Dear Art: My query concerning the development at Gettysburg College was prompted mostly by curiosity--the rest of it by my uncertainty as to how the matter had been left. By all means do nothing whatsoever about the matter. If anything at all is to be done, the initiative should be taken by the College.1
The other points you mention in your letter of the 20th we talked over when I saw you on Saturday.2
Mr. Heckett has certainly made a very courteous suggestion and I should think it would be completely satisfactory to Slats.3
Mrs. Whitman tells me she has forward[ed] to you an excerpt from a letter from a friend of mine, Kiefer Mayer.4 (It just occurs to me that he, or at least his wife, may be friends of yours and Ann's. She used to be Lucy Brooks.)5 The matter of performance in weight-gaining tests is something that was brought to my attention quite a while back. Almost two years ago, I visited the Front Royal Agricultural Station where they have made the most exhaustive tests on this kind of thing. Norman Smith does something similar at his ranch in Colorado. However, his performance tests, as I understand it, are made on the bulls themselves. If, in their first year, their rate of gain is unsatisfactory, he gets rid of them. I suppose this is on the theory that if a bull himself is a fast gainer, then his calves are likely to be such.
I did not read Kiefer's letter and I do not know just exactly what he is proposing.
With warm personal regard, Sincerely
