Letter from Sinclair Lewis to Marcella Powers, May 18, 1944

              m  DULUTH AT Hotel Duluth  LAST!II J J Thursday, May 18  Looking for housesI  I've seen a couple already, nothing yet  satisfactory, see some more today*  It was a mild adventure to WSMM    come up hereAfrom Southern  Minnesota. I had heard how much colder it is here, except  for hot spells in July*~August, but hadn't quite believed it*  Monday evening* at the Little Theater show in Winona, it  was stiflingly hot; one fled downstairs between acts for a  little tepid air* Wednesday morning, when I left Minneapolis,  it was about 72°.  I arrived here at one, 4^ hrs later, to  find it 52, with a fine MMMMM Nor'easter brewing across the  vast gray lakej and last evening when I went to Margaret  Banningfs very handsome house for dinner — meeting president  of the Oliver Mining Go  and a pianist ■* all the integuments  which had been drlppilg removed Way Down South In Mpls —»  underskirt, vest, topcoat «* wei?e frenzledly reassumed*  And this morning when I got up the Noreaster was rolling  pretty large breakers up on the shore, especially over at  the entrance to the Canal, where the long ore boats come In  with coal and go out with iron, and the lake was almost  black.  It was raining and cold «*- yet I sort of liked it*  £* know mm  fresh* But the little buildings way down below  the tall hotel, shops and warehouses, looked s© bleak, with  their big, flat, foolish-looking roofs.  I've looked at several housesf nothing quite possible yet  ***•* may even not be able to find one at all, of course, but  think I shall* Most of them have been too horribly domestic.  «• the photographs of Aunt Ipzabah's boys, the hand«knltt@d  whoozit, the one  bath for four bedrooms, the small itch of  lawn*  But when, this afternoon, the real estate man drove me along  the glorious Skyline Parkway, with Duluth and the endless  lake, suddenly steel blue in courageous sun, and the distant  pine^stubbly hills all spread out* I loved it all, and wanted  to stay#*.d.for a while*  You  have never  seen the real Northland «■* it does not start  till N of Minneapolis, nor have you been far enough North in  Maine* BUT when you leave Mpls? going NE to Duluth, it does  start within a few miles of the city..e,Swamps and scrub oak,  a flat land that could be depressing to lots of people buj;  that 1 find rather free and bracing* Bogs* Muskrat houses*  Forests of birch and poplar (called ""popplew here) replacing  cut or burned pine forests of old. Marshy lakes. Then, in  an hour, pines and the stumps left as relics of forest fires*  Log cabins and tarpaper shacks in small clearings. Finns and  Co-operative Stores* Blackbirds on reeds In slews. Miles,  then, of woodland without a house* The vast elevators and  boat works (building corvettes! in Superior* Wis, Then Duluth  and the greal lake — and the Wind howling at the hotel windows,  /  f^«*-V  """"+- La,    \AAct-A