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camera by the waiter, and it would not be feasible to locate him. The spread will not be out until next Sunday and I haven't seen it, but the galleys, corrected over the weekend, amused me because I had privately gambled that one sentence I used would never see the light of day. On, learning that the Times had a strict limit of $500 for any travel piece, a sum that hardly returned me my costs, I had written: "Aboard the Orient Express, the consumption of [drinks from the bar] is encouraged, by the way, and they are cash-and-carry, and there is no nonsense about special rates. A gin and tonic is $4, a liqueur $6. These prices, weighed on the scales of the Old Testament, are not prohibitive, unless you are trying to make a living writing for the Travel section of the New York Times."
    I won—the third sentence did not survive. It's a funny thing about the Times: I don't know anybody who works for it who doesn't have a sense of humor (big exception: John Oakes. But then he retired as editorial page director several years ago, and is understandably melancholy about having to live in a world whose shape is substantially of his own making). Abe Rosenthal, the working head of the newspaper, is one of the funniest men living. Punch Sulzberger is wonderfully amusing, and easily amused. And so on. But there is some corporate something that keeps the Times from smiling at itself; don't quite know what.

    Frances tells me that a reporter for the Harvard Crimson has called three times, that he is working on a deadline, and that he wishes from me a) a comment on the resolution to be argued against John Kenneth Galbraith in a televised debate at Harvard in January, and b) my ideas as to what I "hope to accomplish." The resolution is: "Resolved, That this House approves the economic initiatives of the Reagan Administration." I tell Frances to call the reporter back and say that my view of the resolution is that "it is satisfactory," and that my "hope" is that "my knowledge of economics should trickle down to Professor Galbraith and his colleagues."
    I occasionally like to tease James Jackson Kilpatrick by calling him "Jim," because on "Meet the Press," candidate Ronald Reagan once referred to him as "Jim" (he is "Jack," or "Kilpo"). I mentioned this, in January of election year, to Reagan's then campaign manager, John Sears. Sears smiled. "That's nothing," he said, making reference to New York's principal Republican, "he calls Perry Duryea 'Da??'/" Kilpo has called to say he isn't sure he can make connections with us in Switzerland in January, we having postponed our departure by three days. . . .
    Other calls I can delay, but not that of Bob Bauman. I hadn't spoken to Bob since the scandal over a year ago, in the fall of 1980, when it was revealed that, while drinking, he had solicited sex from a young male. The news came as a considerable blow, needless to say, to the Bauman family, but also to the conservative community, not least because in Congress Bob over the years had acquired a considerable reputation as a parliamentarian at the service of the right, but also as a heckler of others' moral weaknesses. The government dropped the charge, on the condition that Bauman promise to take part in a rehabilitation program.
    Bob (whom I'd known, as also his wife Carol, since he helped to found the Young Americans for Freedom) had made an announcement of some dignity at a press conference, in which he made no attempt at self-justification, contenting himself to say that since the time of the offense, he had succeeded in curing himself entirely of alcoholism, and that any tendency to homosexuality had gone with the alcohol—and that under the circumstances, he would not retire from the race for re-election to Congress. I was in Seattle, lecturing, when I got the news, and I don't remember a column I ever wrestled with more than the one I wrote that night, calling on Bauman to resign from the race. Although he never wrote to me, he is said