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Show r Boston Letter To j I Cache American j l ... I By F.R.A. : -5 BRAINTREE, Sept. 1st, 1938 Our letter this month will be, as usual, more a New England commentary com-mentary than a Boston news nugget. nug-get. The straw hat circuit of theatres all over the six New England Eng-land states is becoming this year more than ever famous as a school for young actors, as an opportunity oppor-tunity for former stars and movie artists to get into close contact with their audiences, and also for trying out of new plays. Not far from us Sinclair Lewis Is spending his summer in Cohasset. Dorothy Thompson is there too. Don't you believe it if you hear they are breaking up. The Cohasset summer sum-mer theatre got him to rewrite his play "It can't Happen Here" and to act in it the part of the editor. So he appeared with the triple appeal of a novelist, a play writer and an actor and was so successful that houses were sold out for two weeks in spite of Devil's Island weather. Boston critics wisely had nothing to say about him as an actor, but demoted de-moted themselves to showing how superior his play is to the W.P.A. j version. In a land like Utah so predisposed to the political status jquo the play would have been an lawful warning as to the horrors jof fascism, for the valleys of the I Wasatch, are not so very different Ifrom those of the Green Moun- tains in Vermont. As for the act-iing act-iing we found Mr. Lewis acceptable though like all amateurs weak in stage technique. We spent the whole evening wondering why he was doing it. He certainly did not need the advertising even though Ihis last book '"The Prodigal Par- ents" is inferior to his other books. He certainly has intelligence enough to know that he will never be a leading actor. The salary of a summer actor certainly can be no inducement to a Nobel prize winner. So we, being from Utah, decided he must love missionary work and was working mainly as an anti-fascist to show the aw-fulness aw-fulness of living in Vermont or : Utah in case a dictatorship of cheap politicians should be set up. At the same theatre the following, week we saw Mark Reid's New, York success, which is also a most popular play in the summer j theatres. It is called "Yes, Myi Darling Daughter" and bristles' with wit and ideas. One of the women says of her sister-in-law who is getting a third divorce, that her sister's I. Q. goes down to ten the minute she looks at any desirable man. It is not a play for the U.S.AC, to put on though (Continued on Page Four) 0 Boston Letter To I Cache American j By F. R. A, o- (Continued from Page One) we can expect the dramatic department de-partment to stop at nothing since it produced "Hay Fever" a few years ago. Infinitely better for the A. C. production would be the Sinclair Lewis play. Even tho' it has no sex appeal, it would be a most valuable object lesson hi the hands of the department of political poli-tical science. Perhaps Prof. Frank Dames or Prof. Wanlass would play the part of the editor -and thus " compete with Mr. Lewis. The latest of the American Guide Series of the Federal writers writ-ers Project of the W.P.A. is the guide to New Hampshire. This touches Utah nearly, though not so closely as the Guides to Vermont Ver-mont and to Idaho which we have already spoken of, for in the description de-scription of the town of Peters-borough Peters-borough you find the following how happy she has been this summer when in "the autumn of her days" as she puts it she is spending a summer helping in the work of a great university. She has been assisting Miss Gans in her library lecture courses which have been attended by over 800 students. Most Logan people know Mrs. Merrill as the mother of an admirable family and as the librarian li-brarian of the Lowell Junior High ; school. She attracted the admir-j admir-j ation of Miss Gans last summer : by the novel ideas she was introducing in-troducing into her junior high J school library work both in secur-! secur-! ing readers and in inculcating a jlove of books and so was asked i to cany her Cache Valley ideas I to Columbia. The maternal spirit 'never dies' in a good mother and now that Mrs. Merrill has brought her own family to a certain stage I of progress she welcomes as a mother all adolescent lovers of I reading in the Junior high schools land in Columbia. I Our only genuine Utah contact ithis month has been the day Jack 'Christensen spent with us. He is a ,boy whom we have always liked jand admired and though he hac not seen him since his graduatior ,in 1931 we had heard of his steady I progress in the world of scholars and of his few months teaching at the A. C. where he was much perplexed over the departmenl store mob quality of much of the work. He now has an enviablt position with the government and is located at Auburn in Alabama In the same town is to be found at the state college his brother Dr. Reed Christensen who is assistant as-sistant professor of Zoology with his wife who was Verda Dowdle jof Newton. Also through the town j passes occasionally another brc-jther, brc-jther, Dr. Dean Christensen, who jhas invented a laboratory trailer jand in the employ of the govern-jment govern-jment is making surveys of fruit pests all the way from California to Georgia. You see it is no dis-! dis-! advantage to be the son of Dr. :W. O. Christensen of Wellsville i"Jack" was married in Melrose, iMass. last Christmas day to a Radcliffe graduate, the first A. C. iman, if we are not mistaken, ever to form such an advantageous al-jliance. al-jliance. He spent the day with us i asking first to see Braintrees' best farm and was surprised to find ! it run by an Arnold. Then we , visited the old swimming hole. After lunch came an introduction I to Benedictine and then a visit ! to the house in which John Adams 'was born, built in 1663, and to the house in which he set up his European Lares and Penates after af-ter the Presidency and where five Adams couples have held stiver weddings. He gave us one of the happiest days of our retirement. It was most flattering to have a former student leave his legitimate spouse at six in the morning and spend a day with us. In November Novem-ber we will tell you why he did not bring his wife with him. "In the early forties of the last century Brigham Young held a successful religious revival here, people coming from all the surrounding sur-rounding towns on horseback and in coaches to hear him preach. Here he was chosen leader of the Mormon church, after the sudden death of Joseph Smith. When he finally left for the West 136 leading lead-ing citizens followed him to Utah. A Peterborough girl became his thirteenth wife; this did not prove unlucky for her, since she remained remain-ed his favorite for several years." We wonder why of all the Utah missionaries sent to show New England where she gets off at theologically not one has ever called our attention to this fact in the life of Brigham Young. Above all we should like to hear from some of the descendants of the 136 leading citizens of Peterborough Peter-borough who went to Utah. We are never weary of finding Utah in New England. Never do we enter en-ter an old burying ground without coming across a Utah name of prominence. Thus recently we went into the old cemetery of Milton, Mass. that we have passed by all our life and never entered before. First stones . were those of the numerous Wadsworths and we thought instantly of Fred Weds-worth Weds-worth who married Rachel Mau-I ghan years ago. Then ws came across the monument of Mrs. j Theodora Thatcher, wife of Peter Thatcher, and thought of another j Logan family. There were no Utah connotations at the graves of the Gullivers and of Miss Waitstill Trescott who died in 1903 at the age of 85, but both made us wonder won-der why no Utah genealogist has ever 'written asking us to look up for them names in Massachusetts burying grounds. We would gladly glad-ly do it for nothing as the joy of the work would be recompense enough. We recently had a letter from Mrs. Laura R. Merrill telling us |