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identifier/filename
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371-00034
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title
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Letter, Gene Stratton Porter to Lawrence Bruner, 1905?, Apr.
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description
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Typewritten letter, 1 page, from Gene Stratton Porter to Lawrence Bruner, "I think it is mighty kind of you to..."
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Transcription
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APR 10 Ans'd My dear Mr. Bruner, I think it mighty kind of you to furnish me so speedily the information I am seeking. I have in my story most that you say of the gulls. It is the hawk question on which I want to seek light. I do not think the birds I saw were Swainson's hawks, but good "old-fashioned," chicken hawks. They were larger than Swainsons and their breasts almost white with black irregular markings. It was on the afternoon of the second Sabbath of October, what I was told was one of Nebraska's worst winds, was raging. The birds came sweeping down from the North and hung like a cloud in the sky above three hills, as if unable to proceed further in the face of the wind. Then they settled over a freshly cut 1,000 acre field of alfalfa and began on the grasshoppers which were just coming to the surface to seek fresh, growing food. I can't tell you what a picture they made. I drove about beneath them on the hills and among them over the fields and tried to the extent of my magazine to photograph them, but there were clouds, the wind raged beyond any experience of mine, I had only a small and fixed focus camera that I had carried off the cars at noon that day and I could not get them. I went out early the following morning with a telephoto and all necessaries and saw three smaller hawks with darker breasts that I took to be Swainsons. The flock I saw evidently were in migration. I wish to call your attention to my next book, What I Have Done With Birds, beginning serially in the April Ladies Home Journal. When we arranged this series Mr. Bok said to me, "I will publish these six installments, as a feeler, and if people like them and will let me know they like them I will give you a department in the Journal and you can keep it up so long as you have illustration." Mr. Bok claims for the Journal 1,350,000 subscribers which he estimates to mean 6,760,000 readers. It would hit the biggest audience of our best people possible to reach at one stroke, if I could start this department. Won't you please look at this illustraiton and read the article, and if you consider it sane, natural, nature work, won't you please send Mr. Bok a line in your official capacity, saying so, and encourage all others you can to do the same, without, of course saying that I asked you to. Faithfully yours, Gene Stratton Porter.
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date
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1905?-04
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source/RG#/MS#
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MS 0371
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isPartOf/Collection
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Nebraska Ornithologists' Union (NOU), Records
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rights
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For copyright information, please contact the repository.
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publisher
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Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries
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language
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English
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