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There's an amusing story that's connected with a book that we published in 1938 called the Tides of Mont- Saint-Michel by Roger Vercel, a Frenchman, a book having something to do with Mont-Saint-Michel of course and the great tides. It was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. None of us had ever met Roger Vercel, who never came to this country as a matter of fact.

Do you remember how you got the book at all? Was it just sent in?

Somebody did, I think, send it in. We thought that it was going to be one of those minor publications where we would get good reviews, period. Suddenly it was the Book- of-the-Month Club. In those days they were more daring than they are now. Today the Book-of-the-Month Club principally publishes sure best-sellers, you know. Their selections--you can almost tell in advance what they're going to be. But then they were really looking for new things.

And literature too.

Yes. This was a very good book as a matter of fact.

None of us had met Vercel, of course. He had never been here. We got a letter one day. Bob Haas, who spoke French rather well, and read it very fluently, was the one who had discovered this book. Maybe he had read it in