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Caption: Book - Early History of University (1916)
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FOREWORD BY E D M U N D JANES JAMES To the Students, Past and Present, of the University of Illinois— GREETINGS: You are a great army, more than thirty thousand strong, scattered over the whole surface of the earth, in every country and under every clime. The role is contained in the pages of this book. It is a long and honorable one and you may well be proud that your name is in the list. No one could have anticipated in 1868 that such an institution as this has become would be the result of less than fifty years' growth. Not even Doctor Gregory, the first president, that man of wondrous vision and power, who saw by faith the ultimate outcome, would have dared to expect such an achievement so soon. The grain of mustard seed planted by the Bone Yard stream in 1867 has indeed become a great tree. When the ground first parted and the bud of promise appeared on that famous eleventh of March, 1868, when the University was opened, two professors and a head farmer, and two non-resident lecturers made up the faculty, and fifty-seven pupils the student body. The former has grown to over 600, (in the present year,— 1916,) the latter to 6,500. It is truly the Lord's doing and marvelous in our eyes. It is also plain that we have only just begun our real growth as a world university, and the next fifty years will see as remarkable changes as have the last fifty. If we can only grow in truth and grace at the same rate as in numbers and resources! Everyone who has been privileged to contribute to its growth, either as student, member of the faculty, trustee, member of the legislature, governor of the state, or tax-payer and benefactor, may well be proud of the opportunity to be a part of such an institution. We shall be able to wax great and strong just ill proportion as through our alumni and faculties we can extend and deepen our service to our day and generation. You can each of you help us who are in immediate charge of the University to measure up to our responsibilities, not only by performing your own services ever more fully to your fellowmen directly about you, but also by helping the University itself do its great work in a more nearly perfect way:— 1. By keeping the University and its work on your mind and in your heart, informing yourself as to what it is doing and then thinking
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