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obligation excessive. He was a strict constructionist respecting any commitment, personal or professional. National Review continues to be the center of my professional life, and I once calculated that it takes up about forty percent of my time, even though I am reliably in the office only three days every fortnight, during which we take an issue to press. The balance of the work for National Review is done elsewhere, in automobiles, or over the telephone, or aboard airplanes, or at home. The magazine was conceived as a vehicle for responsible, informed, and inspired conservative thought, and it has been exactly that, playing a not insignificant role, I am quick to inform its patrons if caught with their zeal flagging, in its influence on charter-subscriber Ronald Reagan. So, through the corridor opening the door to my own office, greeting Dorothy McCartney, the young and resourceful head of research, who has the office on the left, and Susan Stark, equally young and pretty, who helps with research and correspondence, in the office on the right. The incomparable Frances Bronson's office is adjacent to mine, and the door is now open, so I greet her (probably we have spoken ten times already today over the telephone). She tells me that Bill Rusher is waiting for me.
    Bill Rusher keeps a little appointment book, and no computer is programmed with greater exactitude. When our appointment is for three o'clock, I used to amuse myself by telling whoever was in the room that if he was curious as to when it would be 3:01, he had only to wait until the intercom rang. At 3:01 Bill advises me that it's after three. In the twenty-five years of our association Bill Rusher has made no effort to change these little habits, and there are three explanations for this. The first and least interesting is that in his case it would be like trying to forget he was right-handed—that, simply, is the way he is (he once told me that if he opens the door to the bathroom and finds the light accidentally already on, momentum will cause him to turn the light off , before ratiocination sets in, to advise him that if the objective is illumination, and the light is already on, then you shouldn't touch the switch at all). The second explanation is that having associated so long with persons of informal habits (I am probably the worst of the sinners, though one or two of National Review's editors are not far behind), he feels the need to compensate for us by watching the clock, and living according to its beat. The third explanation is that, having come to be accepted as something of an eccentric, he rather cultivates the idiosyncrasies, which are annoying for the first ten years or so, but finally grow endearing.
    In any event, I walk back through the corridor, past the elevator to the opposite end of the building, where Bill's suite has been for lo these many years. In front of him, neatly labeled and stacked, are his files. They are where they are for a reason, and you must not on any account pull this-here file over to that-there end of the table. I sit, and we move instantly into the problem of our lease.
    Our landlord, an elderly and attractive attorney named Fred Scholem, told Bill a week ago that he would be requiring an increase for a lease renewal in December. Both Bill and I knew that dread moment would come, and braced for it, but the news would have caused Shylock to raise his eyebrows: Mr. Scholem wanted a three hundred percent increase over the price we were paying under our current lease.
    National Review , like all journals of opinion, survives on charity. When we first got the news about the rent, we made inquiries—and learned that the square-foot rate Scholem was asking was in fact competitive for the area. Next I went to several brownstones and offices that had rentable space of ten thousand square feet, our requirement. The rental offices were asking about the same as Fred Scholem was asking, and the brownstones ranged in price from