My parents lived in New York for many years. A very small old man lived on the top floor of their building. I used to bump into him now and then when I visited the folks. He was always dressed in a perfectly tailored three piece suit, thick silk tie, and white shirt with cuff links. We smiled and nodded at each other but never spoke. One day when I was with my father we ran into the man in the hall and were introduced. His name was Lewis Galantiere and from the way he dressed and spoke, he was elegance personified. For some reason I didn’t understand then, my father told this stranger that I was studying literature in university and hoped someday to be a writer. Galantiere lit up and said well, we should talk about that—why don’t you come for tea sometime. When he was gone, my father told me Galantiere was one of the greatest French to English translators. His Proust translations especially were world renowned and used in many universities. But even more interesting, this man had lived in Paris in the 1920's and knew everyone who was there then— Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Picasso— the whole starry sky of talent that lit up that glittery city in those days. A week later we went to visit him. The apartment was small but beautiful. Oriental carpets on the floors, substantial leather and wood furniture, and artwork covered the walls. My father spent much of the visit studying the pictures and later told me there were original Matisse and Cezanne sketches, a Picasso, photographs by Man Ray, a handwritten recipe by Alice Toklas, on and on. We spent a couple of hours with Galantiere and I think he was glad for the company. In his quiet ironic voice he spoke casually of having picnics with the Fitzgeralds, going to the horse races with Hemingway, arguing with the irascible Ms. Stein. He was not showing off— just talking about the early days of his life. His stories were amazing, as close as I will ever come to knowing or being with those gods. One thing I remember vividly came at the end of the afternoon. When he was obviously tired and winding down, Galantiere paused and deep in thought, stared at his hands. Then he said, “The one thing biographers of these people rarely talk about is how hard they all worked. Most biographies just go on and on about Fitzgerald’s drunkenness or Hemingway’s bullying and carousing. But they give little credit to how *hard* they worked and at least in those days, the complete dedication to their craft. I have never seen harder working people; they were like ditch diggers. When they finished for the day, their hands were always dirty.”