Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/129

THE FIRST PRESIDENT 101 was wholly engrossed with Hebrew and its cognates. He found ample time for all sorts of duties in no wise related to his favorite pursuits. No member of the faculty was more ready to take his share of the miscellaneous routine tasks of the Seminary. In the church of which he was a member he was suc- cessively clerk, deacon, treasurer, finance committee man, and Sunday-school superintendent. Lack of time was never urged in plea against an interest needing aid The Morgan Park period, with its organization and experiments, is in a sense the key to Dr. Harper's later career. Those days of heroic struggle witnessed the uncertain beginnings of educational ideas which afterward, proved and developed, became cornerstones of the University which he built. The American Institute of Hebrew with its correspondence teaching convinced him of the efficacy of such instruction, and has its counterpart today, not only in the American Institute of Sacred Literature, but in the whole correspondence work of the University. With the Publication Society of Hebrew, with its printing office and its journals, he satisfied himself of the essential importance in educational leadership of such a department of publication as the University Press now is. His summer schools live again in the Summer Quarter of the University, and of many universities; and his principle of concentration in study is recognizable in the whole system of major and minor courses and subjects This brief survey of the Morgan Park period reveals Dr. Harper in the making. He was not then the man he subsequently became, but the promise and the potency were there. He had not yet attained, but he was on his way to all we know and admire and love. It did not take many years for Dr. Harper to grow too great for Morgan Park. The authorities became aware that they could not permanently hold him there. It was therefore no surprise to them when in 1885 and the winter and spring of 1886 he was approached by Yale University. They were, however, surprised by the interest manifested in the matter by one of their friends. On April 5, 1886, John D. Rockefeller wrote the letter to Mr. Goodspeed, quoted in a preceding chapter, informing him that someone representing Yale had called at his office in reference to an effort then being made to take Professor Harper from Morgan Park to New Haven. This gentleman evidently called to ask Mr. Rockefeller to subscribe to the fund for the professorship in Yale being established for Dr. Harper. To this Mr. Goodspeed replied on April 7, saying: Professor Harper has been entirely open with Dr. Northrup and me in regard to the Yale College matter. They have been working to secure him for