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them, and he came from The New Yorker. He absolutely resented pictures because pictures took away from the space that he might use for his marvelous prose. He was a very good writer too.

How much and how often was the presence of Luce felt?

Well, he'd come down quite often in the early years. He also took over occasionally for three, four weeks at a time, edited the magazine, in the early years. Then, in the later years, when the magazine got much more complicated to put together because of use of color, and the fact that the magazine had gotten very fat from success, so that it was no longer possible to close--so that an end of week you were closing some sections on Tuesday, some sections on Thursday, some sections on Friday. Then you were closing advanced color sometimes six weeks ahead. Then fast color on a two week ahead schedule, i.e. the issue after this. I can remember after three or four years of absence when Harry came down and tried to edit the thing again. He just tangled up in the mechanics of closing. I think that was some time shortly after the war. I think that practically the last time that he ever tried to do it.

Then John decided that his time had come, and Harry decided that he needed an editorial director, and that John Billings should be it. John, I think, never liked the idea, felt that he was sort of a supernumerary, sitting up on Luce's floor, put him in charge of all the unimportant things, much less interesting than editing the magazine itself. He would occasionally sort of grumble. I saw a fair amount of him then. He would occasionally--at that point I was