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A daily book review are in the course of his occupation reads at least three books a week for eleven months thus over a period of eight or nine years he would have read about twelve hundred books which is the same number that Rex Stout had read by the time he was ten years old. The rest of his career has been quite as prodigious as this beginning promised wanting to acquire capital so that he could devote himself to full time writing Mr Stout invented and put into effect the school banking system which was installed in four hundred cities and towns of this country as an author Mr Stout has had fifty three books published in thirty six years most of these have featured a private detective named Nero Wolfe and his young assistant Archie Goodwin. Who with their first appearance in one hundred thirty four in novel called faired alarms assumed immediately the reality of that other famous pair of Holmes and Watson The difference is that those lodgings on Baker Street are no longer occupied but you'd find it hard to convince Any recs doubt reader that there is not a real Nero Wolfe today in a real brownstone on a real West Thirty fifth Street and after this latest novel The doorbell rang you would find it hard to convince the F.B.I. to. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if out there among you of this moment Archie Goodwin might be taking notes not narrow will he doesn't get around much. One of those characteristics and hobbies are well known his general immobility in body not in mind is God made tastes is be a drinking his orchid growing I'd like to say a word this being the kind of occasion it is about his reading now Nero Wolfe is not the only private detective in fiction who reads books there must be at least four or five others. But Nero Wolfe reads books by living authors which means authors who are trying to make a living in the course of a case he may have time to read three or four of these and the titles and authors I mentioned in the descriptions of his cases this is another instance of the support and encouragement given to America's working writers by Nero Wolfe creator. My president the president of the authors League of America as director thank you. Thank you. Mr Dog you all you have some people. You know if you don't mind I'm going to regard you as a committee on grievances because I have a beef. Thirty seven. You know thirty seven years ago I decided to quit that monkey business of trying to pile up some money and write some stories so in the next to five years I rolled five up. And there it was all right I got a letter from Bertrand Russell who was in the got a large and from my Some woman in France named Gaudet car whom I later found out was the current friend of H.G. Wells' and he got mad about it and a lot of little nice things like that happened but it wasn't going to hot because I realized if I went on trying to make serious comments comments about human character and human problems I would never turn out to be a Dostoyevsky or about Zach so to hell with it I quit. And I decided just to write stories and to try to make them as good stories as I could and the very first one I wrote I happened to have been of the couple of characters named Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin who were private detectives and that I liked what people said about the book and about them so I decided to go on trying my best to write good stories and I went on and it was all right I mean some copies got sold even in hard covers and there and I got a few nice letters and pretty good reviews course we all know what book reviewers are so. I was never really disgruntled or unhappy about it it is probably true of writers justices of nearly anybody else that one of the conditions might be the condition that they would like most to reach is a situation where when he or she enters Grand Central Station or a theater lobby or almost any public place they can overhear somebody muttering to somebody else that's him already even that's he. Well. It went along pretty well I wrote what I thought not were great stories but pretty good ones and they sold pretty well in hard covers and they all got came out in different editions of paperbacks and they got translated into. Twenty two different foreign languages including Senator Lees. Which is one of my. Many distinctions that I wrote the only mystery story that's ever been translated into Sinhalese which is the language spoken and written on the on Salon. And that one respect at least I have it all over Agatha Christie and her role Stanley Gardner. But. I was never annoyed by hearing too many people muttering that Sam Well then what happened what happened was that I decided to write another story as I do each year and as always it was the two central characters were to be Nero off an arch a good one and it was to be a story in which they would come in conflict with the. Officers of the law but I had got not fed up with them but just a little bit off of the New York homicide squad and the district attorney of Westchester County and other farmer antagonists opponents of Nero orphan Archie Goodwin I decided to use a new one while who could be could be a CIA It could be and I decided why not it would be the F.B.I. and a man named J. Edgar Hoover Well that was always in my mind I just thought it would be fun to use them for the opponents in a story instead