Letter from Sinclair Lewis to Marcella Powers, January 31, 1946

              &  SINCLAIR     LEW IS  2601    EAST   SECOND    ST.  DULUTH   5,  MINNESOTA  Thursday, January 31  But it can' t be the end of January.  *?ust a couple of  days ago I saw you snowily off on t]ae train. You can't  have much more than arrived in New York.  Your story of Wriston Eriston of North Wriston, Ole  Massa County, Uruguay, S.A. is astounding.  It's probably the first time he has encountered any honesty since  he was slapped, as a boy — though then that must have  happened rather often....The news about Mac Kriendler  and Sally and Dinah and Geo Lee all wonderful....No,  you do not get Pat. He either goes to Lewis Residence  87C, or else across the street to the kind Harrison-^  McGlfferts.  How many times now have I kept you from  sticking in that dwarf flat, already full of MSS, turtles, and Sallies^such endumbrances (I meant to write  encumbrances, but the typewriter's own notion is better)  as Siamese®, leopards, Wristons, pewterfish, and St.  Bernards?  Your lovely letter-ending lady In your last is superb,  and in a new vein.  Do some more.'  Have you seriously got tickets for us for April 10?  Well, and I might be there to help you use them, too.  I have to turn over the house on May 1st, and 3 or 4 or  5 or 6 or 7 or 8 — you get the idea — weeks before  then, I shall have to go East, probly in car with Ace,  and lock for a house for the summer; preferably an  unfurnished house to rent, so I can put all my furniture  in it, for a time at least. Meantime, Mrs. Povah can  superintend the packing $§  everything here and start it  all East.  So maybe I shall be in NY for your birthday, dear darling.  Sort of detach yourself to all the men to whom you  are now engaged for the first days of April, anyway.  For this summer, I'd like not a village house but a  farm, with hills -- real hills — or water or both.  In preparation for the trek, your mother is selling off  all the odd pieces of junk furniture that I got with  the house and that I didn't wish off onto Jay Markle  (the banker house-purchaser) and yet don't want to keep.  She is a born peddler; she has already disposed of some  of the chair monstrosities, for real money. When I  tell you that she gets a 25 %  commission, you will have  an idea of her zeal. Six times she has sold thlsM type-