The Swedish Serenity group's spring convention in Stockholm, Sweden

My name is Gail and I'm a grateful alcoholic.

Hi everyone.

I want to begin by thanking my host who just walked in.

Suzanne, thank you for your hospitality.

Thank you Gunner for picking me up from the airport.

Ivaletta, thank you so much for coordinating so many plans.

And Marie, for all your thoughtfulness, knowing that I'm a history lover,

which you're going to find out in a minute.

and all the Andreas's that helped hook everything up.

You got some smart boys here in Sweden.

I had a little trouble in Scotland, so I appreciate that you were able to do this.

Well, I'm going to begin because I want to make sure we have enough time for this talk.

And as I told you, I'm an alcoholic, but I'm going to prove it because a picture is worth a thousand words.

Now, I'd like to tell you that this is Woodstock. It's not.

I was on a camping trip.

If you notice to the right is about a half a gallon of wine.

I was a winnette.

To the left is a can of beer.

I think there's a pack of cigarettes there and a cigarette in my hand.

And my zipper is not down.

That's just the way those pants were.

So I think that's a pretty good qualifying picture.

And by the way, my sobriety date is May 13, 1978.

I found my way into this wonderful program.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I was lucky enough to sober up in Akron, Ohio, and so I hope I can bring Akron, Ohio, to Sweden.

That's my job today.

Now, here's another picture of me.

That's a picture of me in a blackout.

I think you can relate.

Well, when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous in Akron, Ohio, they told me to say, whenever

A.A. asked you to do something, say, yes.

You might have heard that here as well.

And that's what has actually led me all the way to this moment here with you tonight.

And...

I happen to have said yes to someone who asked me to seat Lois Wilson at Founders Day.

After Bill died, Lois continued to come back and visit us each year, and we honor that on June 10th, Dr. Bob's last drink.

And so we'll have 12,000 people here this June, and we have a big party.

So...

I was seating Lois and I was going to seat her companions down in front of her,

and I met this beautiful woman here.

This is Nell Wing.

Nell Wing was secretary to Bill Wilson,

and Bill saw that this program could get distorted, could become myth,

so he asked her if she would keep the history,

and she eventually became an archivist, our very first archivist at headquarters.

So, I was talking to her, and I said,

No, if there's ever anything I can do for you,

well, just ask.

Don't ever say that in Alcoholics Anonymous.

She said, well, yes, Gail, there is.

I'd like you to start an archives.

I didn't know what an archives was.

I thought it was some smelly old papers somewhere

until I came to this country.

I've spent a good day and a half enjoying your history

that's hundreds and hundreds of years old.

And tonight, I'm going to bring you history that's just a little over almost 75 years old,

but it's traveled quite far since its birth in Akron.

So I want to tell you just a little bit about Nell.

She was like a Wilson.

If you go to the Wilson House, there's actually Nell's room is there at Stepping Stones,

and was a constant companion to Bill and Lois.

So when she asked me to do that, I didn't know how am I going to do this?

Ackerman didn't care about its history.

We hadn't done anything in, you know, a half a century.

And so I got involved in the purchase of Dr. Bob's home.

In fact, I negotiated the purchase on the home, and I thought, okay, I've done it.

I have a place for the archives now. We can put it in there. So I took off and went to New York to stay with Nell.

I stayed with her for about 10 days and I visited Lois to learn how to do archives.

And Nell said, well Gail, if you want to be an AA archivist, A.A. can't own property.

And I started doing what alcoholics do when they don't hear what they want to hear. I started whining.

Whining is anger coming through a very small hole.

And I tried to talk Nell Wing out of our traditions the next three days.

So here I am on a visit to Stepping Stones.

This is Bill Lois' home in Westchester County, New York, with the lovely gardens.

And there's Nell.

I took a picture over while I was there, and you can see the beautiful interior.

Lois Wilson was an interior decorator.

And here I am having a drink with Lois Wilson.

Now, I know you don't recognize me in that picture.

You see, I was sober in that picture, but my hair hadn't sobered up yet.

It's still kind of unmanageable.

Stockholm weather got a hold of it last night.

But anyway, it was a sweet visit, and I left to go back to Akron,

and I broke away from the house and to try to set it up under the structure of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And that's what I'm going to tell you about now.

Now, I'm a retired school teacher.