of a Inspector Kramer no matter WHO So I want to head wrote the story and all I had in mind while I was writing the story was to try to make it as I always I was good at as good a story as I could while it got it got in the galleys and the first thing that happened was that I got a telephone call from a man named one of the first things on my name Caskey Stinnett. And he said that Clay Felker had suggested to him the idea of possibly writing a piece. About me in my new book which was to be published in about a month that it never happened before and I thought by gosh at last I've written such a good story that somebody wants to write something about it even before it's published anyway Mr Stinnett came up to Brewster and we talked for a couple of hours and not long after that the piece that he wrote appeared in the magazine of the Herald Tribune and then letters began to come this is even before the book was out or very shortly after and then letters began to come. Kind of letters I had never got before I had gotten a lot of letters before as every story writer does about telling me asking the please to tell this eighty two year old woman in Seattle Washington with the shingles please to tell her whether New York all of use it or a shower. There is. That kind of research. But when this piece came out I began to get an entirely different kind of letter first I got a letter from a newspaper man in New Jersey the three paragraphs and the first paragraph said there Mr Stout I had just read the piece about you and your book by Caskey still is in the Herald Tribune paragraph Thomas Jefferson thank ship Thomas Paine Thanks you James Madison thanks you paragraph and I thank you. Well I had a Lucian of gobby Asli of writing when I asked him what was wrong with Benjamin Franklin George Washington. But and here I'm coming to my grievance that was the first instance of a kind of reaction that I'd never had before after all of the year he's years of writing stories. During the following two or three months and it's still going on I was asked to go on television programs and radio programs and to grant interviews. It's wonderful to be asked to grant an interview to a newspaper man or woman from Toronto our London are no matter where and I don't think it's fair the. If it had come to a point where I wrote so good a story that people could no longer just pick now and then buy a copy and have reviews about it written about the book and so on as a story well that would have been wonderful but no. There was really some for flying there was really a lot of dust kicked up and why because I'd written an unusually good story no because I'd had the nerve to poke J. Edgar Hoover in the nose. I wouldn't buy don't think I would mind that at all if when I had originally started to write the book I had done so with the idea of exposing our showing up our fighting the F.B.I. and Mr Hu or that was my idea at all I just wanted to I just wanted to write a good story but it's no longer like that it now is come to the point where obviously in the minds and perhaps even breasts of nine thousand four hundred twelve American citizens My fellow citizens I am regarded as the guy who is going to abolish the F.B.I. and Mr Hoover. Helped. Him I really don't care for that job. It's true that. I'm glad I took a little lick it's true that I think that J. Edgar Hoover is one of the most objectionable people in our country today. It's true that it is too bad that we do not have a national federal bureau of investigation that really operates karma competently on a professional level and it's too bad that the. That the great egocentrism of one man is what has prevented this from having a vet and if I have helped a little bit to get some competent cop like a Vincent Broderick like a like a Francis Adams a good cop in charge of our Federal Bureau of Investigation instead of that bird here I would enjoy having done that very much and indeed all it's true that I've told you that I'm making a grievance and I want I want to do to be the grievance committee I admit that that was not a completely honest and candid statement maybe that's what I want to do instead of trying to write good stories maybe out of being a professional crusader maybe out of take out after organizations and not pay much attention really to whether they're doing more harm than good or more good than harm but just go after him on general principles that have been Next time I'm going to start being after them are writing another story and maybe this time how to take out after the other Salvation Army. Or the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Are the Boy Scouts. Or the John Birch Society. Are they. Are the kook Klux Klan. Or the Women's Christian Temperance that you. All think that are and decide what to do about it very. Gagan stop taking notes the evidence is in. And actress is all the people she has played so I could be introducing today among others at least three queens of Egypt Scotland and England and the Grand Duchess of Imperial Russia as well as a co-captain analysis at the fire. Mrs Antrobus who is every woman and Maggie who knew what every woman knows an actress is all the people she might play with this has genius this opens I'm limited prospect so I don't know who might be introducing an actress is herself a self that contains all these other lives and possibilities of lives but lives its own it is this life that