Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/463

 SOME IMPORTANT EVENTS 409 There was one great tragedy in this early history of the Uni- versity the illness and death of President Harper. In 1903, with no suspicion of the nature of his trouble, his friends began to see that his labors were wearing on him and persuaded him to go abroad for rest. He was absent from the University fifteen weeks. On his return he made a written report of extraordinary activities in the the interest of the University, which had taken him to London, Berlin, and Constantinople, concluding this report of his three months' rest in these words: "Of the fifteen weeks from the June Convocation to the first of October, five, including two on the steamer, have been spent in rest, the remaining ten have been devoted to the work of the University." Quite unconscious him- self of his hidden malady, he wondered why his sense of weariness continued, and in January, 1904, requested the Trustees to mature a plan for affording him relief from the full measure of service rendered by him, and providing that he have an annual leave of absence of six months, "preferably from July to January." He was immediately granted six months for the current year and the consideration of a permanent plan of relief was taken up. Presi- dent Harper's inability to rest was never more remarkably illus- trated than in the following item in the University Record for March, 1904: The President of the University, after undergoing a serious operation for appendicitis at the Presbyterian Hospital on March i, surprised everyone by his rapid recovery and presided at the opening function connected with the fiftieth Convocation .... the President's dinner to official guests at the Chicago Club, on the evening of March 18. He thought, his friends thought, the cause of his feeling of exhaus- tion had been removed. But the complete recovery he expected did not come. The author will never forget the day, a few months later, when with Major Rust he was called to the President's house. Dr. Harper said he had something he wished to tell them. They went over in high spirits to learn what the good news was. They greeted him with some hilarity and were dumbfounded to hear him say: I have asked you to come to say to you that I have today received my death sentence from my physicians. They have discovered that my trouble is internal cancer.