Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/245

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STUDENTS AND FACULTY 215 The work of gathering the faculty had been exceedingly trying to President Harper. He had met with all kinds of difficulties. Charges were made against men with whom he had made contracts for assistantships. But he would never condemn a man unheard, and he took time, in the midst of his incredible labors, to sift such charges. One man, who had agreed to come, drew back when another was made acting head of the department. Another agreed to accept if no other man of his rank received a larger salary, and after he had been appointed, refused to accept until he had the President's written assurance on the subject. He should have been dropped at once, but the patience of Job was slight compared with that of President Harper. Demands for books, apparatus, equipment, and supplies of every kind, essential for the proper conduct of the departments, but far exceeding any available funds, made the President's life a burden. There was, however, one difficulty made by an instructor of quite another sort, but it was the only one of its kind. In the original classification of teachers in the faculty the reader was two places below the tutor in rank. It is, of course, natural for men to desire to rank as high as possible. But one man who was appointed a tutor could not reconcile him- self to that title and asked from the President the privilege of being considered a reader, and was so recorded in the first Register! He was not an American and the term used for the higher rank displeased him. Later he rose to an assistant professorship. Mr. Shorey came to the department of Greek from Bryn Mawr, and later became Head of the department, of which, indeed, he was acting Head from the beginning. When President Harper ap- proached Charles R. Henderson, in the spring of 1892, he was a popular pastor in Detroit, and was being sought by another promi- nent church, and was having urged upon him the secretaryship of the American Baptist Home Mission Society and the presidency of Kalamazoo College. He came to the University as Recorder and Assistant Professor of Social Science. The duties of Recorder did not suit him, and in 1894 he was made Chaplain of the University, a position for which his character and gifts peculiarly fitted him. Dr. Henderson's widely lamented death occurred March 29, 1915, on the day on which this page of this chapter was being written.