Patterson, New York

Dec. 21st, '25

Dear Sam!

How have you been since our last wild night
together? I had a hell of a rush trying to get my things
together and catching the train next day. I couldn't get
my corduroy pants and fur cap from Miss Gottshalk before
leaving and I'm not at all sure that she will have time
before she takes her boat to Europe to mail them to me.
There was also a fine old quilt that I'm anxious about
because my Grandmother Hart made it and gave it to me. I'm
wondering if it would be too much trouble for you to tel-
ephone her (Walker 4984) and ask her is she has sent them
yet. If she hasn't would you mind collecting them into
some kind of bundle and parcel-posting them out here to
me? It's all stuff I really need to have. She lives in
Morton Street (below Sheridan Sq.) and near 7th Ave., but
I can't remember her exact number.

You might succeed in interesting James Light in
buying your gun which you spoke to me about. He can be
reached at the Provincetown Theatre during the day, and
and 30 Jones Street, Spring 2005, early in the mornings.
I haven't talked to him about, but Sue said he might be
interested, and I rather imagine that you might like to
have the money. Tate, out here, has bought a gun already,
so there's nothing doing here.

Since my arrival I discover that I have fallen
heir to two wonderfully commodious and light rooms on the
second floor. One a bedroom-the other a study. So far I
haven't received my books and victrola from the stattion,
but when I get everything in and "up" it looks as though I
would ideally fixed. I think I'm going to get really to
work within a week - however the excitement and preparatins
relative to the Holidays makes every other thought laggard.
If you like to hunt, don't sell your gun but bring it along
with yourself up here. The woods are full of all kinds of
game, and though I don't hunt, myself, Tate has been out
scouring over the hills for the last two days.

Thanks for your pleasant card, Sam, which came
this morning. You know you have my best wishes, too, for
the best of luck for you, and happiness always.

Rural Delivery
Patterson, New York

February 19th

Dear Sam!

I'm so desperately hard up just now -I hope
you won't mind my asking you to send out the ten-spot
it
(or whatever of/you can spare) sometime soon. Since
you were so kind as to mention the matter initially
I'm taking the liberty of reviving the topic.

It's good to get back to the country, though
I wish my head were a little clearer on some subjects
-there are so many question marks whichever way one
turns. But I guess that's the way with most of us
most of the time.

I enjoyed seeing you that Sunday afternoon,
and if New York weren't such a mad place, especially
when one is low on cash and looking for jobs, etc. I'd
probably have been able to see you again. I enjoyed meeting
Leo Mohr, too. Did he take his Indian voyage? And what's
up with you?

Best wishes,

Falling Tree Fatal
to Man Trying
to Flee Heat

Felled by the heavy limb of an oak tree snapped off by the wind, Samuel Finkler, 25, of 2119 Tiebout Ave., The Bronx, was found dead when extricated early today.

His companion, Sarah Berkowitz, 19, of 995 E. 131st St., escaped injury but became hysterical and was taken to Fordham Hospital.

Both had gone to Bronx Park, in a sheltered spot about 1,000 feet north of Boston Rd., to escape the heat. The limb, which was about a foot in diameter, was part of a huge tree about 70 feet tall. It had rotted nearly half through and a sudden gust of wind is believed to have caused it to snap

Finkler was pinned underneath the heavy limb and persons attracted by the young woman's screams were unable to lift him from under it. Patrolman John Stafford of the Bronx Park station and other volunteers finally succeeded in extricating the man.

Considerable difficulty was experienced in getting an ambulance from Fordham Hospital to the scene as the only road approaching the spot is little better than a trail. Dr. Gaynor worked over Finkler for three quarters of an hour in a vain effort to revive him.

—H.C.

# FIRE DESTROYS
## VELODROME

*Continued from First Page.*

structure at once was reached after a conference with John Chapman, manager, at present in Atlanta. The Velodrome was owned jointly by John Ringling and Inglis M. Uppercu.

The fire started on the north wall of the stadium near the main entrance at 225th St. John Neville of 58 Marble Hill, night watchman, first discovered the tongue of flame, as it licked along the wall.

### FLEE FOR LIVES.

He shouted to William Handley and Joseph O'Neill. The three ran out a hose and tried to drown the fire. The men had no time to sound an alarm. They felt they could not desert in the face of the flames licking toward them.

But the thin stream of water from a single hose line was an unequal match for the blaze fanned to an inferno by a stiff northeast breeze.

Almost before the three men realized it flames were all about them and they were forced to flee for their lives.

### 5 ALARMS SOUNDED.

The flames had already been seen by Frank Wright, New York

STUDENT POET
DROWNS AT SEA

Hart Crane's Death Is Told of
in Radio Message to
His Uncle.