Miss Hayes describes in her book A Gift of joy a life of love and growth and the finding of new dimensions of understanding of the combination of hard work and quiet faith with which personal and professional challenges I met of the people in the places and the books that are brought to her life the gift she describes in the title we had hoped to have this house with us earlier this season but she has just returned after two months in Japan Korea and the Philippines where under the auspices of the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs she's been taking part in seminars and readings with school and drama groups in that area it turns out after all to have been a matter of excellent timing. For what better gift of joy on this St Valentine's Day of nineteen sixty six when presenting to you the heart warming heart winning Helen Hayes. I have. Thank you very much is a beautiful introduction and did you ever hear a dream talking Well I'm one because the fact that I am up here in the company of two honest to goodness authors addressing you people as a writer. Seems to me the most incredible and preposterous dream that I ever was a part of I had nestled cozily into a lot of different roles in my long and audacious career but so far in this role of writer I haven't been able to find a comfortable position. We're going to. Have houses that have. Never. Been there really that's queuing writers and. I'm still. At sea but still. Manfully going about it going everywhere I'm asked in secret delight that I'm being asked I just told Mr Whitney and direct Stout that my husband whom I quote frequently in the book as having straightened me out. When it was required once said to me that I went. To too many things and I accepted too many invitations and he had a suspicion that I just like to be asked places and never considered selecting but just went wherever I was asked I protested of course against those and he said no it's the truth and when I die I mean when you if I outlive you I'm going to have put on your tombstone God called up and Helen said yes I can come. Well. Here I am right up here. A friend of mine sensing that my self image as an actress was stubbornly refusing to yield to the suggestion that I had become literary. Admonished me and now you would Helen just remember just remember to think of yourself as an author but all my previous conditioning even though I've tried very hard my all of of and respect for fine writers and the fact that I married one and lived with him for twenty seven happy and wonderful years this respect and this devotion to the writer and his great gift. Has prevented me from ever being able to. Take on that role with ease and so having begged my friends forbearance I appear before you now not as an author but as an actress who has participated in that currently obligate Tory experience of writing a book now I enjoyed that experience and I confess it and I'm quite happy with the book. Of course the book I can say that I wrote. That book was distilled from my cluttered and confused mind through the orderly channels of Louis funks and it was Louis funk bless him who tied it up for me my thinking I must confess that it gave me a chance though and I I joined it very much to air out my life a little and to express some of the ideas that I've been wanting to express and at the same time. It gave me a wonderful chance to articulate my gratitude to some of my favorite writers of playing poetry essay novels for getting me sustenance and hope and courage those writers that I have loved are those who hear the thousand nightingales which ones we thought we heard that's a quotation it's. It's from a speech from James M. Berry It isn't in my book and I wish it were I didn't remember it in time the thousand nightingales which we once thought we heard the dreams we once dreamed and suddenly can no longer dream who go on dreaming them for us our writers at least I hope they will pleasant dreams seem to be a bit out of fashion nowadays which is such a loss even the most dire tragedy of Europe the D's or Shakespeare is a pleasant dream in the sense that although heroes the fallen. The world is somehow set straight at the end the balance between good and evil has been restored evil defeated just think what a novelty a message like that would represent in a contemporary play people in fact a gentleman came up to me as we were waiting to come in here today he was about the thousandth of so who were asked me if I really retired and my answer is always the same NEVER I'm going to come back gratefully wagging my tail just as soon as somebody offers me a good part in a play that doesn't depress me. To a. Well what is this book that Lois funk and I have written I think that any of you who've read it already know that it is a kind of an. Impressionistic autobiography it's really. A Some Asian of myself and it's a period of gestation would have shamed an elephant. For fourteen years fourteen years I've been promising Lewis funk that if I ever. Or whenever I found of form that was acceptable to me for a book dealing with my life I go to work with him at once in one thousand nine hundred eighty two louis funk had come to me from the National Foundation for polio who would ask him to approach me about writing an autobiography. Through him. And the proceeds were to go to the foundation and. It was to a way it make people more aware of the scourge of polio and