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It's heady wine, I must tell you. It overcomes a great many of your hesitations and scruples when you see that money waved in front of you. I've always said, “There's nothing like a certified check to change people's minds.”

What happened to Tony Wimpfheimer? Did he object at all?

He didn't have anything to say. He was a minority stockholder. But the deal made him happy, too, He was a very rich boy. He inherited a lot of money from his grandfather, a “tycoon in the velvet market.”

Did he participate when you went public?

Naturally. He participated to the extent of his stock holdings, of course.

Random House stock came out at $11.25 a share and began going up right away. It was $14 the day after it came out because there was a surprising demand for it. I was known from “What's My Line?" and my columns and everything else. People liked me and bought the stock so it started going up. It made me feel more responsible to the buyers than ever.

Well, from then on, I was publishing with one eye and watching our stock with the other. It was over-the-counter. This was just the beginning of the wild phase in all publishing stock. We issued ours just about the time that the whole speculation was starting. Then several other firms went public.