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another matter. Bill Paine told me Wally left the university this house. That’s the good news.”
    â€œAnd the bad?” R asked.
    â€œWe have to keep all his stuff in it—as is.” Clymer shook his head and so did R, and then they both turned to the others now entering, two and three at a time. Bill Paine and Harry Dickinson from the planning committee were among the first arrivals. Behind them came former Wally students and assistants, prominent citizens of Philadelphia, and the Crowd: Franklin scholars from Penn, Yale, and elsewhere.
    Then there was Rebecca Kendall Lee. R refused eye contact and moved quickly in the opposite direction over to Harry Dickinson.
    â€œWhat are you working on right now?” Harry asked R. The editor had a vodka on the rocks in his right hand.
    â€œA book on the early presidents—Washington, Adams, and Jefferson—and how they affect the way the presidency functions to this day,” R said.
    â€œOh, yes, that’s right,” said Harry, turning away quickly and moving on.
    R was more amused than offended. Harry was known as a finder, developer, and editor of prize-winning books, fiction as well as nonfiction. He was especially celebrated for his ability to help authors get early American history on the page in a way that sang—and sold. Once, in a C-Span Book Channel interview, he had even referred to himself jokingly as Harry History Channel. But for Harry, clearly “The Opening Three Acts of the Presidency,” R’s working title, didn’t make the grade.
    R resisted a temptation to tell Harry about
Dear Audience,
a one-man Ben show he had wanted to write patterned on Hal Holbrook’s
Mark Twain Tonight.
On a high school class bus trip to Hartford, R not only visited Twain’s home, now a museum, he saw a special afternoon performance of Holbrook’s show at the famous Bushnell Theater. The whole experience had made a lasting impression. R still had a fairly new CD and an old LP of
Mark Twain Tonight,
as well as VHS copies of two versions that were broadcast on network television. Later, as a historian, R had come to believe that dramatic performances built around important historical moments and people were very effective ways to connect young people to history.
    R had dreamed of Pat Hingle playing Ben in
Dear Audience,
but the whole thing never went beyond a very rough first draft. That was because most of the Ben Crowd who read it had not been happy with it. Wally declared it “fun and possibly entertaining” but disrespectful of Ben and his legacy. To fool with it now would probably be disrespectful of Wally, too.
    He saw Johnny Rutledge enter the room. Johnny had studied under Wally and then gone on to join the staff of Benjamin Franklin University Press, where he was now editor in chief and publisher. BFU had published both of R’s books and several other academic ones that had been written about Ben in the last thirty years. Serious Ben books were their specialty.
    R greeted Johnny with a vigorous handshake and warm manner that clearly took Johnny aback. They had been colleagues, collaborators with similar professional interests, and they were friends—but not buddies. Johnny was R’s size, just under six feet tall, and in his mid-forties, but, to R, had a perpetually eager—and annoying—graduate-student look and manner. He was all corduroy, work shirt, blond hair over the ears and collar, large round rimless glasses. R, in contrast, kept his emotions as well as his dark-brown hair cropped, his clothes casually upscale and pressed. He had never had to wear glasses, not even for reading small print.
    â€œAnything new on the search?” R asked Johnny. As a research sideline, Johnny was obsessed with running down the identity of the mother of William, Ben’s illegitimate son. R had always found that quest to be interesting but not of critical importance.
    Wally’s letter certainly