So if you don't mind, I'd like to take you on a field trip to our office first.

So you know when you come to Akron, and I'm inviting you all now to please come.

You've showed me a wonderful time here.

And I would like to do the same for you.

If you were to make it to the year 2010...

to Dallas, I mean not Dallas, San Antonio, Texas, where we are going to celebrate

AA together.

You know, we're all just one family, the one circle of Alcoholics Anonymous, and that's how

I feel when I come to meet you.

You're just my brothers and sisters in AA.

And so the office, we were getting mixed up with 855 Ardmore, which is Dr. Bob's home.

So we took this large picture window, and it took us about a year to do.

We cut it into about a thousand pieces of glass.

If you had come in, you would have cut a piece of glass and become a part of the window.

Or you might have thrown us a sobriety coin.

We are men and women who normally would not mix, and that window is surrounded with sobriety coins,

of various members that came through.

And then we framed it with what I'm going to be talking about a little bit tonight,

and that's called the Four Absolutes.

They would not have taken.

This is a...

symbolic picture, and the gentleman on the bed is symbolically Bill D., who was the third member of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And when he got sober, he walked out a city hospital on July 4th of 1935, a free man to never drink again.

And that's when group number one began, and in your big book, you'll see that in his story.

Bill makes a comment.

Okay.

So we're not the only one over in America

Celebrate in the Fourth of July.

You can celebrate with us

because it's our Independence Day as well.

I call this Embassy Row.

The big book just turned 70 in April.

And we're going to talk about that book tonight.

It's a great history book, and we'll be talking about it

But it's in many languages now.

It's in, I believe, 58 languages.

It's in nearly 160 countries.

And if you should come in for a visit, please look for your big book,

because we lift that plastic up and you sign it.

And these books are becoming archival as well.

Right there on the end of the left is a poster that was given to me by the first

France, a group in France, it was signed by the first AA's in Russia.

And we recently had one of those AAs visit the office and see that poster.

Also, well, we're not in the UK, but there was some tartans.

Are you aware that there was tartans commissioned for recovery?

They wear ties and things in Scotland and stuff.

So there's actually three tartans that have been commissioned that are there as well.

Pretty cool, huh?

Now, I'm a retired school teacher, so I have 26 displays from A to Z.

And if I'm not there, you can put some headsets on and you can walk around.

And we're redoing these.

So by the time of the international year, we're going to have them really special.

So that's the outside.

And the whole history of AA is portrayed there.

And then if you go to the inside, there's Reverend Tonks' chest.

That's the man Bill called.

It's filled with AA books.

There's the magazines, and you can take them down and read them,

and I'll tell you more about those in my story tonight.

The Bunn bookcase to the left is filled with big books, including the ones that influenced Bill on the writing of the big book.

So that's the interior room, and we'll open the safe and show you some very special things.

So if you come, I know many of you are coming.

I know some of you are going to New York and you're renting a car.

It's only 10 hours from New York, and there's many, many things to see when you come to Akron.

And I'm going to wet your appetite.

This is a gallery.

Some artists have been doing some paintings that have brought some of the scenic things to life for us, so it's there.

And then finally, no archives would be complete without conservation.

And it's there.

We want this to be here for the next generation, paper dyes, so we are cleaning it, repairing it, deacidifying it, encapsulating it,

and taking care of it for you because this is your archives.

If you don't have a first edition, first printing big book, come and see yours at our office.

It's a we deal.

Also, if it's pretty far away for you to visit, you can go to Akrona.a.org.

Some of you may know about the book, Dr. Bob, and the good old timers.

We're trying to keep those voices alive, and we're putting on an MP3 files,

and you can directly download them off of our webpage.

And for those of you that would like definitions of the steps and the traditions,

you can click on any of the words, and little definitions will pop up.

And more will be revealed, because we're always adding things.

So please visit.

And, well, let's start on our story.

That took me about six weeks to learn to do that.

I'm going to ask you to go back in time a little bit to Akron.

Now, a lot of our story is going to take place during depression times.

And our co-founders thought that was providential because this is a fellowship,

and it brought people together.

The hard times caused them to have to work harder to help each other.

I don't know if it could happen in good times if we could have birthed this thing.

Akron was the rubber capital of the world, and we didn't have royalty like you have here.

