8 Plympton Street
February 9, 1944
Dear Panma,
I am concentrating on Blow now practically to the exclusion of everything else.
Am overhauling the biography chapter, I hope for the last time. I have found
some interesting pictures to have photostatted for the thesis, including a view
showing the Great Sanctuary on the left (where Blow lived most of his life),
Westminster Abbey on the right, and St. Margaret's Church in the background.
I did go to a meeting last night where a colored friend of ours, who works
at Harvard, spoke movingly of the depth of feeling with which the Negroes love
and consider themselves a part of the U.S.A. He told of being at St. Nazaire
in France a few months after the Armistice of 1918 and standing beside a big,
strong six-foot colored American boy as they watched American ships flying the
Stars and Stripes and sailing back home. As they stood there, the colored boy
wept and declared if he ever got back to the U.S.A. he would never leave it
again. (Later he discovered that this same boy's father had years ago been lynched!)
I enclose a gay card from Doc. Please return it.
Tomorrow I have to take another Army physical exam. If I pass it, it does not
mean that I will be inducted, but merely that I will be put back in one-a, so
that they can call me later if they wish. It was rather strange to be asked
to go over to Boston again when I never received any notification from Princeton
that I was anything but one-a. I still think it is very unlikely that Uncle
Sam will want my services. I presume I shall have to go through all the same
stunts again that I did in August, but under the new system, it is a pre-induction
exam., i.e.an exam. for classifying, not for immediate inducting, those taking
it.
Jean-Marie and Carol spent Monday night here. He is leaving an excellently
paying position teaching French position at Exeter to become a private in the
U.S. Army (although he was a second lieutenant in the French army years ago).
They brought the two little boys with them, bright, blond, and angelic- almost
too angelic. Then a kind Exeter friend took the boys back home on the 1:15,
so that the parents could have the afternoon and evening together in Boston
(when Julia went to a Child Care meeting and I did Blow).
Well, here is Julia, so I guess we'd better go to bed so that I can make my
7:30 a.m. appointment. Will let you know what happens.
Lots of love, H
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