Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/243

 STUDENTS AND FACULTY 213 the laboratory of Geology, and the President warmly urging action, President Chamberlin on May 4, 1892, was appointed, the appoint- ment of Mr. Salisbury following in June. The following telegram addressed on May 20 to President Harper by Mr. Chamberlin's secretary, who was quite unconscious of what was going on and resented the notice he referred to, greatly pleased and edified the Chicago office: Assuming that you did not authorize the statement in today's issue of the Chicago News that President Chamberlin had accepted a position in your University, please telegraph authorizing me to deny it. President Chamberlin is now somewhere east, and I cannot reach him. No sooner did President Harper succeed in getting a few head professors and professors appointed than he began to make use of them in getting information about other possible instructors. Names were sent out by the score, and Messrs. Hale, Laughlin, Small, Whitman, Burton, Nef, Tufts, MacClintock, A. C. Miller, Starr, Terry, Moore, and others, were kept busy making visits and inquiries and reporting on men. The delay in securing heads of departments had been so great, however, that the President had been compelled in some instances to go forward without their help in their own departments. Mr. Burton writes that, not being able to bring with him to Chicago the one man he had in mind, "as a result, I finally accepted as colleagues in the department men suggested by Dr. Harper." The author- ship of the following letter will probably be readily determined by the higher critics. It was written on the writer's learning of an appointment in his department: One thing is demonstrated, namely, that the department of is bound to grow, so long as I keep away from it. I had not heard of until your note came, but, when I consulted the University column of The Standard, I felt as the Christmas-pie boy did when he pulled out the plum By the way, if you should hear any one intimate that the credit of organizing the department of belongs to anyone except the "Head Professor" will you kindly shoot him on the spot. From the same man came this statement of his view as to a profes- sor's relation to the President: I shall enlist for the war, with the most loyal purpose of doing my utmost bast every day for the common cause. I shall be as loyal to you as one man