What we had was the Industrial Revolution that produced a lot of money for some families.

The family you're looking at here is from the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company.

This is Harvey Firestone's family. Harvey is here in the center.

And the son to the right of him is Russell, and his nickname was Bud.

And he was a terrible alcoholic.

And, you know...

Money can't buy sobriety.

They tried.

They sent him away to treatment.

They did all the family could do with all the power, prestige, and wealth this family had.

They could not help this young man get sober, so they gave up.

It's like all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put bud back together again.

Well, this man here on the left, his name is Jim Newton.

And he's my favorite.

He's just my favorite guy.

He...

You might already know this, but God can use womanizers in our story.

He's a young luggage salesman, and he's chasing pretty girls in Massachusetts,

and he thinks he's on his way to a singles dance, and he follows him into the hotel,

and he ends up in an Oxford group meeting.

And after that, you're probably all familiar with a man by the name of Thomas Edison.

Well, he ends up working for Thomas Edison down in Fort Myers, Florida.

And next to Thomas Edison is Henry Ford, and Charles Lindbergh is one of those guys down there,

and Harvey Firestone.

And they would all get together down there.

Well, Harvey Firestone likes Jim, and he's going to invite him to Akron and get him a good position with the company.

Thank God or you don't sit here tonight.

Well...

Jim Newton takes the son on a train trip to Denver where the Oxford group was meeting.

And on the way there, they nursed the bottle, controlled drinking.

This is before Alonon.

And on the way back, a man by the name of Sam Shoemaker was on that train.

Now, some of you might nod because I hope you know who Sam Shoemaker is.

Small world, they put him in a train car coming back, and he made a surrender in that train car.

And he gave his life and his will like we do in the third step.

And when he got off the train, he didn't look the same.

Lines on his forehead were gone.

The family looked at him.

This was a new man.

And if you're familiar with the prodigal son, when the son comes home, the father is so overjoyed, what does the father do?

The father throws a dinner for all his friends.

And he invites the Oxford group to Akron.

Now the Oxford group was for the down and uppers.

If you were down and out, you went to the Salvation Army.

So this was society times.

It was who knew who.

And you can see that our society got all dressed up and came out to meet the Oxford group.

Now, the Oxford group traveled like an army for God.

They were what originally was a return to first century Christianity.

Later, they became the Oxford Group,

and then they became moral rearmament, MRA,

when Buckman had a spiritual experience,

another conversion experience in the Black Forest in Germany,

and they changed their name,

and they were going to change the world, one leader at a time.

And today, they're known as initiatives of change.

Do you ever hear up-up with people?

They used to travel up-up with people.

Do you ever hear that group?

Do you know that they broke off from the Oxford group just like us in the 60s?

I thought that might be interesting because I think they traveled around a lot.

So the newspapers pick it up because Frank Bookman's coming to town with anywhere from 40 or 60 of the group.

And Mr. Firestone's going to put them up.

They're going to have the dinner.

And his son is going to give testimony to his recovery from alcoholism.

You see, this is how the Oxford group came to Akron.

This is how the story gets started.

And it's important.

It gets started with a drunk's recovery.

That's not what's going to happen in New York.

But in Akron, it gets started with the drunks recovery and Henrietta, Cyberling, attended,

because for the next 10 days, they're going to have house parties,

and they're going to have meetings in the morning and at night for the next 10 days,

and they'll go out into the pulpits of the churches.

Well, Anne Smith, this is Dr. Bob's wife here, began attending.

Now, these two women, they had a way of manipulating poor Dr. Bob.

You know, he started out okay in Akron, but eventually his alcoholism increases, and he doesn't

have too many friends left.

So by the time he joins the Oxford group, he's grateful to have these friends.

And he likes the people, much like when you walk into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous today.

They were comfortable with themselves, they were laughing, and they were of good spirit.

But Dr. Bob and Ann Smith are going to be in the Oxford group for two and a half years.

Now...

It's going to be the same principles that we get sober on today.

I mean, they read lots of books.

Dr. Bob read the Bible a couple times.

He read all the books.

He prayed, even went back to church.

He did everything the Oxford Group told him to do.

And he did not get sober in two and a half years.

That's an important point because there's a reason why.

So, um...

This is Henrietta.

A woman by the name of Delphine Weber calls Henrietta and says,

what are we going to do about Dr. Bob?

