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Reminiscences of Dan Longwell,
from Doubleday to Life*

OGDEN NASH
 

T
 

)/'' ]f ^HIS is more difficult than the public speaking I have done
before because I am talking about a very old and dear
friend whose companionship and advice were golden to
me during many years of my life. Let me start by saying that one
evening after work—around 1927, I should say, or 1928—Dan
Longwell and I were sitting in his room in a boarding house in
Garden City about half a mile from the Country Life Press, the
headt]uarters then of Doubleday's. At that time, under Dan's
guidance and inspiration, I was apt to work until 10 or 10: 30 at
night, with pleasure. This was about 10:30 and we had just fin¬
ished reading in that week's issue of The Saturday Review the
invocation of "John Brown's Body" by Stephen Vincent Benet.
There were some lines that impressed both of us grearly. Wt re-
peared them to each other. Among them were the lines:

Thames and all the rivers of the kings
Flowed into iVIississippi and were drowned.

Now Mr. Churchill, or Sir ^Vinston, as the Thames, did not end
up by being drowned in rhe .Mississippi, but I must say that when

* An address given at the meeting of the Friends of the Columbia Libraries on
February 4,1970.

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