The offer was accepted, and that was why twenty-year-old Franklin W. Hooper, a raw-boned country youth, was doing chores at the fresh-water college, sitting at the feet of Edward Orton, the professor of natural science, and acquiring a passionate love of that subject.

When Orton left Antioch to become president of the Ohio State University, Hooper decided to leave Antioch also and to matriculate at Harvard in order to study under Louis Agassiz. The New Hampshire boy, as before, made ends meet by hard work; he was janitor of old Massachusetts Hall and caretaker of the reading-room. Agassiz at this time was building up the natural history museum that bears his name. Hooper was one of his most zealous and indefatigable undergraduate assistants, specializing in botany, zoology and the details of museum administration. The older man inspired the younger with a life-ambition. "Wherever I am called as teacher or otherwise," said the pupil of Agassiz, "I will start in by founding a natural history museum!"

After his collegiate and graduate courses at Harvard, the young man found limited opportunities to realize his ideals, first at Keene (N. H.) high school, where he introduced the study of natural science and founded the Keene Natural History Society, and later at Adelphi Academy, Brooklyn, New York, where he started the collections in mineralogy and osteology. The Adelphi's young professor of geology and chemistry spent the year 1886 abroad, visiting the chief European museums of science, hoping meanwhile for the help of some wealthy patron who should enable him to carry out the scheme of founding a museum.

It was

after his return from Europe, in the autumn of 1887, that opportunity opened.

At that time the City of Brooklyn had the ghost of a popular culture-institution which, developing from an Apprentices' Free Library, had grown into a lusty and vigorous middle age as a public forum

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and patron of the arts and sciences and had then gone rapidly down hill into a state of decrepitude and senility. truth is that the back of the Institute had been broken by a crushing load of debt and by its trustees' inability to do more than carry the burden. Endowment fund income and rent income had been partly diverted to pay interest on mortgages; and when in 1887 this indebtedness was at last cleared off, the once-flourishing Brooklyn Institute was still land poor, library poor, art poor.

Professor Hooper and General John B. Woodward, the new and active president of the institution, were walking home from church one Sunday morning when Woodward stopped and said:

"Hooper, I wish you would go down to Washington street some time and look over the collections there. At present we are doing absolutely nothing in the way of scientific work. What collections we have are stored away as junk. I wish you would study the situation and suggest improvements.'

Farsighted and enterprising as General Woodward was, it is unlikely that he had even an inkling of the improvements that Hooper would suggest. The idea born in the educator's brain a decade before leaped into activity, expanding as it rose. Through the disjecta membra of the educational skeleton before him, he saw the vast outlines of a real people's university, teaching by means of hundreds of lectures and classes, uplifting art standards by concerts, dramatic presentations and exhibitions, forming a center of light and leading by bringing all scientific and artistic interests to a focus, establishing a museum not merely of natural history but of all departments of human activity, maintained by the city for the benefit of all the citizens. But where were the funds required to carry it out? No Carnegie loomed even faintly on the horizon. Small wonder that President Woodward was astonished, even appalled by the immense outlines of the project. But he was presently infected by Professor Hooper's energy and enthusiasm, and the aid of the trustees was enlisted, they electing him director in the spring of 1888.

The secret of the future institute's success was to be coöperation. In the modern great city there are forces enough and

more than enough for the execution of public-spirited enterprises, provided those forces can be brought together and their waste energy utilized. That was Professor Hooper's task. He started with his personal friends and with the families of the pupils at the Adelphi, causing them to become associate members and contribute at least $5 per annum. One by one the scientific societies of the town reorganized as departments identified with the larger life of the institute. Organizations of professional men entered in the same manner or were newly created; the engineers, architects, musicians, lawyers, artists and above all, the teachers, found a home and a welcome there. Meetings of departments and lecture courses by distinguished scholars were the means of holding together the rapidly expanding institution, which was now renamed the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, and the project definitely broached of founding a great city museum. By June, 1890, an active membership of over eleven hundred had been attained, the number of meetings and lectures held that year was 445, and the total attendance no less than fifty thousand, truly a remarkable showing for only two years of work during which the institute had been practically recreated by its membership and its director with insignificant aid from outside sources.

In the autumn of 1890 the executive abilities of Mr. Hooper were put to their severest test through the destruction by fire of the old Washington Street building. A splendid program for the year had been arranged, the memberships were coming in finely, and there were fair prospects of a surplus to be applied to the museum project, which the city authorities had promised should be got under way as soon as the institute could show permanent funds of $200,000. Never was a disaster more adroitly turned into a victory. The insurance money realized $27,000; the site of the old building was sold to the city for the Brooklyn Bridge approach for $72,000; and then the director, in the spring of 1891, went out to raise the required balance by personal solicitation. It was a strenuous campaign; the country was none too prosperous, and already the silver bogey was beginning to frighten the timid. "Hooper," said one admin lionaire, as he drew his

check for $5,000, "you are positively the best beggar I have ever met!" Hooper pocketed the compliment and credited the cash to the institute, without a murmur. He was not begging for himself; he had headed the list with the subscription of his own family fortune of $10,000, which the trustees subsequently declined to accept, and he felt like the Old Guard at Waterloo, that it was a case of do or die. When, after incredible exertions, $51,000 had been raised in comparatively small sums and the last few heart-breaking thousands seemed in sight, David A. Boody, soon to be mayor and a warm friend of the institute, came to him and said:

"What's this foolishness about trying to raise your endowment fund to $200,000? I think that with a showing of $100,000 the city will authorize the museum.