it was the last push before the discovery of the Salk vaccine and money was greatly needed and so I allowed myself to. Work for a whole year with Lois the two of us work very hard I hated every minute of it but I'm sure Lois didn't have a very good time about it either. Then. The book came to us and manuscript I still wasn't able to. Make a decision within my heart about it and I waited like a foolish woman I waited until it got into the galley stage and then I bought it off I couldn't face the public airing of my private woes it's a sad thing but it's true that the anguish of public figures is more newsworthy than their joys I had learned that when a tragedy befell our family and I was besieged at once by the magazines and the press and the worthy causes and I had succumbed to some of those worthy causes particularly the National Foundation for polio and I allowed a loud myself to be used as a temporary mean for their fund collection but I bought at that book I don't know for sure why but perhaps it was because. It was a sob story and I had been raised from my earliest childhood as an entertainer whose life had been dedicated to taking people out of themselves to lifting this periods and are stretching their spirits perhaps that's it perhaps it's that I had always understood that professionals performers and above all proud actors never complained never explained never asked for sympathy if there is a credo in the theater if there is something that is almost. Synonymous with the Hippocratic Oath. I think it is a short phrase and it says all ways make it look easy so I did an unworthy and shocking thing to my good friend who had written a beautiful and sensitive book I would recall that book with drew it from publication and for these fourteen years it has hurt me very much and so I've been scrounging around within myself to find the right thing the right way of telling a story about me I knew I could never write a straight autobiography and so it came after fourteen years of struggle in search and this strange cure your book is the result it's a gift of love to a public with whom I've had a long warm friendship because I couldn't find a play that I wanted to approach them with because our lovely relationship. I was in danger of being broken by my in activity I think I hit upon this as a means of reaching those people that I truly. Hold with great affection in my heart and so the book has gone out to them to you and it is the sum of me and I hope you are treated kindly and I hope it reaches some of you with the love that I that I gave to it way back in June before the book had been published I went down to the American Booksellers Association to address them they asked me so I came and. And I was good and scared. But I had an inspiration even in the midst of the year of the really mean you all. Had lunch and I I remember I think Shakespeare came down tapped me on the shoulder and said here is hell. Which he does always do to us theater folk and so. I addressed these booksellers into whose hands my book was going in the words of Portia when she said Midget herself to her love the book has passed through their hands and into the hands of the readers and so now again. With the collaboration of Shakespeare I address the readers in Porsche's words paraphrased of course you see me dear readers where I stand such as I am. Though for myself alone I would not be ambitious in my wish to wish myself much better yet for you I would be troubled twenty times myself up thousand times more fair ten thousand times more rich if only to stand high in your account I could by virtue beauties livings friends exceed that count but the for some of me is some of nothing which determine grows is and unless and right unschooled on practiced happy in this she is not yet so old but she may learn happier than these She is not bred so dull but she can learn and how do you stop all ears but her gentle spirit commits itself to yours to be directed as from her lawyers her governors Kings thank you and. No Douglas was appointed as associate justice of the Supreme Court by President Roosevelt and I do better now I'm after an early career that included those on the law tackle those of Columbia and here universities and as first commission and I'm chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission he is famous for the vigor and cogency with which he is top fills his judicial duties his famous also for his wide traveling is in the wilder places of this earth and for the many exciting books he has written about those adventures he is fighting stunts like the conservative he says he is to preserve and protect the rep of the dwindling wilderness areas that still exist in America and has written a wilderness bill of rights Justice Douglas comes to us today to discuss the topic of intense concern to the American people. An issue that has consumed those since the founding of the republic an issue that still gives rise both to reasoned disagreement and violent emotionalism and that it's been the subject of sudden recent and momentous decisions of the United States Supreme Court those decisions involved the use of Bible reading and official prayers in public schools but behind them looms the broader problem of the relationship of church and state in a constitutional democracy I am privileged to present the on of the William O. Douglas associate justice of the United States Supreme Court justice. Mr