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hit. Horace Liveright one day said to Beatrice and me: “Michael Arlen--didn't we have a submission here by Michael Arlen last year?" And Beatrice and I looked at each other and chorused, “We don't remember, Horace.” And he said, “I could have sworn we talked about him.”

Well, Beatrice and I remembered very well that we had turned down a book by Arlen called Piracy. We fled from the office and ran upstairs and pulled out our reports and destroyed them. So now when I hear about a book and say, “I could swear this book was at Random House,” and there's no report, I say, “Who destroyed it? Don't give me any of that. I used to do it myself.

Horace forgot about Michael Arlen. But the next book Mr. Arlen wrote after These Charming People which, after all, was short stories, was a book called The Green Hat. Oh, this was an enormous best seller. And again Horace said, “I could swear we had a book by him in here.” Katherine Cornell played it on the stage, and it ran about two years--with Leslie Howard. It was the reigning best seller for a whole year. Everybody misses a good one once in a while--but how we hate to admit a boner!

Liveright was a great gambler. He was doing books that the old staid publishers wouldn't touch. And he was doing advertising that the old publishers wouldn't do. He had that flair. He introduced big ads with black, black type and eyecatching borders. That was unknown in the publishing business.

One selling experience I remember was walking into the