It would have been an occasion with the unregenerate for profane swearing. Hooper held himself in and replied:

"Why in the name of all that's good didn't you tell me so a year ago? I had it direct from friends of the administration that $200,000 would be necessary.'

Such is the irony of affairs. To-day Director Hooper by no means regrets that he made the all but impossible effort, which, according to one man at least, was not necessary, but which immediately secured for the institute a financial stability of the highest importance in developing its work.

A structure was planned by McKim, Mead & White, following a prize competition, the total cost of which with its interior fittings might well reach $10,000,000. Ground was broken on September 14, 1895, and the first section was completed a year and a half and dedicated approximately two years later. The City of New York has expended over a million dollars on the magnificent marble and granite structure, only three-sixteenths of which is yet completed, although work has been going on for a decade. While the vast design will not be completed before another fifteen years or quarter of a century at the least, the museum is rapidly taking its place among the leading ones of the country in natural science, ethnology, archeology and pictorial art.

In his role of university builder, Mr. Hooper has developed a reputation as a

keen business man and promoter which is far outshadowing his earlier fame as a scholar. Like the successful wide-awake American, he has not been afraid to tackle anything, no matter how remote from his old province. His aim has included every sort of instructive or uplifting entertainment for the seven thousand and odd members of the institute, except out and out theatrical performances. It has made the Boston Symphony Orchestral Concerts a financial success, has had Paderewski and the greatest soloists and instrumentalists on its programs, while its department of music, with a membership of nearly three thousand, and advisory board comprising the chief musical experts of the town, has held beneficent if somewhat trust-like sway over all important musical activity.

"Book concerts and lecture dates in Brooklyn!" remarked Rafael Navarro; former manager of the Academy of Music, with a disgusted expression, the other day; "well, I guess not! What's the use when the institute has preempted that field all to itself?"

Professor Hooper has figured in the public activities of Brooklyn also, having been for eight years a member of the Board of Education, and in consequence a target for criticism on account of his fearless and independent attitude. He He has resented most strongly the application of political pull to posts in the public schools, and waged at least one long and bitter fight to prevent personal influence from dictating choice of a high official.

In person Mr. Hooper is very tall and very large of frame, so that he would

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tower as a giant over his fellows if he did not stoop. His full black beard is barely whitened at the ends, although he is well into middle life. He has a charming suavity of manner, a fund of scientific knowledge which he makes as interesting to the hearer as a romance, and a wide knowledge of this world's affairs, seen from the angle of a quaint, half cynical, wholly human New England humor. Under the surface is the strong idealism that has made so mighty an impress upon Brooklyn; for it is the personality of the man and not only his tremendous strength and executive capacity that has enabled him to achieve what he has. He still puts in twelve to fourteen hours a day at his work; in summer moves the whole paraphernalia of the institute office to the old homestead at Walpole, New Hampshire, and there combines the labors of directorship and of farming his 190-acre ancestral glebe.

It would be a mistake, of course, to attribute all the manifold successes of the institute to this one man. Without publicspirited citizens, such as the late General Woodward and his brother, Robert B. Woodward, President A. Augustus Healy and President of Council L. Mason Clarke, former Mayors Schieren and Boody, the members of the committee on art museums, together with the great army of college-bred and professional men working in the twenty-seven departments, the institute could have done but little. It is glory enough for Mr. Hooper that he aroused the civic life of a great community and enlisted its best element in the march to a higher goal.

HE resignation of President Henry Smith Pritchett, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, took place on December 12. The immediate effect is to enable Dr. Pritchett to go to New York

as executive head of the Carnegie Foundation, which was recently endowed by Andrew Carnegie with $15,000,000, to be the nucleus of a great pension system for superannuated college teachers.

How the departure of its president will affect the New England technological school, for which, until lately, he had been making ambitious plans, can not yet be foreseen. Mr. Pritchett's presidency at "Tech," as the Massachusetts Institute is familiarly called, will at all events be memorable in the history of the institution by reason of the humanizing of engineering studies and school life that he has attempted. In this respect he has been unqualifiedly successful. Of the failure of his grandiose scheme for an alliance of the institute with Harvard University, soon to have at its disposal several million dollars left by Gordon McKay for the upbuilding of a great technical school, the world has already heard. Indeed-so it is currently believed-it was essentially this failure, due partly to an adverse decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Court by which the institute has been inhibited from selling the land on which its present buildings are located, and still more to the uncompromising attitude of a majority of the Tech alumni and faculty who have opposed the plan throughout, that led to Mr. Pritchett's being willing to leave a community in whose progress he had become deeply concerned. change appears to have been made with extreme regret, even though the opportunity to give undivided attention to the Carnegie Foundation will generally be held to be a promotion.

