Viewing page 198 of 421

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

clean - no private baths, no running water in the rooms - just the old pitcher and washbowl and slopjar of yore. There are also a number of cottages and all facilities for sport. All in all it is a very intriguing place but there are only a handfull of people here - a mystery.

Sam Patterson, once a famed character in these parts, had a stroke a couple of years ago that paralyzed his throat and he cannot talk clearly. He is married to a girl about 30, his second wife, who graduated from Duke in 1930. Apparently he had the stroke not long after marrying her. She and her brother and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis, also Southern really run the place, but Sam gets around and tries hard. He is a weatherbeaten old fellow about 72, who used to be a hell raiser, and is still pretty spry but has to be careful. He used to swear terrifically but inoffensively, kissed every new feminine arrival, told stories by the hour. An odd thing is that now his oaths are very clear but the rest of his talk nearly unintelligible. Apparently the fall of Tallwood has nearly coincided with his own decline, his personality having made the place.

I fell in at once with Harvey Clifford, a 38 year old, burly, handsome bachelor and Asst. Cashier of the Consolidated Edison Co. of New York, who has been here before and is near the end of a 2 1/2 week stay here. Clifford seems rather lonesome and glad to have someone with similar tastes for a good time here.

I spent the rest of the afternoon on the porch with a youngster about 22 who is apparently a bellboy here and left tonight. He is a well born kid, and told me all his troubles. Has spent a year at U. of Maine, wants to get married against his family's opposition and can't decide whether to do it or go back to school.