Sargent pressed the flesh well. At a press conference in Braintree last week, he shook every hand in the room though he was already behind schedule.

"Great to see you," he told each of the fifty people there as he moved around the room slowly.

Sargent never rushes in public, but his staff does. "We've got three times the organization that Dukakis does," Brian D. young '76, a campaign coordinator, said last week. "Dukakis can't come close to our 2000 volunteers."

Dukakis also can't come close to Sargent's financing. The incumbent has spent over $800,000, twice as much as Dukakis, who has spent most of his limited funds on TV ads offering him mass exposure.

Sargent has been able to organize mass literature distributions and phone canvasses in selected areas. His staff is also trying a new gimmick--the standout. People who support Sargent are asked to stand in the middle of important intersections at designated times to display their support for the candidate. It won't replace TV ads.

The planning for the campaign comes out of a six-story brownstone on Congress Street in Boston. One aide confided that around there Dukakis is known as "that dirty little Greek with tennis sneakers."

"You should have heard the roar," another aide says, "when the campaign manager came on the loudspeaker and announced Sargent had been endorsed by The Globe. It was fantastic."