Letter from Sinclair Lewis to Marcella Powers, June 20, 1942

              50,  SINCLAIR   LEWIS  Excelsior, Monday  June 20  ■  Take you seriously?  Chapter III  Three years ago.  You first eating lobster at the garish restaurant  in Provincetown, and sharp-eyed watching the too-  affable manager.  And going to Mary Ellen Vorsefs,  where everybody In the world, everybody you have not  seen since, sat on the floor. And moonlight on the  beach and I wanted to kiss you and wasn*t encouraged.  And the lake at Skowhegan and walking around It, past  stone walls, and stopping to call on the big white  cat, and my funny primitive cottage, and your elegant  one, and coming back by train at night, and I wanted to  kiss you and was somewhat more encouraged.  First meeting with Connie, with Edith, with Hal —  the first alarmed, the second dubious, the third  darling from the start. And you dubious and alarmed  by the encrusted splendor of your apartment at the Lom-  bardy. And the utter nobility of your white trunk.  And Washington, and Senator Vandenberg — playing for  you while he was president of the Senate pro-tem —  and meeting Senators Taft and Davis in the Senate  lunch-room, and the Venetian-blinded gilded den where,  aaid the director of the Bureau of Engraving, he slept  after lunch, and in that Bureau a watchman that was  down underneath a vault mysteriously looking in all  directions.  And the Movie Star asst director of the FBI and you  shooting rifles and us going to Mt. Vernon in an  FBI car, and you, very drowsy after all this, napping  happily in a compartment all the way down to the magic  of Florida.  And St. Augustine and the funny semi-tropical hotel  and the gorgeous house on the beach and bathing in  surf and the old Slave Market and buying our first  car, our little raspberry-colored car that you still  love, up in Jacksonville, and the consternation when  I paid for the car right then, in real money.  And a little black kitten on the outer beach   at  the Alligator Farm — and off and losing our way and