The Press: The Common Touch

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to the bland mixture (e.g., December's roundup of unintentional double-entendres on double-feature movie marquees: We Want a Child and Things Happen at Night; Groom Wore Spurs and Woman on the Run).

In the Digest's world, things are usually getting better, faith moves mountains, prayer can cure cancer and poverty holds hidden blessings ("Innumerable poor wretches," said an early Digest article, "have nothing but money"). The Digest keeps a hopeful eye peeled for new miracle drugs, and regards old age as nothing more than a state of mind. Even death is not fearsome ("It is not unpleasant to die"). It is a world of plants that act like animals ("Some Remarkable Carnivorous Plants"), animals that think and act like humans ("Seeing Ourselves in Our Dogs"), and humans who often seem more like saints ("God's Eager Fool," Dr. Albert Schweitzer). "The Most Unforgettable Character I've Met," one of the Digest's most popular features, often tells about people dedicated to helping others. The wonders of nature are inexhaustible ("If there were but one sunrise in every century, all beds would be empty"), sermons are found in stones, and birds are God's own choir. Digest readers are left with a warm feeling about themselves, about life, and about the Digest.

The Formula Makers. The magazine's own most Unforgettable Characters are DeWitt, 62, and Lila Bell Wallace, 61. A perfect team, each complements the other: Wally is tall (6 ft. 1 in.), Lila Bell is small (5 ft. 3 in.); he is bony, angular and shy; she is dainty, cheerful and forthright. He is a worrier, torn by inner doubts and subject to spells of melancholy; she is self-possessed and an optimist to the bone. He calls her his "pillar of strength," and cannot talk for long without praising "that incredible and wonderful woman." "He always expects the best of everyone," she says. "Even when they do him an ill turn, he doesn't remember it. But I have a memory like an elephant." As one intimate described them: "Wally is the genius, all right, but Lila unwrapped him."

William Roy DeWitt Wallace was born, amid genteel poverty, at tiny Macalester College, near St. Paul, where his father, Dr. James Wallace, was teaching. He became president when DeWitt was six. Dr. Wallace, a Presbyterian preacher and a Greek scholar, raised five children on his $1,500-a-year salary. He did it in the stern fashion of his own boyhood, when he was nourished (as he later wrote) on "cornmeal mush, buckwheat cakes . . . family worship morning and evening, the shorter catechism and two long services on Sunday, rain or shine." DeWitt, the second youngest, rebelled against this regime. An indifferent student, he preferred baseball and pranks (when a cow was found in a third-floor chapel, DeWitt was suspected).

After his sophomore year at Macalester College, he wanted a change of air, and left to attend the University of California. There he enrolled again as a freshman, because "the freshman year is more fun."

During the Christmas holidays of 1911 an old friend from Macalester, Barclay Acheson, took DeWitt home with him to Tacoma, Wash. DeWitt was much taken with Barclay's sister Lila, but she was already engaged.

The Great Idea. The next year DeWitt