to pay back to bondholders and stockholders. These were arguments that he could understand when far away, and he cabled me, ‘All right, go ahead.’ I did, and we made the prognosis good and a little more. I wish I had time, space and patience to tell you how I based my estimates for attendance, and then tell you how hard I worked to make it all come true. The other members of the Council of Administration agreed at the first meeting to stand by and support me all the time and always. This they did, with the result that at the conclusion, with six thousand written pages, we did not have a single negative vote recorded in the minutes of our meetings. The members of the Council of Administration, besides the Chairman, were: George V. Massey of Dover, Delaware; J. W. St. Clair of West Virginia and Charles H. Schwab of Chicago.” Mr. Massey, the only surviving one of the four, corroborates this assertion of harmony, and adds the following appreciation of his dead colleague’s services: “As one of his associates in the Council, I was afforded exceptional opportunity to become acquainted with his wonderful capacity for effective work along the most judicious and practical lines; and the knowledge of his envied characteristics, thereby derived, warrants the statement that the successful results of the Exhibition were more largely attributable to his untiring and energetic efforts than to any other official related to the undertaking.” The year or two covered by those six thousand pages of minutes was a period of dramatic intensity for the man at the head of the vast enterprise. The local Board of Directors, composed of Chicago business men, was the great working body which organized, paid for, and ran the Fair, the National Commission being a more or less ornamental consort appointed by the Government to give the Exposition authority and dignity in the eyes of the invited nations. When Mr. Higinbotham, on August eighteenth, 1892, accepted the presidency of the Directory, after the successive resignations of Lyman J. Gage and William T. Baker, the early local enthusiasm had given way to despondency, for the impression had gathered force that soaring expenses could never be met even to the extent of repaying the bonded indebtedness, not to speak of the stockholders. As president of the Board of Directors, Chairman of the Council of Administration, and member of the Bureau of Admissions and Collections, Mr. Higinbotham held three offices, each involving “heavy responsibilities which could not be delegated, resting upon powers which were ill-defined, yet were co-extensive with the purposes of the company’s incorporation.” For over two years these duties required his entire time—often from twelve to sixteen hours out of the twenty-four—and more than a man’s due share of physical and mental energy.