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of their posts. He was very much taken by public health matters. Dr. Herman Biggs was really a very great public health man and a great physician, and he was also a member of Tammany Hall. He was Charlie Murphy's private physician and medical adviser. He was a great man - really a great fellow. In that relationship he had the private ear of Al Smith. He didn't attempt to get him to do anything politically, but he kind of illuminated him about how necessary it was to public health matters, what you could do with a great public health program in New York State. Biggs was a very able and very fine man. He did a great deal to educate Al Smith in that field. Of course we all pitched in with whatever we knew.

Even in those days Smith's was a very receptive mind. That was the thing that was extraordinary about him. Without a formal education, he could learn more from a conversation than anybody I ever knew. I suppose he'd been in the habit of picking up his knowledge and information that way - from what people told him. He was a good judge of the credibility and disinterestedness of various people and so didn't get his leg pulled. He would ask you the kind of questions that required an absolute answer. He would dig it out of you. I know the way he treated me. He would dig out of me information that I didn't think was important. I was always anxious to