THE FASTEST IS FASTER

On the afternoon of September 5, Peter Snell, the world record holder for the mile, half mile and 800 meters, as well as the half mile and 1,000 yards indoors, got out of his Austin station wagon in a bleak suburb of Auckland to run the five-mile anchor leg for the Owairaka Amateur Athletic and Harrier Club A team in the Calliope and Western Suburbs Clubs Seven-man Round the Harbour Relay. As Snell set off down the sidewalk, dodging three schoolgirls in green jumpers who were out for a jog, his wife, Sally, drove ahead to give him his time for the first mile.

All told, 39 teams were competing in the 37-mile race, including a representative women's team which recorded a faster time than some of the men. The turnout of 273 harriers was unexceptional for New Zealand. Within half an hour of Snell's unheralded victory in the 800 meters at the 1960 Olympic Games, he had replaced Sir Edmund Hillary at the head of the national pantheon, and running became an enduring fad. There are, for instance, groups of joggers, middle-aged men who plod a half hour a day to keep fit. "Sunday morning about 50 of us turn out," says their leader, Colin Kay of Auckland. "We run a bit of flat, a bit of hill. It's very beautiful at 8 a.m. We're free and easy. We keep the pace down to the slowest man. It's all very sociable." One Saturday last August, a Mrs. Millie Sampson, a 31-year-old mother of two who lives in the Auckland suburb of Manurewa, went dancing until 1 a.m. The next day she cooked dinner for 11 visitors. In between, she ran the marathon in 3:19.33, presumably a record. And the same day that Snell was taking part in the relay, one John Young, 21, completed a 10½-day, 430-mile run from Wellington to Auckland and announced, "I am as fit as a trout."

The relay was Snell's first race since July 4, when he had finished third in a seven-and-a-half-mile cross-country race, defeating his compatriots, the world-class distance runners Murray Halberg, Bill Baillie and Barry Magee. Snell has not run a mile since April 11, when he did a tolerable 3:58.5, or the half mile since March 7, when he did 1:48.5. This suits him fine. "Obscurity," he says. "That's what I want." Snell does not mean that he wishes to avoid fame and its responsibilities; it is just that he would prefer that the opposition did not know how well he was running. Now it is spring in New Zealand, but the past winter, which everyone agrees was "really shocking," cold and so wet that moss grew on the sidewalks in the heart of Auckland, served his purpose.

Snell admits he ran poorly early this year. "There were three reasons," he said after lunch the other day. "The first was my adjustment to marriage." "Really!" Sally said. "That sounds reasonable, doesn't it?" Snell said. "I usually end up taking the brunt of everything," Sally said. "Pete's landlady was so good-hearted, she did every mortal thing for him. He had no responsibilities before he got married. Now he has to look after me, the house and the garden." "I was fortunate she more or less adopted me as a son, Mrs. Warren," Snell said of his landlady.

He went on to relate that the second reason was a rift, since healed, between himself and his coach, Arthur Lydiard. Their estrangement was due to Lydiard's resentment of a statement made by Snell in a magazine article last year and it continued well into 1964. "The big advantage of having a coach," Snell said, "apart from his knowledge, is the inspiration he imparts. Arthur makes you feel the tremendous possibilities with in your power. I need someone sympathetic to lean on. I can't withstand the stresses by myself. A wife is no good for this. When Arthur wiped us off, it was necessary to go to someone with my problems. It's a weakness in my makeup. Then the other runners, their families, ostracized us. The whole thing was very childish, but I was concerned about it. It constituted an upset." The third reason, he said, was the excessive number of speeches he had to make for his firm. Rothmans, the cigarette manufacturer.

Snell hit bottom on January 21, when he was badly beaten in a mile by John Davies. "Was I second?" he said. "Third. My time was about 4:05." "His training was very bitsy," Sally explained. "And it was pouring heaven's hard as well." "I never heard you say that, Sally," Snell said. "Say what, Pete?" "Heaven's hard. You never use that expression." "I use it once in a while," she said. "It sounds stupid," Snell said. "It was raining," Sally said. "I don't perform well on a damp track," Snell said, and went on to say that shortly thereafter he came down with gastroenteritis, as well.

