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Harvard has eight "final" clubs, whose members set the pace for the Harvard accent, Harvard "indifference." The Pore is the most exclusive and most awesome of the eight. Preliminary skimming is performed by the Hasty Pudding Club, which each year elects 45 sophomores as Harvard's social cream. The final clubs pick most of their members from the Pudding. The Pore is most likely to elect the sons and relatives of old Porkies, closely examines each candidate's family tree. But congeniality counts as much as pedigree, and the three to 18 members whom the Pore elects from each class must be jolly good fellows. (Its definition of good fellowship, the leftist Harvard Progressive recently remarked, "rests on a good liquor capacity and a full agreement on the meaning of the word 'meatball.' ") The Pore abounds in crew men and polo players, seldom picks football players or Crimson editors.
Harvard's new house plan, by which undergraduates are expected to eat in the houses, has not changed Porkies' habits: they still have dinner every evening at the club. There they solemnly observe certain traditions. One of these is a crew song. At a certain point, as they sing "I float like a feather," members whip handkerchiefs out of their pockets and toss them into the air to float.
A Porcellian wears a small gold pig on his watch chain, a long tweed jacket, tight flannel pants and a short haircut, generally contents himself with a gentleman's three Cs and a D in his studies. Most inviolable tradition: Once a Porcellian always a Porcellian. Porkies keep up their Porkie friendships all their lives, go back religiously to the annual Porkie banquet at which new members are initiated. When a Porkie marries, fellow Porkies always gather round him after the ceremony and sing the club song. From the Pore's clubrooms, non-Porcellians are religiously excluded. In the last 20 years only five men have been excepted from this rule: the Prince of Wales, Al Smith, Herbert Hoover, under Secretary of the Treasury Roswell Magill and onetime Budget Director Lew Douglas, who were wined & dined in the club.
Last week the Pore's new members, un-blindfolded, stole eager glances around their sanctum: at the pair of ivory tusks, brought by Teddy Roosevelt from Africa, the curios gathered from the corners of the earth by many another Porkie, the "busybodies" (V-shaped mirrors) at the windows by which Porkies may sit in their chairs and watch the street, the Long Room, lined from floor to ceiling with books, the banquet chairs, each with the name plate of its donor on the back. Presiding at the banquet was the Pore's grand marshal, Maine's ex-Governor William Tudor Gardiner. On this first occasion, the new members were allowed to drink only sherry.