His teaching began at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,but William Rainey Harper lured him to the new university of Chicago,where he remained officially for exactly a generation and where his students in advanced composition found him terrifyingly frigid in the classroom but sympathetic and understanding in their personal conferences.
他的教书生涯始于麻省理工学院，但是William Rainey Harper把他吸引到了新成立的芝加哥大学。他在那里正式任职长达整整一代人的时间。他的高级作文课上的学生觉得他在课上古板得可怕，但私下交流却富有同情和理解。