Francis, the best editor I was ever to know, was a great and severe teacher, and
nothing passed his desk (to reach the desk of the editor in chief) that didn’t
make sense. Making sense may sound like a rather low standard, but it was a very
high one when applied by Francis. To give him an article in which one sentence
fell short was to be loudly summoned to his desk in the middle of the room and
given a sarcastic scolding that would leave any department head gnashing his
teeth (not because Francis was wrong but because he was so damned right).
I learned perforce to demand sense of every word in every article handed me by
one of the writers in my department or by one of the outside scholars who
contributed articles. (Our article on relativity was written by Albert
Einstein.) And without noticing it, I began to demand sense of everything I
knew, which included the received wisdom of our culture.