The side, at any rate, of Mr. Pritchett's presidency that has never been adequately described is the narrative of his efforts, for the most part very successful, to make the institute something better than a factory for grinding out engineers. Both the strength and the weakness of the student material with which he has had to deal has been well understood. "The American," he said in an address some time ago, "is alert, energetic, resourceful and superficial. He can make a little knowledge go farther than the citizen of any other country, and this lesson he has had every opportunity to learn in our schools. Initiative, resourcefulness and nervous energy were great factors in our pioneer work and they are great factors still; but they will not endure in competition with efficient training, patient study and exact knowledge. The pioneer epoch has passed."

Bringing culture to Boston might be regarded as equally superfluous with carrying coals to Newcastle; yet that has certainly been Mr. Pritchett's most worthy service to the technical school over which he has presided for the past six years. He has thrown his influence into humanizing the life of the place. Recognizing that the prospective engineer, just as absolutely as the student of classical courses, needs comradeship and diversion, as well as technical instruction, he has built up the Tech Union, with its opportunities for social intercourse and harmless amusements. He has welcomed the growth of a normal and healthy interest in athletics. Whatever has seemed to foster the community spirit has had his hearty support.

Nor have his efforts been confined to the student body. In order to promote greater solidarity of sentiment among the alumni he organized the big reunion of 1904. He followed the example of a few of his teachers, and set an example to many more of them, by taking an active part in the work of building up the city beautiful that is gradually supplanting the commonplaceness of old Boston, and his appointment as chairman of the Charles River Dam Commission, a position which he still holds, came about in recognition both of his remarkable engineering capacity and his appreciation of the artistic part of an undertaking which involves converting the tidal estuary known as the Back Bay into a decorative fresh-water lake comparable with Hamburg's Alster Basin.

A conviction as to the duties of citizenship led him soon after he settled in Boston to become a resident of the lesser city instead of following the majority of the privileged classes to a pleasanter and better-governed suburban town. And this civic interest has not been confined to attending the primaries and voting. A scheme for a radical reform of the system of Boston city government, one which would, in theory at least, be applicable to most American cities, was elaborated before the Massachusetts Reform Club two years ago, and although it has not yet been adopted, for it was too far in advance of the times, it has stirred up abundant discussion and has already influenced the thinking of others. It called, amongst other requirements, for a mayor with very

large powers, an assistant mayor, a cabinet of seven heads and a single chamber of forty representatives, all these to be paid relatively large salaries in order that a better class of men might be attracted to the public service.

In addition to many other responsibilities Mr. Pritchett very lately accepted the chairmanship of the board of management of the Franklin Fund, the money left by Benjamin Franklin for the creation of an institute to benefit workingmen. That he had a hand in Mr. Carnegie's endowment of that fund is, to say the least, suspected.

Not only in deed but in word Mr. Pritchett has emphasized for the benefit of the institute students and of the general public his ideas of service. Again and again in public address he has upheld the conception that young men should be prepared in the technological schools not so much to hold certain jobs as to live the best life possible while holding them.

In charge of Mr. Carnegie's pension fund Mr. Pritchett will have every possible opportunity to justify the faith of those who believe him to be one of the strongest of modern educational thinkers. Everything on the material side will be in his favor; whereas in Boston he has had great odds against which to contend. Mr. Carnegie is a personal friend of long standing, and the two are said to be in agreement on all vital points. Even had Mr. Pritchett remained at the institute he would still have been the ironmaster's right-hand man. It is indeed generally believed that Mr. Carnegie stood ready, in case the merger of Harvard and the "Tech" had taken place and Dr. Pritchett had been in line to succeed President Eliot, to endow the combined institution with untold millions. That chance to make out of the oldest American uni

versity and the largest of American technological schools incomparably the leading university of the world, if it ever existed, has seemingly been lost. At all events, the former president of the Massachusetts Institute will have a free hand in his new undertaking, directed from headquarters in Forty-fifth Street, New York.

Mr. Pritchett's career up to this time has been so comprehensive, and he has thought so broadly along various lines, that he should be an especially efficient man in managing the great humanitarian work which Mr. Carnegie has in mind. The director of the foundation is now in his forty-ninth year, a native of Missouri, a graduate of Pritchett College at Glasglow in that state, and a sometime enthusiastic disciple of the German methods of scientific research, in which he still believes with modified zeal. His doctorate in philosophy was gained at Munich; his honorary degrees were received from Hamilton, the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins. At the time that he was called to the presidency of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1900, he was superintendent of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey. His equipment for holding that important position had been acquired through years of service in governmental and private astronomical observatories.

That still further honors are ahead of Mr. Pritchett has already been rumored from Washington. The Carnegie Institution will, one year hence, lose its present president, Dr. Daniel C. Gilman, who finds the labor of directing so great an establishment too onerous. The two men most prominently mentioned as possible successors to Dr. Gilman are Charles D. Walcott, now director of the Geological Survey, and Henry Smith Pritchett.