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him, which was very sympathetic to the needs of medical research. Actually, Stevenson for some reason or another has never really understood this, the needs in the field of health, as he's been extremely healthy himself and has not had anybody he's felt very close to who's been acutely ill, other than his wife, and her problems have been largely of an emotional nature.

That's a recurring theme, isn't it? One's interest is based...

One's own experience, you know. His mother and father died in the early '30s, and as I recall died of circulatory problems; one had a stroke and the other had something else. But whatever they died of he was told that it was the will of God, and he used to say to me when I first tried to talk to him about health problems and the national interest, “Oh, listen, I really believe in herbs and roots.” And he really most of his life has been remarkably well and has had very few health problems himself.

Well, in any case, in the summer of '55 he and Will Blair came to visit me for a weekend at my farm in Amenia, with Florence Mahoney. And we invited several other people to dine with us that night. I forget now who they were. It was the first time that he or Bill had been at my farm in the country and Bill thought it was so pretty that he said, “Mary, are you sure you're a Democrat. Most Democrats don't live like this.”

Florence Mahoney had a very serious conversation with Stevenson in the car driving up to the country, and after this conversation she characterized him in a way that was, I fear, very