She goes, what do you mean?

What are we going to do about Dr. Bob?

Well, he's a terrible drinker.

He's about ready to lose his practice.

He's about ready to lose his home.

And she did what they did in the early days of the Oxford Group and AA.

They would get up in the morning,

and they would open the Bible or a spiritual inspirational book,

and they would read it.

and then they would stop and they would go into the listening part

listen to what God had to say for them and then they would get a

sheet of paper and a pencil or a pen and they would begin writing what they

thought God was saying to them. Then there was another part that they did it

was called checking. You never went it alone

any more than you should in AA I suppose

But they did this thing called checking, and then you would check it through the four absolutes,

honesty, purity, and selfishness, and love to make sure that guidance wasn't coming from your ego.

That guidance is one of the reasons why I think we have the program today.

So many people were listening.

By the way, your 24-hour book, how many people know about the 24-hour book?

That came from two listeners from the Oxford group, just two women who listened,

and then a drunk came along and made it into a book for us.

So anyway, Henrietta comes up through her guidance, and she calls her friends T. Henry, Claris Williams.

Now, T. Henry looked like a drunk, but he wasn't.

It was actually a tire mold inventor.

Bill Wilson comes to town, and he loses his job because of Bill Wilson.

In the proxy takeover fight at his company, because it was a National Rubber Company, and he was the inventor there.

And they had this beautiful home.

and they almost lost their home.

Yeah, he's lost his job.

He almost loses his home because they were for closing on homes,

much like they're doing today in the United States.

People can't pay their mortgages.

And the bank stopped short of taking this house

because they'd already taken so many.

They couldn't take any more.

So Henrietta asked him if we could use the house

for a special meeting for Dr. Bob and Ann because they weren't sharing.

And...

They agreed, and so Henrietta set up the meeting, and she said, it was on Monday.

The first meeting was what they called a set-up meeting.

Now, we call when we speak a lead, because from the Oxford group, there was always a leader.

And when you speak in AA in our country, we call it a lead.

Well, she was the leader of this, and she said, you come to mean business.

There's not going to be any pussy footing around.

We're going to share, and we're going to share deeply.

Sounds like intervention, doesn't it, for some of you that might know what an intervention is.

Now, she got that from her guidance.

So, they planned the meeting for Wednesday at 8 o'clock.

And I don't know what they said.

They all went around the room and they shared it.

I don't know.

Those were down and uppers.

What did they do?

Touch the stove and say some four-letter word.

I don't know.

But when it came Dr. Bob's turn, there was this long pause.

And he thanked them.

And then he said, now there's something that I want to share with you.

I am a secret drinker and I cannot stop.

Oh, he said, at the cost of my profession.

He was a doctor.

I am a secret drinker and I cannot stop.

Step one.

Would you like us to pray for you, Bob?

Yes, I would.

They all get down on their knees in this home.

That's what they prayed back then.

They'd all get down on their knees and they prayed for Dr. Bob.

Now, Henrietta would continue to pray for him.

For the next couple weeks, it's not going to be long before something happens here.

But she will continue to pray for him in her morning quiet time.

Well, Bill Wilson, as you know, comes to town and the deal falls through,

and he is left in the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel that you see here.

And he's pacing the lobby and he hears the tinkling of the glasses and he thinks he's going to go in and have a drink or strike up a conversation when he remembers something Lois said to him.

You see, he'd been working with alcoholics for months before he came to Akron and not one got sober.

And he was pretty depressed about that.

But Lois said, but you're sober, Bill.

So, thank God.

He walks over to the telephone.

He puts a nickel in the phone.

Oh, before he does, he looks at the directory, and he finds the most perfect name he can find.

Reverend Tunks, when Bill went for a walk, he took a Tunk.

That's an old Vermont term that he used.

You know, thank God he picked that name or we might not be here tonight.

Because this is the only name he picks, and it's the Firestone Minister that had brought the Oxford group to town.

So when he's looking for the Oxford group and he needs help, Reverend Tunks will give him 10 numbers.

Thank God nobody was home.

We might not be here tonight.

People are busy.

They're not home, and he finally gets a hold of one man, the last number, and it's Norm Shepard.

And Norm Shepard gives him Henrietta Cyberlings number.

Oh, Bill doesn't want to call a cyberling.

