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Well, let me finish this.

Some of the problems with that big dictionary were solved, as I say, by the deal with Time-Life. They sold almost a quarter of a million copies before the official publication date. It was an enormous help to us. The Book- of-the-Month and Time-Life together gave us a big chunk of our original outlay back before the dictionary came out.

There's one hilarious story about this big dictionary. There was a question over a few dirty words that were listed-- you know, which ones had to be included and which ones just belonged in the argot of slang and gutter language. I've always been, as I think I've told you, against censorship of any kind. I think that all these words belonged in, but there was quite an argument over a couple of them. We had one session at Random House which I will never forget, where we invited nine very important English professors from various universities during one of the holidays. I think it was Thanksgiving. We paid their expenses for a trip to New York just to talk about this. This was how careful we were about everything.

One of the professors was a lovely lady. I won't identify her, but she came from one of the big universities, and is a great English authority. She looked like a Norman Rockwell picture on a Saturday Evening Post cover--gray hair pulled back in a bun, rosy cheeks, and dressed very simply: a dignified, lovely lady. Here we were talking about these filthy words, and finally she got annoyed with the whole