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something for a thousand dollars, and when it was finished he'd send you a bill for $3,000 and when you'd say, “You were supposed to do this for a thousand,” he'd say, “Well, I figured wrong.” I mean he wasn't the least bit abashed. But it was a beautiful catalogue.

Well, now, did you push on the selling?

Donald and I did our own business. We owned it. And the two of us would take turns going to Boston and Washington and Philadelphia. And when we came in to sell our books, we were the owners. That meant that the bookseller was meeting the actual publishers. They liked that. We weren't just salesmen now. We were starting in for ourselves and beginning to be heard about.

Were you able to get stores that had never sold M.L. before to begin selling it?

Yes, we got Modern Library into chain stores. Liveright had never bothered with them. Supermarkets were just beginning, and there were new markets developing. Nobody had ever bothered selling Modern Library. It was taken for granted by Liveright. It wasn't exciting enough. We were giving our entire time to it, except for the time we spent playing bridge and backgammon and playing golf. But it was our whole business.