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An estimated ten million read his syndicated newspaper column, A Daily Thought. At the invitation of women's and culture clubs, lyceums and Chautauqua, Phelps delivered some 10,000 cheery lectures to some five million delighted listeners. On the air for Swift's hams and the Heinz 57 varieties, he was the literate housewife's delight. To his equal glow for the great and the trivial in books ("As I grow older I find Shakespeare more thrilling, more enchanting; yet I relish a good detective story"), Phelps added the seductions of wit† and a stock of anecdotes about literary greats he had known (Galsworthy, Barrie, Maeterlinck, Conrad, Shaw, et al.). To critical literary contemporaries, Phelps was a sinner who had stopped to look back at the Victorian Age and turned to a pillar of saccharine. Said unruffled Billy Phelps: "The most important emotion to preserve in maturity [is] the enjoyment of enjoyment." His warm enthusiasms and wide friendships helped many a man to do just that.
*Some Phelps hates: musical comedies, buttermilk, the novels of James T. Farrell, paint on young faces, simplified spelling,
†Sample: Phelps's citation of Walt Disney for an honorary degree: "He labored like a mountain and brought forth a mouse."