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in pursuit of art education in France, Germany and Italy,
that my mind was ever negative about my homeland,and the more I saw of anything else the more strongly I felt I wanted to come home to Maine and paint my own incomparable country again.
And the truth is,that the very first pic,tures I ever exhibited in New York,shown as far back as nineteen eleven,were pictures of Maine,taken over on the west border in Center Lovell and North Lovell where I lived and painted over a spac e of ten years,in long summers,and once a whole winter through, and got my first recognition in art from pictures of Maine scenes as felt by a Maine son,a nd outside of Winslow Homer who was not a M aine born man,I suppose I am the first one to be allowed to
take credit for showing Maine scenes to the outer world,and outside of my friend Waldo Pierce,who does not give the same attention that I have done and am now doing entirely,I know of no one who gives the subject the same attention ,that is-to do what I like to think I may call State portraiture and I was very pleased that at both of my last two exhibitions in New York, Waldo came and left me a note at the first one #Saying #I am on my way to Maine, but I don't see why I have to do ,it is all here " and last year he left me a note saying, "More power to you for
giving birth to Maine", both of which notes I highly prized as Waldo is a Maine man and feels the native emotion,naturally.

It is inspiring to be proud of one's native country,and for man man;y years when coming north,I never felt local emotions until I got to Kittery and then when South Beriwxck vame, I began to think at once of tha; t lovely person and gifted author, Sara Orne Jewett who has so grac;ed the record of the State of Maine with her beautiful stories of it.
Maine is I always think, something else than just America it is tor us who were born here, America localized,and it suppose this idea has the same effect on anyone who is born elsewhere when he enters his own birth locality.
And so it is a matter of great pride to me to fulfill the [word crossed out] request of the State Library of Maine by giving it the souvenir material it asks for.
My father was an englishman who came over here in the early [word crossed out] eighteen sixties,and headed tor Lewiston where there was already some sort of an english colony of cotton workers from the Lancashire England country,and liking it,he sent for my mother who came over in a sailing vessel taking six weeks tor the journey--they married at once and settled down and my father
immediately became a citizen of Lewiston and remained so for sixty five years,until his death in nineteen fifteen.
I have now only neic es,nephews and cousins who survive and are residents of Lewiston and Auburn,and the most conspicuous [letter crossed out] of these was the late Charles [letter crossed out] Horbury whom my father brought over as a boy,and by some strange means unknown to me now,

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