Letter from Sinclair Lewis to Marcella Powers, January 20, 1946

              •■  SINCLAIR     LEWIS  2601    EAST   SECOND    ST.  DULUTH   5,   MINNESOTA  Sunday, Jan 20  Dear darling:  I'm still writings from Minneapolis,-but I go up to  Duluth day after tomorrow.  The chief news is that you have  been gone for three weeks now, and I have received only one  short letter and one post card from you.  That's pretty bad,  even though you are busy.  So am I.  I hope a letter from  you is even now &t Duluth or on the way, and I rejoice much  in the Mary Orr sale to Cosmo for |750.  MM  You probably know from your mother that Joseph, our Joseph,  is already installed at Duluth, and that Lillian is leaving  on Tuesday.  On his way, he stopped by here at the Leamington.  He was grown, with army grub; he seemed iz>ery nice, and I thot  the chief change in him was, from his army experience, more  and more articulate resentment about Negro segregation.  I have had a grand two weeks gathering material, and I have  all I need.  Since I wrote, I have seen ever so many new  Negroes,  from preachers and Urban League officials to plain  citizens and a man deep in bootlegging, gambling, black and  tan whoring, who knows much less-about the Negro preachers than  I do'.  ;  The sad thing was that my older brother, Fred, died suddenly  last Tuesday, from a coronary.  He was so much older than I  and so different in interests that I did not know him very well  and the only really sad thing about it to me was the thought of  how many amusing things and pleasant places he has missed in  his life. Ace drove me up to the funeral; we stopped at  St. Cloud and picked up Claude, Mary, and the two girls. Sauk  Centre seemed so small, huddled in the snow; the preacher, at  the small Congregational church, kind and good and not mattering;  and the final little group in the snow at the graveyard wasn't  quite real — so frightened ""and huddled in Hihe great gray plain  with the snow flying.  So much love, my dear