On the departure of the hated proctor, a broad grin would spread over the countenance of the joker and in a little while the scene would be repeated with variations.

In order to render historical the origin of the club and also to give it a classic touch, they decided to call it the Porcellian from Latin "porcus".

[12] Despite the exclusivity and mystique, some, like National Review columnist/editor, Ronald Reagan speechwriter, and Dartmouth emeritus professor of English Jeffrey Hart, have noted the club's modest physical and metaphorical character.

Finally, in 1881, it determined to tear down the old house where it had so long met, on Harvard street and build a new structure its site.

The new structure is of brick, handsomely trimmed in stone, and rises to the height of four stories, with about seventy or eighty feet of frontage on Harvard street.

Two large stores claim a part of the ground floor, but they do not encroach on the broad and handsome entrance to the club's apartments.

According to relative Sheffield Cowles, however, FDR, in his late thirties, declared, perhaps hyperbolically, that not being "punched" by the Porc was "the greatest disappointment in his life".

The great desire of every student is to become a member of it…the doings of the club are shrouded in secrecy…All that can be said by a stranger who has been privileged to step behind the scenes is that the mysteries are rites which can be practised without much labor and yield a pleasure which is fraught with no unpleasant consequences.

In speculating as to why Richardson was chosen, he writes, "The thirty-four-year-old possessed one great advantage over the other candidates: as a popular Harvard undergraduate he had been a member of several clubs, including the prestigious Porcellian; thus he needed no introduction to the rector, Phillips Brooks, or five of the eleven-man building committee—they were all fellow Porcellian members".

[6] More recent information on the membership of the Porcellian Club may be found in a 1994 Harvard Crimson article by Joseph Mathews.

He writes, "Prep school background, region and legacy status do not appear to be the sole determinants of membership they may once have been, but ... they remain factors".

According to a notice published in The Harvard Crimson on March 20, 1909: A gate is to be erected at the entrance to the Yard between Wadsworth House and Boylston Hall.

The gate prominently features the club's symbol, a boar's head, directly above the central arch and is a famous Harvard landmark.

According to a note to the obituary of the club steward on Monday, April 1, 1929, in Time magazine, "The Porcellian roster includes Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt Jr., Poet Oliver Wendell Holmes, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Nicholas Longworth, Poet James Russell Lowell, Richard Henry (Two Years Before the Mast) Dana, Novelist Owen Wister, John Jay Chapman."

A 1940 Time article said:The Pork had as members James Russell Lowell, the two famed Oliver Wendell Holmeses (the author of Autocrat of the Breakfast Table and the Supreme Court Justice), Owen Wister, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, President Theodore Roosevelt (the Franklin Roosevelts go Fly Club).

Among its living members are Massachusetts' Governor Leverett Saltonstall, Congressman Hamilton Fish, Yachtsman Harold Stirling Vanderbilt, Poloist Thomas Hitchcock Jr., U. S. Ambassador to Italy William Phillips, Journalist Joseph Alsop, Richard Whitney, now of Sing Sing Prison, of whom all good Porkies prefer not to speak.