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sightseeing and also visited with Aunt Sally Patrick who was in her seventies, I guess, and didn't see too well and lived in a small apartment on Beacon Hill not far from the Common. I think this was my first realization of what a tragedy it is to be old and alone; however, Aunt Sally was remarkably cheerful about her situation and displayed a great deal of courage about it, it seemed to me. I admired her but still felt her outlook was pretty dim and it must be hell to grow old like this.

   After a couple of days in Boston, I boarded a Boston & Maine train at North Station for Portsmouth and thence to Star Island by boat. The ride up on the train was another new experience in geography as we went up the coast through the typically New England towns and along behind the salt marshes with glimpses of the sea as we sped along. There was a big contingent on the train headed also for the Shoals (Isles of Shoals) and I may have met Gladys Timmerman and Bill McLennan on the train; I don't remember. However, on that train or one following closely behind it, was the girl who was destined to end my series of girl interests by becoming my wife. For this reason alone, this was probably the most fateful trip I ever took, but in addition, the Shoals experience was to prove a strong influence in my life for many years to come, in fact, to a degree it still affects me. It gave me a philosophy of life which I believed and tried to follow, often falteringly, but nevertheless it remained there to act often as a rudder when I needed it. I shall not take up space in this account to review all these aspects of the Shoals experience because I've written much about it including an article two years ago which was bought by YANKEE magazine for $250 and for which I furnished photographic illustrations but which, to my intense disappointment, hasn't been published yet. I've written short stories based on the Shoals as well as diary accounts in 1924 and 1925 so most of my thoughts about it are down in my record. Briefly, however, at that time in 1923 and for a number of years afterward, I thought it was perhaps the most moving place and experience I'd ever know.

   We went from a dock on the Piscataqua River in Portsmouth, down the river to the Atlantic and thence some ten miles or so out to Star Island, on a rugged little vessel looking like a converted ocean-going tug and named "Sightseer." From the dock at Star Island, we walked up the long board walk to the big, gay-90s, white clapboard summer hotel sitting up on the rocky slope overlooking the pier. Soon afterward, we got in line in the lobby to register and this was when I first saw Willie. She was immediately ahead of me in the line and I recall either seeing her name on something or hearing her give her name and I thought it was "Fritchie" and wondered if she might be related to the celebrated Barbara Fritchie of Civil War fame who waved a Union flag defiantly at Stonewall Jackson. Willie wore a