Jane Mansbridge
I asked Sid to read a draft of Beyond Adversary Democracy. I think it was because he had just left the University of Chicago and retained some fondness for it, and I had just arrived. I think I may have spoken with him about the questions I borrowed from Participation in America in my Selby questionnaire (I was particularly puzzled about a question on local government because I tried to follow up to see what kinds of local governments the respondents had had, and could not find any – or something; my memory blurs). But like an incredible dear, he read the Selby part of the manuscript. So these are my memories:
The first thing I learned about Sidney Verba was that he was willing to read a manuscript from a young scholar whom he hardly knew and had not had as a student. When he read that manuscript, he had much wise advice, which I have forgotten except for two things, one small but important and one great. The small but important piece of advice was to take away two of the decimal places after my numbers in my tables. He pointed out kindly that although the results were statistically significant, I had only 61 interviews, not enough to claim the precision that three decimal places suggested. This may not seem a big deal to most, but I remember and am deeply grateful for that advice every time I happen to glance at those tables today.
The big thing was that, when I talked with him on the phone to get his reactions on the manuscript and told him how daunted I was with what I was doing, and said thought perhaps I should not publish it but keep on working to make it better, he repeated cheerily a remark I think he said he had got from Lucian Pye that “A thing worth doing is worth doing badly.” I have probably repeated that remark to myself a thousand times. Sid was deeply kind and gentle as well as being deeply intelligent and insightful.
I loved his offhand jokes. On the topic of Boston parochialism, he told of the Boston lady who mentioned to a friend she was taking a trip out west. “How are you going?” asked the friend. “Out Boylston,” was the reply.
