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What luck!

It was an incredible break. I don't say that Messner would have been able to persuade Liveright not to make the deal, but it might have turned the tide, because that left only a lawyer who was getting tired of the argument.

Where did you get the extra money?

Well, when I was at Columbia in my last year, my junior year, I was by this time editor of the Jester, columnist on the Spectator and a member of the Student Board. I was a big shot, I figured! Well, one of the courses I took in my junior year was called Appreciation of Music, and the man who gave this course was Daniel Gregory Mason, a very famous man in his field. His was one of those absolute cinch courses where you got two point credit for practically no work. Mason used to play classical music on the piano and I used to write Jester jokes and never listen to him. I remember he played Beethoven's Fifth one day--you know, it starts with those four sharp notes. As usual, I was writing some copy for Jester. But this day at the end of playing this selection, to my horror he passed out paper and told everybody to write their impressions or reactions to this glorious composition. All I had heard were those first four notes. So I wrote an appreciation which he read out in class the next time as an example of someone who obviously didn't know the technical end of music but had a real true