DearTIME-Reader:

WHEN Correspondent John L. I Steele flew home from San Francisco and checked through the West Executive Avenue gate of the White House one day last week, he brought with him a new assignment to add to his already considerable duties. For the next nine weeks he will not only be covering the President of the U.S., already the busiest man in the world, but also the Republican candidate for the presidency in the election campaign. The pace was already accelerated: Steele found himself finishing up one story at 1 a.m., hustling back to the White House for ceremonies on the South Lawn at 8 a.m. the same morning.

Chicago-born Correspondent Steele. 39, came to TIME from the United Press in 1953, first covered Capitol Hill before he moved over to the White House a little more than a year ago. Since then he has seldom been far away from the President. Because the White House, like a turtle shell, goes wherever its principal occupant goes, the job of being a White House correspondent is by definition an itinerant one. With the President, Steele has crisscrossed the U.S., flown down to Panama and, recently, out to California for the Republican Convention.

STEELE studied American history under the Arthur Schlesingers (father and son), Frederick Merk and Samuel E. Morison as a Nieman Fellow (1951-52) at Harvard and likes to think of himself as an amateur historian. His specialty was the Revolutionary War, but now he is a Civil War buff. On weekends at Gettysburg he has tramped over the battlefields near the President's farm, armed with a huge folding map and binoculars, sometimes studying with Dr. Frederick Tilberg, chief historian at Gettysburg, at other times with his 13-year-old daughter Debby and nine-year-old son Larry, who currently is concerned with the reasons behind J. E. B. Stuart's failure to get behind Meade's line on the third day of battle.

"I particularly like the battlefields in the fall," says Steele, "when the late afternoon light behind Seminary Ridge is smoky, and, standing near the clump of trees which mark the high-water point of the Confederacy, any fool can see Pickett's Division rolling forward. I know of no more moving spot in America than this."

Steele never lets his historic musings make him forget the present. He has the battlefields cased for available telephones and keeps in touch with White House Press Headquarters in the converted basketball court at the Gettysburg Hotel--in case Neighbor Eisenhower makes any news.

Covering the White House is both the most important and most exacting news beat in the world. "Today, everything the President of the U.S. says or does has significance for everyone everywhere," says Steele. "And now everything the Republican candidate for President of the U.S. says or does is going to be of special interest for a lot of people in a lot of places, too."

Cordially yours,

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