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Letter to Gertrude Porter Ashley

(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
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This four-page letter of college freshman Tom Ashley to his mother in nearby Deerfield, written in the spring of 1913, is a familiar litany of problems common to first-year college students. Ashley, in his first year at Amherst College, is beleaguered by problems with his studies, his clothes, and his weight and is certain that anything he does say in a letter will not meet with his mother's approval. He repeats, after each "story," " so there is nothing to write about."

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