By the United Press.

CLEVELAND, April 28.—Hart Crane, 33, Cleveland poet, was drowned while en route to New York from Vera Cruz on the steamer Orizaba, his uncle, N. B. Madden, was advised today in a radiogram.

Crane, after receiving a $2,500 fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, had been in Mexico about a year, carrying on work in creative poetry. He sailed from Vera Cruz last Monday, his uncle said.

Poet Was Affected
by Father's Death.

By the Associated Press.

MEXICO CITY, April 28. — Mr. Crane had been deeply affected by the death of his father last summer, his friends here said. Last week, they said, he threatened to kill himself, and a friend was with him on the way home to prevent suicide.

Poem, "The Bridge,"
Won Prize in 1930.

Mr. Crane's long poem, "The Bridge," won a prize from Poetry, a magazine of verse published in Chicago, two years ago. Reviewers saw him as a highly important American poet.

Mr. Crane would have been 33 years old next July. He was born in Garretsville, Ohio, coming to New York in 1922 to join an advertising firm as a copy writer.

Associated Press photo

Lieutenant Thomas H. Massie
arriving at court

Hart Crane, 32,
Poet, Reported
As Lost at Sea

Guggenheim Foundation
Fellowship Winner Miss-
ing Off Liner Orizaba

Hart Crane, poet, who won a fel-
lowship of the John Simon Guggen-
heim Memorial Foundation last year,
has been lost at sea from the steam-
ship Orizaba, en route from Vera
Cruz to New York, according to a
wireless message received yesterday by
his family in Warren, Ohio. Crane
had been in Mexico most of the last
year, writing a long historical poem
of the country.

No other details of the death were
available, according to The Associated
Press. Crane sailed from Vera Cruz
last Saturday. The Orizaba is due here
Friday.

Crane would have been thirty-three
years old next July 21. His long poem,
"The Bridge," inspired largely by the
magnificent architectural sweep of
Brooklyn Bridge, won the prize of
"Poetry," a magazine of verse pub-
lished in Chicago, two years ago.

Difficult to Comprehend

The critics said of Crane that as a
poet he often was difficult to compre-
hend. His own declaration was that
he was "more interested in the so-
called illogical impingements of the
connotations of words on the con-
sciousness (and their combinations
and interplay in metaphor on this
basis) than in the preservation of
their logically rigid significations at
the cost of limiting the subject matter
and perceptions involved in the poem."

Crane was born in Garretsville, Ohio.
His father, Clarence A. Crane, who

candy manufacturer. The poet's name was really Harold. Hart was the name of his mother's family. He began writing verse when he was thirteen years old, and when he was fifteen his first poem was published in "Bruno's Bohemian." When he was sixteen years old his work attracted the interest of Mrs. William Vaughn Moody, wife of the author of "The Great Divide."

In 1922 Crane moved to New York and got a job writing advertising copy. Soon he moved to an old house at 110 Columbia Heights, Brooklyn. One of the earliest owners of the house had been Washington Augustus Roebling, builder of Brooklyn Bridge, and the room which Crane occupied had been the room from which Roebling, broken in health from his work on the span, supervised its completion.

## Poem Took Five Years

Crane, however, did not know this until years after he had conceived the idea of writing a long poem "about America and the modern consciousness that its development has given rise to," as he put it. Through the material asistance of Otto H. Kahn, Crane obtained the leisure in which to compose its work. It required five years for completion, and in December, 1929, Crane finished it, having worked on it in the Isle of Pines, Cuba; Pasadena, Paris; Marseilles and, finally, Brooklyn.

Hart received considerable notice when "The Bridge" appeared in the spring of 1930. The average reader, who would be frequently puzzled by James Joyce, G. B. Stern or even T. S. Eliot, occasionally gulped at some of Crane's vast images, almost overreaching themselves, but the reviewers saw him as a highly important American poet with elements of Whitman, Melville and John Donne.

One section of the poem is "The Tunnel," describing the subway ride from Columbus Circle to Brooklyn, of which the following is an excerpt.

"Whose head is swinging from the swollen strap?

Whose body smokes along the bitten rails,
Bursts from a smoldering bundle far behind
In back forks of the chasms of the brain—
Puffs from a riven stump far out behind.

In interborough fissures of the mind . . . ?
And Death, aloft—gigantically down
Probing through you—toward me, O ever-
more!

And when they drag your retching flesh,
Your trembling hands that night through
Baltimore—

That last night on the ballot rounds, did you
Shaking, did you deny the ticket, Poe?

An earlier volume of Crane's poems,
"White Buildings," was published in
1926.

Crane's Treasurer Freed