Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/240

 210 A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO On the strength of contracts like the foregoing Europe was flooded with young professors. Depending on such scraps of paper, which bound Dr. Harper simply to recommend their election, they borrowed money and went abroad to spend a year, more or less, in travel or in study at the great universities. In every case in which he made these contracts the prospective President was accustomed to require, or at least very strongly to advise, the prospective instructor to go abroad for as long a stay as possible to better his preparation for his future work. Mr. Buck's contract was made in February, 1891, nearly a full year before his election. On February 4, 1892, four notable appointments were made as follows: Hermann E. von Hoist, Head Professor of History; Richard Green Moulton, University Extension Professor of Eng- lish Literature; Emil G. Hirsch, Professor of Rabbinical Literature and Philosophy; and Ezekiel G. Robinson, Professor in Apolo- getics and Christian Ethics. Mr. von Hoist, author of a well- known constitutional history of the United States, was a professor in the University of Freiburg in Baden, Germany, and his acquisi- tion was regarded by the President with great satisfaction. Mr. Terry, Professor in History, had greatly aided in securing him. Mr. Hirsch was the able and popular rabbi of the Sinai Congregation of Chicago and most generously contributed such services as his duties to his congregation and the public permitted. Mr. Robin- son had been president of the Rochester Theological Seminary and later of Brown University, and came to give the closing years of a distinguished career to the new University. Mr. Moulton had come in 1890 on a temporary visit to the United States, as he says, to enlist interest in the University "Extension Movement" which had origi- nated in the University of Cambridge [England] and spread to other Univer- sities, British and foreign. I had been connected with it for sixteen years. .... Within a few weeks after I had begun my tour, I declined some tempting overtures for permanent work, on the ground that I could not entertain the idea of leaving England. I met Dr. Harper in Washington, D.C., in the Christmas week of 1890, and in a single conversation he induced me to promise a year's work in the new University He thoroughly entered into the conception of "University Extension" as we understood it in England. He was resolved to make this a feature of the work he was inaugurating. Mr. Moulton's one year became a life engagement.