When we were having a book printed in France we complained about the bad alignment. Ah, they exclaimed, that is because they use machines now, machines are bound to be inaccurate, they have not the intelligence of human beings, naturally the human mind can corrects the fault of the hand, but with a machine, of course, there are errors. The reason why all of us naturally began to live in France is because France has scientific methods, machines and electricity, but does not really believe that these things have anything to do with the real business of living.

[Harold Ross] said, that afternoon in the corridor, that he hated misprints ever since an early issue of 'The New Yorker', but he had learned, in that green issue, to be humble in his contest with them.

It seems the magazine had bought for that issue an article by S.J. Perelman about the habits and manners of New York theatre audiences. Those audiences, Perelman had written, "would laugh at the drop of a ha on the stage."

Ross could see bad trouble ahead. On the very first galley he wrote in big letters: "THIS IS PERELMAN'S JOKE. DO NOT CHANGE TO 'HAT'."

Through galley after revised galley Ross nursed this line unchanged. He grew obsessed by that "ha.". It became so important to him that when the magazine was finally to be run off, he actualy climbed into the press, looked up at one of the rollers for the right page -- he told me he had learned in his newspaper days to read cold type in its upside-down and backward state -- and saw, to his relief, "ha." Not quite satisfied, he assembled the printers and told them that they must not, under any circumstances, change that word. He went happily home and slept soundly all night.

In the morning, he went to the office, opened the magazine to the Perelman piece, and saw "hat." Then he realized that he had lectured the printers at eleven-forty-five. At midnight, a new shift had come on. A zealous artisan had seen the obvious error, stopped the presses, and made the change.

I retell this story of Ross's because I have cherished it all my life as a lesson. His story was a fable, the moral of which is: a writer, even more than an editor, should care so passionately about every word he uses that he will be willing to risk his life by climbing into a press at the last moment to make sure words on the roller are the ones he has chosen -- but, alas, he must also know that there is no way in the world for him to produce a work that is perfect in every word.