Chairman. Friends and. I listened very intently at the list of agencies that wrecked Stout is going to expose. And I was greatly relieved that the Supreme Court is not on his list. I remember the first time I left the court in person I was a young lawyer I had been practicing here in the city and was teaching it here and went down with Dr HUTCHENS And the dean of the law school to Washington on a very important mission I can't remember now what the mission was except that it was important. And we fulfilled it and went over to see the court. The court was then in the Capitol building sitting under the dome in of the old courtroom that they first occupied eight hundred fifty nine and I recommend to you in your next visit it's still there beautiful much more exquisite than the present court room the judges were lined up on the ropes about to go and Hughes who is chief justice introduced us and we came down the line to James Clark McDonald's who had been named by Tim Wilson to serve on the court and when young law students asked me How do you go back getting on the court I tell him how McDonald's going on he became sort of not just his attorney general that Wilson had to get rid of him. He was a man that I admired very much for several reasons. Mostly because you always knew where he stood even before a case was argued he had made up his mind. And unlike some of these wishy washy people he never changed his mind. And we came down to him and he greeted Hutchens and said Well Dean I said I suppose up at Yale Law School you're teaching the students that the members of the court are nothing but a bunch of old fuddy duddies and Hutchings as quick as a rattlesnake replied No Mr Justice we let them find it out for themselves. I thought that was a funny story hit the time but it started as Hans me as the years go by. One never knows. The day after our first prayer decision which is a. Made on a Monday this was Tuesday I was headed west and I was changing planes at O'Hare I had a bag in each hand I was walking down a long corridor and a man in clerical garb coming towards me put down his two bags through ease arms around me kissed me and went on and I said hey Mr Wait a minute he said I can't because I got to catch a plane I had gone a few more steps when them another clerical man in clerical garb put down his bags and also embrace me also a stranger and he had time. To talk and I said Who are you guys anyway what are you up to he said wear low thirty's and we think your decision was wonderful. Well my that he was a Presbyterian minister and my Presbyterian minister certainly didn't think are decisions wonderful matter of fact I got a little edgy buck going to church because I found all the sermons now were directed towards mean. My press during finally came around as I think most of the our many of the religious groups have come around to an understanding of what establishment of religion means in the terms of the Fourth Amendment is now after a long history applied to the States I'm very very grateful to the I travel a lot of. Staying in motels and hotels many long lonesome evenings and I'm going was grateful to the Gideons for leaving the Bible there for Richard literature makes wonderful reading never tiring and as I have traveled I have. Come across some very moving things I remember I went down the Mackenzie River fifteen hundred miles from Fort Smith to the Arctic Ocean and I came up to a place called Fort McPherson I stayed there a day or two a man of the name of MacDonald an Anglican minister had put in there an eight hundred sixty four and never left and his mission was to minister to the needs of the Indians and the Eskimos and to translate the Old Testament the New Testament and the Book of Common Prayer into the loo shew Indian language that at that time was an unwritten language. A very dedicated man and I attended allusion to Indian service I didn't understand a word but I went from the cadence and the rhythm I recognized the Lord per When it came along so those of us from the West and I have this the bible in this is a part of our preditions and there's it's deep and it's. Something that we accept and desire and need and it's sometime therefore becomes quite irrational. In this and in the discussions that are had concerning it because it deals with feeling and emotion rather than with more objective talk and I discovered on my world travels that other religions are the same the Bhagavad Gita. I recommend a Clio me Wadsworth has just published a book. On the Bhagavad-Gita I wrote a forward for it was a fascinating study that she made I recommended to you. I was very much taken up with the faith of Zoar Aster. There are little islands or asterism left in the world. One of the most interesting is in Bombay India the par Caesars or is or Esther's and one of the things I like about this or Astor religion is that one of the Ten Commandments in his religion was conservation and then of course there are the that the Muslims. With their very keen sense of proselytizing and those of you who travel the Middle East go to the schools on the opening will always find the Moslem prayer being. Pronounced in unison in a sing song Beautiful. Way And so you know that if the Muslims get control of a school board in the in this country as they will some day because the Moslems are growing very fast and it was permissible. School would start off under the Muslim school board