Viewing page 47 of 102

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

but we got treated like a pack of smugglers trying to sneak in a shipment of "jules"--today it would be heroin. They opened every bag and suitcase, every package, looked under the car, removed all the seat cushions, looked under the hood. They gave us the business, found nothing, and left us with the mess to straighten out. Fortunately we would soon be home so it didn't matter much. We headed for home really teed off nevertheless. We had some sandwiches on Southwestern Boulevard to tide us over and then continued on the last lap. We arrived home about 9:30. We found all well. The children were in good health and we were happy about that. In fact, we decided right then that Bab and Rog were very much worth coming back for and that took the bitterness away from the ending of a vacation that had been an exceptionally good one. In fact, as I've already indicated, the diary says: "--wonderful trip--Saguenay the best of all but all in all about best trip ever took--"

This brings me to a question that hadn't occurred to me before. Apparently we were away for ten days without anyone at home knowing where we were because we had no specific itinerary nor did we know where we would be staying in any of the cities where we stopped. We may have wired home our Quebec address at Mlle. Hudon's--that's a possibility I hadn't thought of although I have no recollection of such a thing nor does the diary refer to it. The babysitter undoubtedly had Mother's address and Willie's parents' so she could call on any of them in an emergency but I still wonder how she'd have got in touch with us. There must be an answer to this but as I think of it now, I have an extremely guilty feeling.

To end the account of our Quebec trip, I've decided to add my story called "Return" because it was an outgrowth of the trip and goes into more detail about the sort of feelings I had which were generated by the historical associations encountered. Also it goes into more detail about General James Wolfe, particularly the love affair which he knew could never be consummated because of his failing health. The story is short and amateurish but it shows the kind of thinking I was doing some of the time at least. This is the fourth attempt at the story, after which I let the matter rest. It was one which I sent to Thomas H. Uzzell for criticism and I got it all right--he told me he couldn't figure out what it was all about and it made absolutely no sense to him. I thought I knew what it was about and Uzzell's comments merely convinced me that he didn't know what he was talking about although one of his credentials was having been fiction editor of Collier's Weekly which at one time was quite a sheet. To add insult to injury, I had to pay Mr. Uzzell several dollars (six or eight, I believe) for this piece of criticism and at a time when that much money looked like a good deal to us.

Thus endeth, except for "Return," the story of the Quebec expedition.