Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/234

204 A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO of envy or jealousy in President Harper. He rejoiced in the grow- ing reputation of members of the faculty as though it were his own. Every distinction they received gave him pleasure. Every book they published was a source of satisfaction, and the greater the book the greater was his satisfaction. He was proud of the honors they received and he watched the development of growing scholars with joy and pride. President Harper began the work of securing a faculty for the new University before he had himself accepted the presidency. His hand indeed was forced. Young people who desired to enter the new institution, who, as has been related in the first part of this chapter, began to report in September, 1890, and had kept on reporting in increasing numbers, were asking all sorts of questions needing to be answered by a trained educator. In the closing months of 1890 the President-elect found the right man for this work in Frank Frost Abbott, whom he had marked as a growing man. He engaged Mr. Abbott conditionally about the beginning of 1891, and had him formally appointed University Examiner and Associate Professor of Latin July 9, 1891. To Mr. Abbott there- fore belongs the honor of being, after the President, the first member of the faculty to be appointed. The second appointment was that of Zella Allen Dixson as Assistant Librarian, and was made the same day, July 9, 1891. President Harper's educational plan provided for the appoint- ment of heads of departments. One of the duties of the head professor was "to consult with the President as to the appointment of instructors in the department." The natural thing, therefore, was to appoint the head professors in the several departments, that the President might have their assistance in making up the faculty. If this course could have been followed it would have wonderfully simplified the President's problems, lightened his labors during the eighteen months preceding the opening of the University, and saved him anxieties without number. He began therefore to look for head professors, and immediately fixed his mind on professors in the leading universities of the country. Then came the tug of war. As a matter of course these men were, of all the professors in the country, the very ones it may perhaps be said, the only ones who were practically immovable. Why