ALUMNI SOLIDARITY 249 vate alumni solidarity. He founded new alumni associations and visited them in the interest of the College, traveling thousands of miles to report on the progress of affairs at home; and he made, in 1886, the first proposal that the alumni should appoint a permanent advisory committee to consult with the board of trustees and to make recommendations. His proposal was not adopted and it was not until 1900 that a plan of alumni representation on the board was put into operation. By 1886 there were seventeen flourishing Princeton alumni associations in existence and others in process of formation. To-day there are forty-six associations, beside the parent Alumni Association of Nassau Hall, now in its eightyseventh year. No Princetonian will grudge Dr. McCosh the credit due him for this enterprise and for sowing the seeds of what has become a distinguishing feature of the relations of Princeton alumni to their college; but, after all, he could have accomplished little without the aid of men who were willing to assume the actual labor involved in bringing these relations about. The Alumni Association of New York, later incorporated as the Princeton Club of New York, was a pioneer in this work, having first fostered alumni interest among its own members and then having stimulated graduates living outside of its territory to follow its example. And, if it may be said with the fullest appreciation of the valuable service of many other men, to no one in the New York Association did more work fall, or is more honor due for the existing solidarity of Princeton alumni, than to one of Dr. McCosh's own pupils, a man whose life as a graduate and as a trustee has been the representative example of unshaken loyalty to Princeton-Moses Taylor Pyne, of the class of 1877. Old Dr. McCosh's most ambitious dream remains to be mentioned. He had intended that the new studies he introduced into the curriculum should be eventually so grouped and combined that they would result in forming the studium generale of the traditional university. He believed that with the materials available he could have constructed a university of high order. Moreover, he was confident that this step would have been followed by an outflow of liberality which would have enabled him to give the institution wider range of usefulness in both the undergraduate and the graduate departments. But the realization of this dream was denied him. age fell on his willing frame; he had brought the College, as he said, to the very borders, and he left it to another to carry over into the land of promise. Advancing years led him to resign in 1888. Some time before this he had contemplated the step, and had been induced to retain the presidency by the appointment of Professor James Ormsbee Murray to the deanship of the College, thus relieving himself of the disciplinary burden. He was in his fifty-eighth year when he came to Princeton, and his years as president had been years of ceaseless activity that would have satisfied a far younger man. Until his death in 1894, he spent the remainder of his days in Princeton, a presence on which undergraduates who had never been his pupils gazed curiously when they saw him in his seat at Sunday chapel or met his massive stooped figure, with the great white head, under the arching trees of the Walk named after him. If Nassau Hall was the monument of Governor Belcher and President Burr, Dr. McCosh had but to look about him for his memorial; it was the new Princeton of the coming century. THE UNIVERSITY The Administration of President Patton. Special Students. Higher Degrees. New Buildings. The Honor System. The Sesquicentennial Anniversary. The Graduate School. Passing of Old Princeton. Alumni Representation. Upper-Class Clubs. The Administration of President Wilson. New Course of Study. Senior Council. Preceptorial Method of Instruction. The "Quad" Plan: The Graduate College. The Graduate Council. The Inauguration of President Hibben. The Constitution of the University. DR. MCCOSH's successor was found in the faculty. Born in Bermuda in 1843, educated at Knox College, Toronto, and at Princeton Seminary, after brief metropolitan pastorates the Reverend Doctor Francis Landey Patton had been called to the chair of theology at McCormick Seminary, whence Princeton Seminary had taken him in 1881. Since 1884 he had also occupied the chair of ethics in the College. He was inaugurated at commencement in 1888, the day Dr. McCosh delivered his farewell. During the fourteen years of Dr. Patton's administration the number of undergraduates rose from six hundred and three to one thousand three hundred and fifty-four, while the faculty was increased from forty to one hundred. During the same period seventeen new buildings were erected, of which seven significantly enough were dormitories. Although it is too soon to estimate at its proper value an administration which ended only a decade ago, yet it will be seen that processes were then set at work which have set an indelible stamp on Princeton. From this period, for instance, may be dated the modern development of the campus, the introduction of the English collegiate gothic into American university architecture, the opening of the School of Electrical Engineering, the introduction of new entrance requirements, and the revision of the course of study along lines which were to be perfected in the next administration, the stiffening of the requirements for the higher degrees, the adoption of the honor system in the conduct of examinations, the transformation of the alumni body into an intelligent condition of organized co-operation, the erection of the University Library, the celebration of the sesquicentennial 'anniversary of the founding of the College, the adoption of the university title, the inception of the Graduate College idea, and the grant of alumni representation on the board of trustees. The most notable step of progress associated with the administration of Dr. Patton was clearly foreshadowed in his inaugural delivered on the afternoon of the June day when Dr. McCosh recounted the work of his twenty years at Princeton. President Maclean, as we have seen, had continued in the ways of his predecessors without any attempt to reach after higher or more adventurous things. During the fifty years before him it had been tacitly agreed that the College was to be, like the original organ in the prayer-hall, "small tho' good," and the ambitions of President Smith's day had long been lost sight of. It is doubtful, as Dr. DeWitt has pointed out, whether in organizing medical courses and in opening a law school the authorities had really foreseen that they were making the experiment of an American university. These projects had been discarded after no very serious effort to develop them, the theological department had |