That's probably the president's wife.

He doesn't, that's what he thinks.

So he walks away from the phone.

He's not going to call her.

And then he hears that voice of guidance.

He says, I heard a voice say to me, you better call that lady.

He turns around and he goes back upstairs and he calls her slender threads.

Now, Henrietta Cyberling was very proper.

She was raised at Vassar to marry a Vanderbilt.

but she had ended up marrying a cyberling.

Now, I want to remind you, this is high society times back in the 30s,

and it's going to be Mother's Day weekend.

What a great gift we got for all the moms, huh?

He's going to call her, though, on a Saturday,

and when he calls her, he says,

I'm a rum hound from New York.

Can you imagine saying that to her?

Total stranger. I'm a rum hound from New York, and I'm looking for another alcoholic.

Because of her faith, because of her morning prayers, she thinks, Mana from heaven.

You come over here right now. I've got just the man for you.

Well, that man, you know, was drunk.

So the next day, she says, if you'll go to church with me, we'll try to do it the next day.

And Bill did that.

Now, I want to, and as you know, Dr. Bob didn't want to meet with him.

I'm going to give that bird 15 minutes, and Bill looks at him and says,

it looks like you could use a drink, and then two of them go back and retire into that little library.

Right here is where they met.

And if you come to Akron, you can visit there, same wallpaper, same everything.

And, you know, they talked late into the night.

Two real quick stories.

I just feel like I want to tell you.

One is when I told the story about Delphine Weber...

The woman who called Henrietta, I did it at the 50th anniversary of group number one.

A gentleman came from the back of the room crying.

He came up to me and he said, Delphine, Delphine Weber, that's my grandmother.

I didn't know my grandmother had anything to do with the start of AA.

Then a woman comes into the program, Ethel Macy,

And she saw F.A. Cyberling's limousine driver who drove Bill home that night, Bill back to the Mayflower, shortly after that had come into the program.

And little did he know that night when he drove Bill back from the gate lodge that that man would be starting a program that would save his life.

So we never know what we're doing today is a link in a chain of events called Alcoholics Anonymous.

I have many, many stories like that.

I could tell you because I've met the offspring of all the pioneers

and many of their children and grandchildren to this day need the program.

So something you're doing today is going to help somebody downstream.

So this is the man on the bed we talked about.

And, you know, Bob didn't have too much sobriety when they called on him,

but they knew they needed to work with another drunk.

I want to tell you a little bit about the four absolutes that they took to him.

You see the words there.

These are the only yardsticks we had in Akron.

We didn't have 12 steps.

These are the four words that we got from the Oxford Group that is what we used.

We still studied these today in Akron and the area.

There are four questions that go with those four words.

Is what I'm about to think, say, or do, right or wrong, true or false, ugly or beautiful,

and how does it help the other guy?

Now, those were real powerful tools.

What happened though with the Oxford group is that when they started going country to country, they wanted to convert Hitler.

and a telegram got intercepted that said,

God bless a man like Adolf Hitler or whatever.

But the real intent was to try to, if they could get him,

they could turn the whole thing around.

But instead, it caused so much controversy

that Bill, who was trying to take care of this new little group,

backed away.

And you will not...

They're in the big book,

but he's kind of got them woven through.

But we'll talk more about how important the Oxford group really was.

So after...

That prayer. This house here, remember they said a prayer Wednesday at 8 o'clock at the meeting here?

They will continue to meet in this home until late 39.

This is what we call the flying blind period. We didn't have conference-approved literature.

The big book wasn't conference-approved. We were just hanging on to the Oxford group.

And what would happen here...

is that a little squad of drunks began to form, and it was called the alcoholic squad,

and it was like a subgroup to the Oxford group.

I mean, the Oxford group was there, but these drunks were coming in,

and they were kind of taken over because, you know, for us, it's life and death.

So we were kind of out-growing these guys.

Well, you know, the guidance part I told you about?

Well, those drunks were pretty serious, low-bottomed dr.

and they were Jones and man, they were shaken, and they couldn't sit still for the guidance.

So Dr. Bob would take them upstairs into the upper room and they'd have their own prayer meeting.

Now, the reason today that some of us use the Lord's Prayer is because in the Oxford Group, we opened with the prayer,

you gave some testimony, and you closed with the prayer.

