Thank you, Mark.
It is good to know that some people still remember the beginning of it all
Sol was so happy in the country raising aphgans, and his truly wonderful
black one who won best hound and then best of show. The dog knew what was
happening and he enjoyed it all. His picture on cover of Life shows him
sitting on a block of ice and laughing. He was as happy as Sol and Sunny
Shay, the co-owners. When he came back to the Bowker office of Publishers'
Weekly, he was ashen. Mildred{Smith} got up from her desk - she guessed what
had happened, and said:"He won". Sol nodded.
Mr. Melcher had spent weeks convincing Sol to come down to the City and
work on the new magazine, AB. It cost Mr. Melcher a lot of pride to do this
but as a t rue Yankee, he knew what was important. He invited Sol to the
Algonquin for lunch and the enormous pop-overs they had then, he promised him
he could have a bottle of brandy openly on the top of his desk, and, most
important, he could report directly to Mr. Melcher. These two men knew that
the latter request made good sense because Mr. Melcher had been a bookseller
and understood the antiquarian part of the business. One other thing Sol
requested and Mr. M.assented to rather eagerly: he could haave three months
to research the old booktrade magazines in the PW office to determine why
they failed. He told me it turrned out to be fairly easy: Greed. They all at
one time or in one way or another had competed with their subscribers. That
was why Sol never bought nor sold a book for the twenty-five years he was
connected with AB.
Thank you and see you during Bib Week
mary ann