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Correspondence from Charles E. Banks to Fannie Hardy Eckstorm ca. 1915-1930, Part 5
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Boston. July 20. 1931.
My dear Mrs. Eckstorm The old saying that all things come to those who waits is a distinct appeal to laziness. "To him who digs" is my amendment; for the few things I have got by waiting are not to be compared with those I got by perspiring labor.
I refer to your long quest for the correct date of the battle of Pigwacket and miss you are duly impressed with the humbug of the publisher in ducking the Sunday fight. Reminds me of the Battle of Dunbar not fought on Sunday because the Scotch elders would not allow Leslie to attack Cromwell on that day-a perfectly good military principle to strike first with advantage on your side-but allowed time for "Noll" to strengthen his position. Results the "Elders" ran hectic were walloped.
I have two very early forms of Ogunquit, one in 1655 on a mass map. (Bost. Museum) Negunket[underlined] and another about same time as Nagunket[underlined]. This alters the face of the landscape. I seem to see the same root that appears in Machigonne, Mon-Egan, Knapps-Egan (Vineyard) with a lost first syllable-um? mum? Qunquit is a small area between higher land, fit for a corn field.
I am enclosing a French letter from Champigny, [?] of Quebec, 1692, reporting the massacre at York. The part enclosed with a (calling attention to a phrase which stumps me and numerous others- "les comptes aves des pors or poix[underlined]. As a last resort I had gravitated to the idea that pois or poix was a Canadian-French idiom for scalps[underlined] as the Parisian had no expression (as far as I know) for scalping or scalps. Occurred to me to send it to Quebec to the counsel to ask help from some savant there. With the printed proof I send the explanation of Mons. Roy that archivists of the Province. It is in French which perhaps you can digest. But it is to