Gloucester. Sep. 26, 6pm, 1915 Sunday

Mrs. E. W. Davis
85 Hawthorne Ave.
East Orange, NJ

Dear Ma,

Sloans leave to-morrow. We have been on friendly terms for the last week or so. Everything is all right. The girl who is going to do the cooking came this morning and seems to be very good. That is all settled. On the last week one could notice distinctly the change from summer to fall. Two nights we had the most brilliant moonlight I ever saw. It was like daylight. We walked around in it and tried to decide what color it was. That is whether it stained things one color, blue, green and so on.

We finally came to the conclusion that its light was as impartial as the sun's only not so brilliant just plain white light. I think this is correct.

Smith and Connoyer got up at 6 o'clock the other morning and went smelt fishing. I went along with them.

The wharf was packed with school-boys, conductors and motormen laborers and even the man who owns the Savoy hotel was there. Each one had a little bamboo pole and they were packed so close together that you would wonder how in the world they ever kept from getting the lines so tangled up that they never would come undone.

Well Smith and Connoyer caught 88 smelts in two hours. We had them for lunch, supper and lunch again. They were certainly delicious. I would get a few dozen and send to you but I'm afraid they'd spoil.

I could use some money at an early date. Yesterday afternoon Smith and I got Connoyer's dory. It is the oldest vessel afloat. In these parts anyway. It takes two people to run it. One to row and the other to keep the water from getting any higher than the rower's knees. Smith was a fine bailer. The water never got over my ankles. We went in among the small Portuguese, Italian and Spanish fishing boats.

They are all painted in brilliant colors. Red, blue, green, etc. and the fishermen on them are tremendously interesting. It is just such a scene as you would see in some old fishing village in Europe. I am trying to get a large painting of the scene. Then we rowed further out in the bay and I landed on some rocks that were sticking out of the water.

They were covered with star-fish. The biggest ones I ever saw. We got a couple that were ten inches across.

The other night Cornoyer took the Sloans and Smith down to the Savoy for dinner. The rest of us went to the moving pictures and met them when we came out. The Savoy party was kind of stewed so the women all went home in Paks car and the men decided to walk. We walked a little way and I suggested that we go through a haunted house that I had heard about.

This was eleven o'clock at night. It is an awfully weird looking place and hasn't been inhabited for years. It sets right off Main St. on a big high embankment and has this six story tower commanding a view of the whole city and bay.

Winter and Smith stayed outside and the rest of us went in thro' the cellar. I leading the way and Sloan following on all fours making a noise like a cat. The house has a great many rooms. They were all in a state of the utmost confusion the ornaments and plaster being knocked from the walls and the plumbing gone. A regular vacant house. We went all thro' it from top to bottom I Sloan, Cornoyer and Tietjens. The view from the tower in the moonlight was wonderful.

When we got down to the first floor Winter and Smith had come in and Winter wanted to go up so Sloan took him up. I started down the cellar steps with the rest following and was confronted by two great round globes of light. What was it?

Smith, who was stewed told us afterward that he had fixed it all right by telling the cop that we were only some "poetical people" looking around. This must have struck the cop funny if he had any sense of humor. The rest of the way home was employed in singing, shouting and Sloan chasing cats over the roofs of Gorton-Pews factories in the moonlight. It was really quite funny.

Well that will be enough for this one.

Love,
Stuart

They haven't sent any of us our Masses yet so if you have a copy mail it to me, will you?