experiment was a confirmation of West's views. Mrs. Swann's bequest 

 for the building of the Graduate College made the question of site one 

 of immediate practical importance. The erection of McCosh Hall had 

 made the Academy Lot unsuitable and therefore Messrs. West and 

 Hibben favoured the golf links, the site ultimately chosen, while Mr. 

 Wilson wished to have it on "the campus," in the restricted sense of that 

 word, and his approval of West's 1903 plan had been conditioned on a 

 campus site. He even offered to give up the beautiful grounds of Pros- 

 pect for the purpose. Before Mrs. Swann's death, Mr. Wilson had, it was 

 said, promised Mr. Cleveland that the Graduate College should be the 

 next great project for which money was to be raised. The proposal of 

 the unfortunate "Quad System" was loudly decried as a breach of the 

 agreement and Mr. Cleveland was very bitter on this point. On this 

 particular head, I have no first-hand information, but I feel certain that 

 the whole difficulty arose from a misunderstanding, but was none the 

 less deplorable for that. 



As the Faculty committee on the Graduate School was hopelessly 

 divided and was made up exclusively of Princeton graduates, the 

 Trustees legislated it out of office and appointed another, in which 

 distinguished graduates of other colleges were represented. All of this 

 committee, except two, urged that the proposed Graduate College should 

 be built as near the center of the campus as possible, while two members, 

 West and Hibben, voted to have it built on the golf links, where it now 

 stands. The question of site was made acute by a letter from Mr. W. C. 

 Procter, of Cincinnati, a close friend and former pupil of Dean West's, 

 who wrote to him on May 8, 1909, offering to give $500,000 to the 

 Graduate College, as described in the Dean's book, "provided the 

 scheme is carried out on those lines." Mr. Procter rejected the site at 

 Prospect and felt "therefore obliged to say that this offer is made upon 

 the understanding that some other site be chosen, which shall be satis- 

 factory to me." A month later, Mr. Procter wrote to the President, say- 

 ing: "My preference still remains with Merwick. If this does not meet 

 with your views and those of the Board of Trustees, I will accept the 

 golf links, provided a better approach is secured." 



Mr. Procter's offer led to an embittered and angry controversy. The 

 offer was not immediately accepted and, after considerable debate 

 between a special committee of the Trustees and Mr. Procter, the latter 

 withdrew his offer by his letter of February 6, 1910. By this time, the 

 controversy had been still further envenomed by Mr. Wilson's attack 

 upon the upperclass clubs, which had split the Faculty from top to 



