 He received his undergraduate and master's degrees from DePauw University in Indiana and his doctorate from Cornell University.He was a distinguished student of the classics and began his academic career at Illinois College in Jacksonville before joining the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis as an instructor in Latin and Greek in 1907.Ten years later, he was named Collier Professor of Greek and, after briefly resigning in 1918 to become assistant librarian of the St. Louis Public Library, he returned as assistant to the chancellor in 1921, serving both Chancellors Frederic Hall and Herbert Hadley.