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By Gladys St. Clair Morgan

__.__:-gaJ Ii&i.JJ __ Rachel Field, a magical Mme to be added to niy Hall of Fame; a jewel to be laid away in my itreastU'e trove of priceless memories. !Rachel Field, author of many children's stories, among them "iHitty", a winner of the Newberry Medal, poems of rare loveliness, and in more recent years "God's Pocket" ,and "Time out of Mind" which remains at the head of the best sellers after many months and has taken the young author far up on the lacld:er of success. Though she was born in Stockbridge, Ma.ss., and makes her permanent home in )New York City. she has spent many summers 1n Sutton, a small island off Mt. Desert, and in these sojourns she has become so imbued wilth Maine atmosphere that she writes more sensitively of it than some of our nathre~born writers. It was from Sutton she motored up to Camden the other afternoon to address tihe Maine .Library Associaltion meeting, and it was my great privilege to hear her. She came to Camden with her husband, a blond giant with so much distinctilve personaUty that one cannot imagine speaking of him as ":Rachel Field's husband". !His name is Arthur Pedersen.

Opening her talk on ":How !Books i Happen", Miss Field said: "It seems' f~olish for me ,to spend my time talking about books ito a troomful of ;people who know so much more aibout !books than I ever shall" She gave just what we wanted most to hear, !behind the, scene sketches of how her own books were written. "Books can !l"ise and \ fall like cakes," was a laughing remark," and tight rope walkers and writers have much in commpn, you nev,er know' :when you're-going tofaUI off! Doctors and! their pati'ent.s were also used as a comparison, a doctor may nurse his patient along to a point where complete recovery is in sight, and then ,there is a relapse. So with a writer and his 'book. 1

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,She was seven or eight when she firsit had the impuLse to write a lbook. It was a very nice book, iblank white leaves cut and carefully sewed together and bound in a cover ptrettily printed in bright crayons: "B-00-K". She decided the nice white blank pag,es loo~ed better than anything she could put on them, so that first book was never written, and "Perhaps it' was my best book, who knows?" she queried. She told of a play she wrote during •••• Rachel Field! is young and lovely. her second year at Radcliffe -which en,joy,ed no small success. It seemed Dark auburn hair curling back from her face and caught in a soft knot at to her to be very original in thought, and when later she wrote the poem the ,nape of her neck. Vivid blue eyes "If Once You've Stepped on an Isvery white 'teeth. A warm glowing face. To me she conveyed a composite land", she had the idea tha1J she alone picture of Hedwig Benedicit and Ethel experienced the feeling expressed Lee iHayden, interesting? She was. therein. Yet in both irultances she wearing a blue knitted sutt, one of had come to realize the.it hundreds of , thos,e heavenly blues so popular this others have the same feelings, ·the season; her hat was a darker blue felt. same ideas, the same thoughts; that r her own thoughts were not orlginal in 1 the least, but simply an expression of another's tlioughits on paper. Miss FielJ.di voiced her love for Maine, anclJ Maine appears over and over again in her writing. She says she feels Maine more keenly after she has returned! to her New York apartment, and there can readily put on pa.per pictures vistoned during hetr summer sojourn that elude her when actually in Maine. 1

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IShe gave a dellightful story of "J;Iitty". One day when she and Dorothy iuathrop, iLlusm-ator, were strolling down a !New York avenue, they spied a ,tiny wooden doll, not more than a. finger's len!Jf;h, more than :100 years old, iin ,an antique shop window. To her diminutive apron was; atltached the inscription in almost illegtb'le hand writing "Hitty". lit was too expensive to be purehased, \but one could admire and long through the glass. MissField and Miss Lathrop corresponded later about iHitty. She is so tanned she must have lbeen on a 'long ocean voyage", or "I am sure she w,as in a shipwreok" for what would a long ocean voyag,e be withou.t a shipwreck! iHitty kept popping up in iletters, embroidered ,more and more, and one day Miss (Lathrop wrote: WhY don't you write a story about Hitty and I will illustrate it for you?" a,nd so tall at once ,there was ,the ibook Hitty". It was easy writing, Miss !Field ,told us, because she had Hitty do all the :things she always wanted. '\iO do w~en a child nine or so, inter- I 'weaving stories she h!lld heard he,~ mother and grandmother tell. She told of Oalico iBu.sh" another charming young stocy, concernil.ng The Maypole, around wMch is one of those

curious stories tba,t }:lave come down

from generation ,to generation; from l the first settlers on Cranberry Isles, to be exact, of the French wm~. of an, early settler who had set a maypole·up on ,the spot now known as The Maypole.

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