she had felt that the attendance thus far was slight, she had not realized the financial issue involved. One glance at the familiar face, however, informed her of the danger; gave her an emotion of anxiety which she will never forget. The face, usually smiling and even tender with friends, was white and stern and drawn; incredibly strong and firm, but cold and hard; the face of a ship captain through a tornado, of a general when the battle seems going wrong; recording a moment when individual emotion was swallowed up in the tragic passion of leadership through imminent disaster. Fortunately this long and ever increasing strain began to diminish soon after. In August the gate receipts began to creep up, so that the bondholders became less clamorous and the Board of Directors less apprehensive; and the phenomenal “Chicago Day” attendance of October ninth—the twenty-second anniversary of the Fire which a young employe had fought for Field, Leiter & Co.—a day when 761,942 persons went through the turn-stiles, enabled the Treasurer of the Exposition to pay the bondholders in full. But finances were only one detail, though of course the most important, the most fundamental, to the responsible Company and its president. Other issues involved brought less anxiety and more joy, introducing an infinite variety of experience and motive into the life of a middle-western American merchant. Of these were the president’s relations with the board of architects, those distinguished artists from far and near who designed and built the Fair. In this connection may be mentioned his life-long loyalty to the memory of John Wellborn Root, the first consulting architect, who made the ground plan of the Fair, admittedly a master-piece of great-festival design, but suddenly died—in January, 1891—before he could lead in carrying it out. Mr. Higinbotham, to the end of his life, loyally insisted on ascribing the beauty of the Fair chiefly to the genius of this man, contending always against rival claims and the forgetfulness of time.