Despite these calamities, Snell is the overwhelming favorite in the 1,500 at the Olympics, and in the 800, too, if he chooses to run it, and for sufficient reason. First of all, no one who will be opposing him at Tokyo has ever come within a second of his record times for the mile (3:54.4) or the half (1:45.1). (Snell has never run a 1,500-meter race, but he feels, in essence, that he has triumphed in the half because he has greater stamina than his swifter opponents and, on the other hand, that his success in the mile is due to his superior speed. The 1,500, which is some 120 yards short of the mile, may thus be close to his ideal distance.) Secondly, Snell did not begin training seriously until the week after his 3:58.5 mile. From that date the quantity and quality of his training have surpassed anything he had done previously. In fact, his performances during the dismal winter months have convinced him that he will soon be capable of running the mile in 3:50.

Arthur Lydiard once predicted Snell would do 3:48. "He would've if he hadn't gotten a swelled head and stagnated," Lydiard said recently. "After he broke the world records he went haywire—racing and racing, wearing his condition down, looking jaded. He became confused." Lydiard, a small, freckled, messianic and intractable man, is quite satisfied that he has hit upon the most beneficial way to prepare for the middle-distance events. He has no use for interval training, the system evolved in Scandinavia and followed by Franz Stampfl, who coached Roger Bannister. "They're trying to develop stamina through speed," Lydiard says scathingly. Nor does he believe in the Spartan regime of Percy Cerutty, who was Herb Elliott's coach. "You must exhaust yourself systematically and sensibly," Lydiard says. "Not go ahead and kill yourself. You must train and not strain." Furthermore, he thinks that special diets, calisthenics and weight lifting are either inefficient or unnecessary. "I'm very weak in the arms, you know," Snell says. "I've purposely neglected my upper body. If I swam a couple of laps in the Tepid Baths, my arms would feel like they'd drop off." The Tepid Baths, a vast, steamy place, is Auckland's only heated pool.

Lydiard's training program is divided into three phases: distance running, hill work and track work. Distance running is designed to build up stamina. Lydiard believes he can develop stamina in any athlete. He claims, for instance, that if Henry Carr, who is the fastest man in the world over 220 yards, would put himself in his hands, "he would smash the half-mile and mile records with consummate ease."

Snell began his distance running on April 18. Ten weeks later, when he concluded it, he had run a total of 1,012 miles. If at all feasible, he ran the same mileage each day of the week: 10 miles on Mondays, 15 on Tuesdays, 12 on Wednesdays, 18 on Thursdays, 10 on Fridays, 15 on Saturdays and 22 on Sundays. As he became more fit, Snell was able to maintain an average speed of seven miles per hour over variable terrain. One of Lydiard's bywords is "undulating." "Hills, not mountains!" he will say. "The more hills the better! Undulating! Undulating!" Snell figures he can reckon his pace in a race to within a fifth of a second. "I'm damn near as reliable as a motor car in judging 10 miles," he says. "If I run 70 minutes, I'm within 200 yards of it." Snell can go at a faster rate, of course, but it is a Lydiard dictum that the key to training is controlled speed. "You must always know you can do a little bit better," Lydiard says.

For these daily jaunts, Snell would generally set out at 5:30 p.m. Before long it would be dark, and he would be running by the lights of the streetlamps. He would alter his routes to alleviate the monotony, but the suburbs are all much alike, the streets bordered with pollarded plane trees, the houses roofed with corrugated iron painted red or with tiles, and each having its patch of lawn, its fruit tree, a bit of a garden. On Sundays he would run in the morning, going up into the Waitakeres, a considerable range of hills on the outskirts of the city. There he would follow a road which winds through the native forest of punga (a tree fern), manuka (the tea tree), kauri (a tall tree that secretes a useful resin) and rimu, or red pine. At some points he could see the Pacific or the Tasman Sea. During the cross-country season Snell would occasionally run through the grasslands of Cornwall Park, scattering the sheep before him; in the summer he sometimes runs on a track through the bush for the novelty of it. "I find 100 miles a week a great struggle," he says.

On June 27, Snell commenced six weeks of work on what he and his fellow runners call "the Circuit." It is, roughly, a square, two-mile course in the suburban area of Blockhouse Bay, and was selected for its imposing hills. The purpose of the Circuit is to strengthen the legs. Snell would climb the hills in slow, exaggerated bounds, rather in the manner of a ballet dancer crossing a stage, and then run pell-mell downhill. He would do the Circuit as many as four times in a single training session, and follow it with a little work on the level. For instance, the entry in his training diary for July 6 reads: "Circuit X 4 laps in atrocious conditions, but ran very strongly downhill in speed work. 400¼ effort. 700 (30 yd. dashes). 400¼ effort." The power poles in Auckland are 30 yards apart, so in his 700 Snell would sprint a power pole, jog a power pole.

