When Jeff Wylie, head of our Boston bureau, first called on Robert Frost at his Vermont home to tell him that TIME was going to do a cover on him, Frost replied: "If it is worth doing at all, it is worth doing well." He thereupon invited Wylie to stay as long as necessary to get the story. Wylie stayed a week, while Frost poured forth his ideas, interspersed with bits of autobiography.

Wylie found Frost "truly fascinating, and the most charming conversationalist--I should say monologuist--I have ever known." Later, TIME staff writer A. T. Baker joined the two for an evening's conversation during which Frost and Baker spent much of the time quoting other men's poetry to each other. As a parting gift to Wylie and Baker, Frost gave them the signed typescript of his new, unpublished, 14-page poem. Its title: How, Hard It Is To Keep From Being King When It's In You And In The Situation.

Last week we received the following communication from a subscriber in Illinois:

"Next week I will receive my 1,000th copy of TIME. I have sworn 999 times never to read TIME again. But each time it appears in the mail box I get nosey to know what's going on in Asia, who the best ten Senators are, etc. As usual next month we'll subscribe again. If you ever stop piquing me, I'll know I'm washed up."

A few days after the Korean war began TIME correspondent Frank Gibney flew into Kimpo airdrome from Japan in time to report the evacuation and fall of Seoul. After Kimpo had been secured by the marines, Gibney returned there by air. He wrote:

"The last time I had seen Kimpo the broad parking space in front of the administration building had been jammed with bright new American cars. U.S. State Department civilians, who were being evacuated to Japan by air, had left them there. I remembered trying to start one of these cars, a big, substantial-looking Buick, as we prepared to go into Seoul that night. The Buick's keys were gone. I was not a good enough mechanic to start the car by crossing the ignition wires, so I drove into town in another vehicle.

"Now the once immaculate parking place was covered with fox holes and the pup tents of the marines, who were heating their morning rations over small wood fires. There was only one link left with the past. In one corner of the lot, gutted and tireless, its once shiny hood and fenders burned a dull red, was the Buick. It still bore its diplomatic license plate: CDA 253. Evidently the Communists weren't able to start it, either."

Readers of our overseas editions often send us the names of friends "who should be reading TIME, but aren't," with the suggestion that we invite them to subscribe. Recently, we turned the tables on some of our Latin American subscribers by asking them for the names and addresses of friends and acquaintances in their areas who might like to subscribe to TIME. To date, we have received hundreds of names from them. Said a subscriber in Belize, British Honduras: "The first two names on the enclosed list are of people who usually swipe my copy of TIME before I have half read it. I would therefore be very happy to see them have their own." And a Ricran, Peru reader wrote: "Since my first reading of TIME in 1929 I have missed very few issues. To a great many people of my generation, TIME has become a way of life."

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