Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/510

CHAPTER XVII THE DEVELOPING UNIVERSITY This history has in the main been concerned with the external developments of the University's life. There has been ample reason for this in the multiplicity and importance of those external features. Ordinarily the inner life of an educational institution does not fur- nish very much material for historical narration. The work of instruction goes on from day to day, and indeed, from year to year, quietly and uneventfully. It has no annals. It goes without say- ing that the students who presented themselves through the years were received and assigned to their classes, that they pursued their studies with more or less diligence, that they were directed in their work with more or less skill, and in due time won or failed to win their degrees. Everyone knows all this, and the ordinary univer- sity pursues the even tenor of its way without eventful or interest- ing incident in its intra-mural life. But the University of Chicago did not have the ordinary university life in the period covered by this history. Its youth was one of extraordinary growth, expansion, and activity. New things were constantly occurring within the walls as well as outside the quadrangles. In tracing the developing life of the University from the end of the first year, the story of which has already been told, through the first quarter-century, the life inside the quadrangles will be chiefly considered. But to make that life itself understood, it is necessary, at times, to conduct the reader outside the walls. The educational work of the University was from the beginning committed entirely to the faculties. Looking back ten years, President Harper was able to say in his Decennial Report: The history of these years shows conclusively that the attitude of the Trustees toward the faculties of the University has been broad and liberal. It is understood that all questions involving financial expenditure fall within the province of the Trustees and are to be considered by them; that all appoint- ments to office in the University are made directly by the Trustees upon recommendation of the President, and that on questions of fundamental policy, 444