On August 12, Snell began his track work, which, naturally, is designed to build up speed. There is not a single decent all-weather track in New Zealand, which makes Lydiard exceedingly bitter. Last month Baillie and Magee had sore legs from working out on unsuitable surfaces. "New Zealand," Lydiard says, "is a small country. The people have small minds in many ways. All they do for you is pat you on the back. We have trained for the Olympics by running down roads in hailstorms dodging cars." New Zealanders run, for the most part, on grass tracks, but these are worthless during the winter. As a result, Snell trained either at Lovelock Track, a quarter-mile bitumen oval which lacks a proper surface because the money is not forthcoming, or at Alexandra Park, a five-furlong, crushed-limestone harness track. "This is the Yonkers of New Zealand," Snell says wryly. "On a very modest scale. You could say we are following in the footsteps of Cardigan Bay." This is a local pacer that is being raced with signal success in the U.S. While he is doing his speed work, Snell rises every morning at 6:30 and runs around the perimeter of a nearby golf course for a half hour or more, so it is not unusual for him to put in more than 75 miles a week in this phase.

The workouts at Alexandra Park arc quite informal. One day last month Halberg warmed up by jogging a lap with his 4-year-old daughter. Subsequently, Snell, Halberg, Ray Puckett, the marathon runner, and Mrs. Avis McIntosh, the hurdler, ran several handicapped 100s which were started by a 12-year-old girl who happened by. Another day Snell ran 220s with Miss Doreen Porter, the sprinter. Snell's track work varies greatly. On August 15 he had what was, perhaps, his most spectacular session. Snell ran 20 440s, with a quarter-mile jog in between, at an average of 61.5, the last eight averaging 61. It must be kept in mind that this was done in wintertime on an inadequate track. Snell was highly gratified by this effort, particularly by the times of the last eight quarters; the best he had ever done before for this drill was 62. (Incidentally, John Davies, who was Snell's nemesis last season, beating him on five occasions, says he, too, has run 20 quarters in 61.5. Since his previous low was 65, Davies must be regarded as having an excellent chance for a medal in the 1,500 at Tokyo.) On August 17, Snell did 20 220s at a 27.83 average, also splendid time. On August 18 he did a 14.35 three-mile, and on August 19 he turned in five poor 880s. "I was feeling the effects of my two great bursts," he explains. On August 21, Snell pulled a thigh muscle, which has now mended. In early September, dissatisfied with his training, especially a vile 2:02 half, the first quarter of which was run into the teeth of a strong, cold wind blowing down the backstretch at Alexandra Park, he stopped making entries in his diary. "I got to a pitch where I couldn't care less whether I missed the Olympics," he says. "There are times in your training when you wonder how on earth you could run a 4:30 mile, let alone a four-minute. My training had been fantastic. Then I hit a flat spot. I lost a few days because of my injury and because I was feeling sick of athletics. I had frenetically set my goal on the 1,500 to the exclusion of everything else.... Suddenly you find you are no longer flogging yourself along. You no longer have the ability to punish yourself."

On September 8, Snell ran four quarters in 53.3, 53.6, 53.4 and 54.3—the latter as his thigh began to bother him. He had planned to run 55s. "It's quite pleasing," he said afterwards. "When you've lost it, you have no idea how you feel. This will make all the difference to me mentally. When I did those 220s in 27.8, I was supposed to be doing them in 29. Was I going too fast, I asked myself. There is a danger, you know, of overdoing it. Or could this mean my training times have to be considered in terms of a 3:50 mile? I feel everything has to be revised now. Perhaps I should be running 53s. I've never been a 3:50 miler, so this is all supposition. From now on I'm training to be a 3:50 miler. From now on my training times have to be better. I've got to aim for it. Positive thinking is necessary here. I've tended to underestimate myself, so when I did far better I got a mental lift, but I don't think the conservative approach is wholly to my advantage.

