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hours. He kept for himself a huge cellar and sold the other wines at a huge profit.

This was the kind of thing that Elliot loved to do. But the poor fellow threw away all of his money and died, I think, up in Providence, practically penniless.

There's a story more or less concerned with me. One day, Elliot was due at the office and we were laughing about his lying proclivities. I said, “You know, I bet I can make Elliot acknowledge a story that I will make up and that he will accept it as part of his autobiography,”--the way I had done with Bill Saroyan. So they said, “Let's see what you can do.” I knew that Elliot had.worked on a Boston newspaper, either the Traveler or the Herald or the Globe. I don't remember which. He had told me a lot of fish stories about those days. So I made up the story that at the same time they were running this column, they were running a comic strip about Peter Rabbit. You know Peter Rabbit. That's your generation.

Oh, yes. Absolutely.

So my story had Elliot going in to the editor and demanding a raise. The editor said, “We can't pay you any more. We're paying so much for comics now that we can't raise our feature writers. For instance, have you any idea what we're paying for Peter Rabbit.” So Elliot Paul angrily said, “You're robbing Paul to pay Peter.” Well, that wasn't a very good story, but it was the best I could think up at the moment.