Books: A Natural Force

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Swope was only happy when he was dealing at the top, and Kahn suggests that he was arrogant beyond his rights. He was also a compulsive intellectual show-off who loved to embarrass his guests ("By the way," he would ask, "when did they stop using bagpipes in the Turkish army?"). One night his noisy grilling of a guest on the topic of obscure German poets distracted Franklin P. Adams, who sat in a nearby room trying to concentrate on a cribbage game. "Who was Kleist?" demanded Swope. "The Chinese messiah!" roared Adams. It was one of the few occasions when words failed the insuperable Swope.