"To run a 3:50 mile," Snell says, "you have to run the first three quarters evenly in at least 2:56, than do a 54 last lap. Preferably faster than 2:56. I doubt my ability to run much faster than 54 for the last lap at that pace. The first three laps of a mile race are a formality. The race starts with a lap to go, with 300 yards to go. I'm the half-miler in the mile, so the slower the pace the better. My advantage is speed. When I sprint I open a gap of five, 10 yards. I can maintain a full sprint for 200 yards. One reason I look around so much in the straight is that in me I've got a reserve I can't tap unless it's absolutely necessary. My own will cannot make me use this reserve. If I look around and see someone like Dyrol Burleson about to come up.... The reserve is for emergency only. I can't pull it out if a fellow is 10 yards ahead, but I wouldn't have let him past in the first place.

"In the 1,500 at Tokyo, no one will be capable of breaking away from the field before the last lap. If the pace is killing, I'll wait until the stretch to make my sprint—the length of the straight at least If not I'll start it around the turn. There's an advantage in having the turn to yourself. That initial move, those couple of yards, are invaluable. If Burleson makes his move from 300 yards in, my strategy will be to follow him. He's laid his cards on the table. I'm faster, but I'm not sure Burley quite believes it yet."

Snell has run the 100 in 10.2, the 220 in 22.4 and the 440 in 48. "Other athletes refuse to believe my quarter time," Snell says. "They say it should be at least a second and a half faster. People underestimate strength and stamina." At the other extreme, Snell has run the marathon in 2:41:40. "I misjudged the pace, and ran the first 20 miles too fast," he says. "My time includes the time I spent sitting down and walking. The thing I'm acutely aware of is I'm weaker than Burleson and Company after two miles.

I'm not a particularly good distance runner. I do well in cross-country because I seem to get momentary rests. I couldn't come within a minute of Halberg or Baillie at seven and a half miles on a track. I've got to have that relaxation. The secret of my success is my ability to relax at a reasonably fast pace.

"All I'm concerned with in the half is insuring a fast tempo the whole way. If it's not fast enough I have to go out and force it. Most half-milers can lick me over a 100. My half-mile time is an indication of my stamina. I don't want to be killing myself, however. I still need speed for the straight. There is great confidence in knowing that in a hard half the one with the most stamina is going to be the strongest."

Snell is definitely going to run the 1,500 at the Olympics, but he does not yet know whether he will contest the 800, although he plans to compete in the first heat. "I'll be short of races," he says, "and I can use the heat as part of my training. Actually, the half is my favorite race but, unfortunately, it is not the event the public wants to see. They want to see me run the mile in under four minutes. There is a possibility that I'll try for the double. I'd like to think I'd run both, and at the moment the opposition in the 800 looks easy, but I would rather win the 1,500, and I don't want to jeopardize my chances. The 1,500 is a glamour event."

Peter Snell is now 25. He has put on a few pounds since he established his world records in 1962 and weighs 171. He says he stands 5 feet 10½, but he somehow gives the impression of being a much bigger man. At rest, his pulse is 42, and it is, as he says, "an extraordinary experience" to feel its strange, slow beat. Snell has an appealing, boyish, bony face, and his left ear protrudes more than his right. He and Sally, who is 22, and whom he married on May 11, 1963, live in a $10,000 yellow clapboard house at 67 Walker Road in the Auckland suburb of Point Chevalier.

"This is a working-class neighborhood," Snell says. "The families here are all grown up. So it's quiet and peaceful. Not long ago I was placing collection cans in hotels—bars—for an Olympic appeal. I must tell you that New Zealanders are not particularly civilized in their drinking. One fellow says, 'You know me.' I say, 'Should I?' He says, 'I'm your neighbor.' Well, he isn't, actually. He lives five houses away. Admittedly, the people here think Sally and I are snobs. I don't have time to call on people. And, partly, we don't want to intrude. They're all so much older than us, too. We just can't go in and say we've...."

Snell's house is situated on a long, narrow quarter-acre plot. He has a small front lawn and, unlike his neighbors, he has erected a picket fence along the sidewalk. Last month the flower beds around the front lawn were blooming with lavender, dwarf iris, carnations, roses, chrysanthemums and marigolds. "Gardening will be one of my main interests," Snell says. Even today he sometimes forgoes his morning run to dig in the garden. The backyard, which slopes away from the house, is planted with fruit trees: Gravenstein, Granny Smith and Golden Delicious apples, pear, mandarin orange, lemon, Golden Queen peach, plum and grapefruit.

