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copy of letter to Mrs. Fuller [copy of letter to Mrs. Fuller in red font]

October 25, 1938 Shipcote Hingham, Mass.

Dear Mrs. Fuller,

How kind of you to write about "Here I Stay"! I work so much from snippets of experience, heresay and history that it is hard for me to remember which is which when a book is finished.

There are two women in our district who do their own farming. One cuts unaided twenty cords of wood and does her own plowing. Horn Pond is the Muscongus end of Damariscotta of course, transferred. Most of the Tory father's opinions are Henry's. You'll remember I was reading town histories for local history. The sailor with his little model came out of an English Sunday school tract. The doctor's wife's way of eating astonished the lady in Grandmother's First Hundred Years. I leaned heavily on that man who lived at Paris for the Vendue, the pigeons, and the catamount, in his book on his family. The cabin stands in a pine grove near Harvard, Mass. A chance visitor told me about his grandfather's shop on the Ossippee trail that sold everything from gooseyokes to pulpits, and so the list goes endlessly on. I did find the name Deerwander somewhere in Maine, probably some hamlet that has since died out. Where the Indians came from I don't remember now but Molly Molasses was real and Captain Bob Bandylegs wasn't. The growing elm switch was near Buffalo. My mother saw it as a girl, stuck in by a bride before the door of her new house.

I'm at work on a new novel. Henry is still at the farm workingon his St. Lawrence book. We had a beautiful summer along its shores but missed the farm, where we spent a few weeks in September, so perfect that they almost covered over our sense of loss. Do remember me to Miss Stuart, with best wishes to yourself --

Cordially

(Signed) Elizabeth Coatsworth

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