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Dr. Perry is proud of the democracy he has brought to Exeter. The faculty is practically self-governing, and so, to a large extent, is the student body. Perry abolished fraternities five years ago, because he thought they were too clannish. Exeter spends $105,000 a year on scholarships, has a man searching out likely material among "coal miners and C.I.O. sons," not just to leaven the richer students, but to give poorer ones a good education. Says Perry: "Poor boys can learn a lot from rich boys. There are smart rich boys just as there are dumb poor boys." The schooling Exonians get now includes art, music and science as concessions to modern education, but two years of Latin are still required. "I'm not a brilliant man," says Dr. Perry. "It's the brilliant men who get in trouble. Like that fellow at Chicago" (Chancellor Robert M. Hutchins). He adds, characteristically: "The innovators make great contributions, however." All of Exeter's boys, like college men, are free to wander through the town, call on girls, and even smoke (if they are over 16). Likely as not in their wandering they will meet Dr. Perry careening wildly up the wrong side of some street in his battered jalopy. If they do, they are expected to tip their hats (as they do to all "profs"). In his office, at leisure moments, Dr. Perry munches from a supply of malted milk tablets in his desk, pastes promising after-dinner jokes in a black scrapbook. A favorite: the student from a progressive school who went home with an A in "sandpile." He is one of the best after-dinner speakers in New England.
Dr. Perry asked to be retired by June 1946. He plans to live in Boston, where for ten years he has been president of the hallowed Tavern Club. There he will be just across the Charles River from his distinguished brother, 16 years older, Harvard professor emeritus Bliss Perry, onetime editor of the Atlantic Monthly, who lives in Cambridge. For his successor, Exeter is looking over a list of 100 men. It wants a man like Perry, but younger: between 35 and 45, of college-president caliber.