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Woodrow Wilson made a lot of trouble for these super-plutocratic trustees. He saw that the club system was destroying the intellectual life of the university, and he tried to break it up and introduce a system under which the rich students would at least know the names of the less rich ones. He was bitterly fought at every point by the society group, led by Andrew West, head of the Latin department, and dean of the Graduate School, a college politician who is genial to people he can use, but is a bitter partisan of reaction. This Dean West had a vision of a hyper-exclusive school for graduate students, an ivory tower of classical culture, and he got Mr. Procter, who owns a tower of ivory soap, to offer half a million dollars for this purpose. But Woodrow Wilson objected to the plan and delayed it, and Mr. Procter became angry and withdrew his money—which caused a furious hullabaloo among the Princeton plutocracy, led by Mr. Taylor Pyne, the first grand duke.

For some time the conflict raged, and it was settled in a peculiar way. Dean West got somebody to offer three millions for the proposed school; and that licked Woodrow, and Woodrow bowed his head in submission. It had been possible to hesitate over half a million, but three millions—“flesh and blood cooden bear it!” I am quoting from the delightful scene in Thackeray’s “Yellowplush Papers,” where “Chawls,” who is in the service of the Honorable Algernon Deuceace, is being tempted to do some rascality for “his Exlnsy the Right Honorable Earl of Crabs.” At first he resists the temptation; but then his Exlnsy “lugs out a crisp, fluttering, snowy HUNDRED-PUN NOTE! ‘You shall have this; and I will, moreover, take you into my service and give you double your present wages.’