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judges, we'll appoint committees, and I won't make any recommendations on the appointment of judges unless they pass standards that reformers would set up: everything the reformers had asked for years. I said, “Let's go and have lunch.” So we walked across the park to the Buffalo roadhouse, which is on Seventh Avenue South, a very nice tavern. And he said, “You walk so fast,” as we walked across Washington Square Park. It's an interesting sight because here he is, an Italian, me Jewish -- the two forces that had been fighting each other, not as Italian- Jewish but as regular-reform, and we had become good friends. And as we were walking along Washington Square South, he points to a building on Washington Square West, and I had not known this. He said, “That's where Carmine used to live. I used to take him up there regularly.” I did not know that. I may have erred in understanding him, because I know that Carmine for years when I had lived in the Village lived at 11 Fifth Avenue, where he still lives.

That's the end of that story except for the fact that I was then called by a reporter who said, “What's going to be your involvement in this race?” It was Frank Lynn, a nice fellow. And I said, “I'm not going to support Begun.” This is a rough paraphrase: “I don't think Rossetti is a bad guy and for a more basic reason -- we can't beat him. He will win.”