And then you had a little literature on the table, and we read the Oxford Group literature,

and then we went and got donuts.

So...

Now we're going to go to, there's two places that this story takes place in.

One of them is Akron.

And now we're going to go to the other stage, which is New York.

This is Calvary Church.

This is Sam Shoemaker's Church.

The Oxford Group headquarters is there in New York.

This is where Roland Hazard, when he comes back from seeing Carl Jung in Switzerland,

this is where he will get three months of sobriety.

This is where Ebby Thatcher will come.

and he will get a couple months of sobriety and make a call on Bill.

So this is very important to us, this church.

That's Sam Shoemaker.

Bill would say that we got some of the steps from him

because Sam often spoke of the same principles.

We read a lot of his books.

And this is where they held the Oxford Group.

Let's go in and see what a meeting there was like.

That is a typical picture of when Bill and Lois were attending the Oxford Group there.

Now, after Bill gets sober in town's hospital, he gets this idea of primary purpose.

When you read his story, he said, and I saw how my experience could benefit others.

So Bill, Oxford Group wanted to be all things to all people.

Bill just wanted to help a drunk.

So when he came in, he just about knock you over looking for a drunk.

The Oxford Group didn't like that too much.

So they started giving Bill and Lois the cold shoulder.

They didn't like them at all doing that.

So that's Clinton. That's an artist's rendition of Clinton Street. This is Bill and Lois's home. And they start inviting the drunks back to their home. This is 1937. This is happening. And you can see they're greeting them there. And they form a group called the drunk squad. So you've got the alcoholic squad in Akron. You've got this drunk squad in New York.

Well...

One minute Bill's a millionaire, the next minute he's broke.

Have you ever seen Bill? You can tell he's got a motion disorder.

He's up, he's down. He's up. He's down.

Well, he's making a comeback, and he's coming back to Akron, and he's on a business trip.

Things have been pretty slow going, and he's going to stop in to see the Smith.

This is 855 Bardemore. This is Dr. Bob's home.

And they're going to be...

A lot of failures. I don't know if you understand how hard this program was to get going,

because people were just falling off the wagon.

Somebody would get a few, you know, a little time, and there was a lot of failures,

and they didn't really know what they had.

So they're sitting around the house.

By the way, that's Photoshopped in.

Can you tell?

I just wanted you to know that the three of them got together, and they started counting noses.

That should say, 1937.

And they began counting, and they came up with 40 people sober.

And this feeling came over the three of them.

It was like a moment of ecstasy.

And then they bowed their heads in gratitude

because they realized that a light had come into the dark world of the alcoholic.

It's the first time it dawns on them.

This thing might be catching on.

Well, if you know, Bill, the next moment...

That humble moment turns into, hey, he's been working on Wall Street.

Why don't we get his chain of hospitals?

And, hey, we need some missionaries.

And, oh, we better get some literature to keep this message from getting garbled.

I mean, that's where he went straight.

You know, poor Dr. Bob.

You know, he's like, whoop, what happened here?

And, well, you know, the two of them were best friends.

They were both Vermonters.

And they...

They always got along, but that doesn't mean they always agree.

They agreed to disagree agreeably.

Thank God.

I think that was so important to getting this thing off the ground.

Imagine that they were fighting all the time.

I mean, I don't know if we'd have made it either.

So Smitty, Dr. Bob's son, said, if it was up to Dr. Bob,

A.A. would have never left Akron.

But if it was up to Bill, he had franchised it.

So here you can see the two co-founders.

It's a very touching video.

I think it's the only one we actually have.

In a little bit, you'll see Anne Smith, the mother of AA.

And what they did, and you can see the wild ties of Dr. Bob.

He was pretty, that in Argyll socks.

And they were both funny.

You know, they both had great senses of humor, as I think you can tell there.

Pretty happy in their sobriety.

Yeah.

Now, Anne Smith was kind of more shy.

She's going to be uncomfortable when she comes on here.

There she says, get me out of here, Bob, come on.

Just stay in the background.

But she was sweet and everyone loved her.

And she certainly earned her title, Mother of A.A.

Bob wasn't too keen on the idea.

He just wasn't quite sure.

And they had come up with the idea of a group conscience.

Once before that, Bill had been offered a job at Towns Hospital,

and he got pretty excited.

You know, they were hungry.