The Snells live in five small rooms. Snell's domain is his den, what he calls "my junk room." In it are his mugs, cups and plaques, his Olympic medal, golf sticks, a great naval gun shell that serves as an ashtray, bottles of wine, an old portable typewriter he uses in connection with his work for Rothmans, a suitcase with "Petey's Play Box" lettered on it. "Sally's parents have a sense of humor," Snell says wryly. "It's a set of tools, actually."

Snell has only two slender scrapbooks. The first clipping reads: "P. Snell completed a well-judged 880 yds. in 2 min. 26.7 seconds." "I was just 13," he says. "It's very mediocre." Snell, who grew up in the rural town of Te Aroha, some 70 miles southeast of Auckland, did not begin running in earnest until he was 19. He excelled in all ball games, showing particular promise as a left-handed tennis player. From the time he was 5 his mother gave him a new racket for each successive birthday. The second scrapbook concludes with his Olympic victory. "Write-ups don't mean anything to me anymore," Snell explains. "It isn't necessary to read my clippings to boost my ego. I've become blasé about it, if you're familiar with that word."

However, despite his athletic feats and his celebrity, or perhaps because of them, Peter Snell is not convinced he is a success; he is frequently dissatisfied, regretful, groping. He enjoys working for Rothmans, where he is a sales representative and assistant to the advertising manager, but is very sensitive about it. He has been told that it is not a proper job for an athlete and hero. "Do you really think I'm ruining my image?" he will ask, rather forlornly. Then, too, he is disturbed because he does not have a profession and that he did not go to a university. "This is my complex," he admits. "I haven't accomplished anything scholastically. You see, my father was an electrical engineer, my brother and my cousins are all electrical engineers." "There was so much emphasis put on becoming an engineer in Pete's family," Sally says. "There was no room for individuality. When the Queen made Pete an M.B.E. [Member of the Order of the British Empire], his brother told him he'd rather be a B.E.E. [Bachelor of Electrical Engineering]." "I'm getting over it though," Snell says. "I'm starting to realize that other fellows.... I think you can succeed just as well without a degree as with, but I am partly disappointed that I spent so much time in sport. Therefore, I feel sport owes me something. Basically, I'm not bitter about not being able to reap the rewards, but I'm aware I'm making a lot of money for someone."

"Pete used to think people were going to use him for what they could get out of him," Sally says. "It was his bugbear. Before we were married he lived almost like a recluse. He missed out on a lot and he's suffered for it. He didn't come in contact with all the odd bods. He's still diffident and staidy, but at least now he has a reasonable sense of humor. The first time I went out with him he didn't try to make a pass at me. So many bods you're always having to protect your virtue. What a relief! I could relax with him. He was different. He thought I was a Catholic, and without my knowing it he bought a book on Catholicism and studied up on it. He told his mother and she forbade him to marry me. Imagine that! He was 24! When we got married Pete said I'd either have to give up work—I was working in a bank, in foreign exchange—or he'd give up Tokyo.

Bit of blackmail. He always had it in the back of his mind that it was essential I give up work."

"Peter was pitched forth from no one into a world figure," says Mrs. Warren, his former landlady. "But we think he's handled everything very well. Not in the least bigheaded. When he came here we gave him a feeling of belonging, a stable homelife. He never came home to a lot of bickering. It was a little while before he would thaw out at that stage. He was very quiet. Like getting a pearl out of an oyster to get him to talk. He always felt that people wouldn't listen to what he had to say. I didn't know he had a sister for six months. He didn't think anyone would be interested."

"Peter needs bolstering up," says Sally. "That feeling he has to win all the time is a bit of a bugbear. We're trying to lead two lives at the moment. We both feel a little nervous at the end of the day. I'm edgy, tired. I don't feel like bolstering him up all the time. I'm tired of spending my life boosting him along, tired of playing second fiddle to his running. It's sort of like a major sin him missing a day's training. He gets quite depressed about training sometimes. I originally thought there was a lot of glamour in athletics. It's just plain boring, I think. I have to go to the meetings and try to stay awake. They seem to think I should go around and chat merrily to all and sundry. I think Pete's a bit tired of it, too. I think he's just as keen on his quitting as I am."