with a Muslim prayer the galloping fashion of the Muslim religion is most evident in Africa I don't I'm not a great expert on Africa I've spent some time there. They have a sort of a built in them approach to to Africa because Africa is a very polygamous country in. My Presbyterian missions to go to the head of the clan and telling me yes to get rid of eighty nine of his wives. And only had to keep one big to become a Presbyterian Well the eighty nine wives don't like it and he doesn't like it and he ends up usually being a Moslem but there is one Christian Church that has sent out the message that they can take his converts to polygamists on one condition and that is that they will respect the principle of depletion and when the old girls die off he won't replace them with new. This. Bible of ours is so deeply ingrained in our institutions as I said that sometimes it's difficult to talk about it unemotionally Jesus taught us that the. Man could be the master of the social order of his social order and should be and Paul taught us that man could be master of himself and should be and the democratic concept of Christianity became ineradicable in our whole political fabric and so that is the one great unifying force of the Bible but that is not what we are particularly concerned with because the Bible has become different things to different people it contains love poems and folklore and appeals directed to wooden tales of savagery and allegorical material and historical Chronicles and it's all held together by doctrine and the doctrine is determined by the scripture by tradition and by the findings of church councils and so doctrine competes with doctrine and that is why the stablish McLaws was put into the First Amendment it has come as a. An awakening as a sort of a shock. To many people because most citizens are not close to dance of constitutional history one hundred years ago eight hundred sixty six there were very few things in the federal Constitution that bound to the states as respects the pigment of individuals. It was applied the Constitution primarily it was a division of power among agencies of the federal government and defining the relationship of the federal government to people not the relationship of states to people there was a ban on bills of attainder and ex post facto laws but apart and then came the thirteenth Amendment but apart from that. The states had had it pretty much to themselves and that's why you had an eight hundred forty two in New York State this terrible terrible fight that led to massacres and bloodshed and arson and pillaging and plundering where the Protestants. My church suppressed dreams have the King James Version of the Bible in the New York public schools and the Catholics said if you can have your Bible in the schools we can we should have our Bible in the schools a do a version. And either one at that time that got control of the school boards could. Because there was no restraint but then comes the fourteenth Amendment and the fourteenth Amendment provides that no person shall be deprived of life liberty or property property without due process of law and that as a matter of judicial construction starting not with the establishment clause but with free speech. Has been construed to incorporate most of the provisions of the Bill of Rights. Making applicable therefore to the states the expressed prohibitions that the Bill of Rights has has laid upon the Congress and the president and the Supreme Court and that is why as a matter of judicial history in recent years going back not earlier than one nine hundred twenty and crystallizing finally in the one nine hundred thirty S. the First Amendment and it's a full panoply became applicable to the state and that is why the decision of the court. Banning ace particular sectarian prayer or particular tickler version of the Bible from the public schools I have been after all you know in English alone at least eight different versions of the Bible published. The first one one first being kind Daylesford which he was strangled and executed. These these versions strive for recognition we had a can experience in this country very early with this stablish not establishment in the sense of complete establishment such as you have today in Franco's Spain. Not that kind of establishment but establishment in Virginia for example for the Anglican Church was preferred in certain respects and that was the precise target of the First Amendment of the abolition of state preference for any one religion and if I the Muslim can get my prayer and you the Mormon can get your prayer in and you the Catholic can get you your prayer in the press during You can get their permanent and so the great divisive force of. Religion will come to play on the secular institutions of what the. A very wise man Benjamin Franklin. Said the about this is applicable today as it was when he first said this many years ago when a religion is good I can I can see that it will support itself and when it cannot support itself and God does not take care to support it so that his professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power it is a sign I apprehend of its being a bad one but I shall be out of my depth he said if I wait any deeper in theology and I think this member of the court would also thank you very much for your kind of going to. This concludes today's book and also lunch and thank you very much.