If in the
course of the next three minutes you were not asked in a tone of utter
weariness, "My God! Is there much more of this?" there was a reasonable
chance that you might be allowed to read from the print a fifth or
possibly a fourth of what you had not summarized.
Dinner on the yacht passed in much the same way as lunch, except that
serious subjects and especially politics were taboo.
The meal hours were really the most trying experiences of the day. Each
of us went to the table with several topics of conversation carefully
prepared, with our pockets full of newspaper cuttings, notes and even
small reference books for dates and biographies.
But there was seldom any conversation in the proper sense; that is to
say, we were hardly ever able to start a subject going and pass it from
one to the other with a running comment or amplification, partly because
any expression of opinion, except when he, J. P., asked for it, usually
bored him to extinction, and partly because the first statement of any
striking fact generally inspired Mr. Pulitzer to undertake a searching
cross-examination of the speaker into every detail of the matter brought
forward, and in regard to every ramification of the subject.
I may relate an amusing instance of this: A gentleman who had been on
the staff, but had been absent through illness, joined us at Mentone for
a cruise in the Eastern Mediterranean.
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