Indeed, Snell plans to retire either in March, after the New Zealand season, or following a European tour next summer. Before then he would like to break some records. "The 1,500 should be ideal," he says. "The 1,000 [outdoors] should be mine, too. Of course, the mile." He doubts, however, whether he can lower his half-mile mark. "The Olympics has given me the incentive to do all this work," he says. "I'll never have it again. I wouldn't like to think I was capable of breaking the records and not take the opportunity. Records make the sport. I'm very record-conscious, myself. I'd like to run a record in a socialist country, too. In Moscow. It holds a great fascination for me. I think the ambassador value of that kind of performance would be terrific—our system against theirs. I'd quite like to set a record out of New Zealand. New Zealanders prefer an overseas product to a local one. There is a tendency to feel we can't make things here as well as elsewhere. Anything that's international gets a great reception here. I think, too, that a record made outside New Zealand would be more highly regarded. When I set my mile record at Wanganui, people wondered whether it was genuine. I think I more or less proved myself, didn't I? Then I'm going to enjoy myself. I have joined a golf club; tennis will be my main summer sport. I'll continue to run, maybe compete in the odd cross-country run. Perhaps a 10-mile run three nights a week. Have a run Sundays over the 22-mile course. Play golf on Saturdays. Having been in a highly fit condition, I'll want to retain it.

"I want to broaden my interests," Snell says. "I read very little, for instance. One or two books a year. This is shocking. I have to do more of this. You just don't feel like sitting down with a book after training. I think I'm losing out, not reading books."

"It'll be nice being able to do things together," Sally says. "We have a 12½-foot yacht rotting away down in the bay. We've been out five or six times in two years. We thought it would be fun. It will be fun. The times we've been out, it's been hilarious. All the yachties standing on the shore roaring with laughter."

After dinner one night last month Snell went to see Mr. Scott, his masseur, who lives nearby. Snell took off his sweat pants and lay on his back in his running shorts on a glider on Mr. Scott's enclosed porch. On the floor, which was covered with linoleum, an electric heater shone. Mr. Scott, a heavy man past middle age whose eyes are enlarged and distorted by his glasses, pulled up a chair so that he was sitting by the glider. He uncapped a bottle of olive oil, poured some of it on Snell's heroic legs and started to work. Mr. Scott said there are three factors involved in running—the mental, the physical and the spiritual. Then he said that Kipling's poem should be the runner's bible, and Snell quoted a line or two from it. "Peter feels the pull of the spiritual more than the other boys," Mr. Scott said. "Far more. That's why he plumbs to the depths. That's why he can get to the heights. He's more sensitive. If he gets the spiritual, there'll be no holding him. Peter was a lost boy, to be candid. I still don't think he's found himself. He will. Fame hit him quickly, before he was ready. He's made mistakes. He'll make more." At one end of the room was a stand which held potted plants and seashells on its tiers; above it, along the molding, porcelain terns were flying. In the lounge, where Mr. Scott said Mrs. Scott was writing a novel about a family of New Zealand settlers, a woman was singing. The radio? A record? "Peter hasn't touched his physical capabilities," Mr. Scott was saying. "I should be able to punish myself more." Snell said. "If I treat it like a business.... If I could take that surge that goes through man, that makes him do things greater than he's physically capable of...." He paused to listen to the rain striking the tin roof. "The ease that he does things," Mr. Scott said. "He has such an abnormal strength. The harder Peter runs, the more graceful he gets. I'm fey. I sense these things. My fingers got eyes in them. They sense these things. The physical side doesn't dominate in Peter. That's why he runs easier. But it's not wonderful, Peter's breaking records. For him it's just an ordinary feat. He works hard. For a really fit person, it's ordinary."

Mr. Scott then indicated the many marvels of Snell's legs. "My calves are big," Snell said, feeling Mr. Scott's hands upon them. "But they're quality," Mr. Scott said. Snell began to talk about himself. "I dither a bit," he said. "Sally gets annoyed." "Peter's got the brains," Mr. Scott said. "He doesn't use them. He will. He's not a ditherer. He just takes longer to work things out. Peter's a lazy trainer, too. That's why his achievements are all the more remarkable." "It's amazing how many times I have to force myself out, "Snell said. "Five miles down the road, I'm really glad I'm there. Sometimes, though, it's gotten worse and worse, and I've stopped." "Fancy having a voice like that," Mr. Scott said, listening to the singer. "Elisabeth Schwarzkopf." "You know," Snell said, "after you've won a race, people ask you to touch them."

Later, when he was walking home, Snell said: "I've been brought up to believe you can't succeed in life without a profession. It isn't true, is it?"

FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS