SOURCE: "Tilley the Toiler: A Profile of the New Yorker Magazine," in The Saturday Review of Literature, Vol. XXX, No. 34, August 30, 1947, pp. 7-10, 29-32.

In the following excerpt, Maloney discusses "legends" concerning various personalities and practices associated with the New Yorker.

This article is the work of a man who spent just under eleven years on the staff of The New Yorker magazine, wrote two million words for it, more or less, went through five hundred and seventy-odd weekly deadlines, and resigned at last because he felt rather middle-aged and pooped.

Once a year, on the anniversary of the first issue of The New Yorker, there appears on its cover a portrait by Rea Irvin, the magazine's first art editor, of the mythical character known around the office as Eustace Tilley. Tilley, who is represented as scrutinizing a butterfly through a single eyeglass, is a supercilious fellow dressed...