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the Government, and I want you to write a book about Roosevelt. He's just dead. He's in everybody's mind. You've been here a long time, you've seen him, you've known him well. I want you to write a book about it. Now, that's what I want you to do, and you ought to do it.”

I said, “Oh no, nonsense, I don't do that kind of thing.”

You had written in your life?

Yes, but it wasn't much of a book. I hadn't put much into it. People at Work--well, I hadn't put much back into it. That had been written because a woman I knew needed a job, and she had begged me to do it. She thought she could take my old speeches and my new speeches, and other things that she observed, and patch up something that I would be willing to sign. Well, I wasn't. I mean, when the end came, it didn't quite bust our friendship, but that was because I made a determined effort not to allow it to, and it was horrible, I thought. Terrible book. It was a patchwork job and obvious, but even then, what she had done to it was such cheesy, cheap, cheap- connective tissue that I couldn't stand it, and I rewrote a lot of it. I just tore out her handiwork and wrote other stuff which I could bear, but which was certainly not bright. I mean, it was not--well, it wasn't chatty. It didn't make a good book out of it, but at least it spared me the humiliation of a