Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/230

 200 A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO applications in writing. "No applications in person will be heard by the offi- cers of the University unless personal interviews are requested by themselves." .... I don't expect to accomplish anything by this effusion. Dr. Harper will say and believe it is nonsense I can only say my soul burned within me at the abuses by which your time, the most precious of that of any human lives in my acquaintance, is being stolen from you by a procession of well- meaning thieves among them Yours very truly, F. T. GATES But Dr. Harper did not say this was nonsense. On April 6, he wrote : I have not written you since you left I have been so very, very busy. We have made some changes. The stenographers, Professor Abbott, and myself are now on Fifty-fifth Street Mr. Abbott has his office hours in the city [office] from two to four. I am there only from four to five. These changes brought some, but not entire, relief. During the succeeding hundred days the calls at the University offices, 1212 Chamber of Commerce, averaged more than thirty a day. On July 10 President Harper wrote: Life at Chicago has become a great burden, so many people after me. He fled therefore to Chautauqua. But the applications continued to come, up to and after the opening of the University. Though Dr. Harper, in 1891, was a young man, only thirty-five years of age, the selection of the faculty of the University was com- mitted to him by the Trustees as a matter of course. His nomina- tions were first laid before the Committee on Faculty, and, after approval, sent to the Board of Trustees for final action. The Presi- dent laid each case before the committee and afterward before the Board very fully, and his recommendations of men were always approved. Probably no university president in the United States was better equipped for the task of manning a great University with teachers. He had a very wide acquaintance among college and university professors and a still wider knowledge of them. For eight years he had been conducting summer schools. For as many years he had been connected with Chautauqua, and these two lines of experience had immensely increased his first- or second-hand knowledge of college teachers. For at least two years and a half