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sure they would have nominated Charley and me, because we weren't interested enough in details or “meetings.” We were too interested in the world around us. There's a moral in this. I think even the most ambitious young man should not be so engrossed in the one thing he's doing as to not know what's going on outside. We had that wild interest in everything.

That's what makes a good publisher really.

And that's what Charley Allen did, too. Now, here I was working in Wall Street and beginning to speculate a little bit on my own.

That's what I was wondering.

We had a pretty good market those days. This was 1919, 1920. The market was starting to head up. The war was over, and things had gotten settled, and the country was beginning to expand at a great clip. There was no great art to making money in the market when you were right down there and could move fast. I got to the point where I was seriously thinking of buying a seat on the Stock Exchange. In those days it was selling for somewhere around $100,000, but I had made quite a little money on the side. I also had this nest egg that I'd inherited.

Had you been investing all along while you were in college?