"Dear Hilda:I am so glad that California has done you good. You have to forego life on the Acropolis I think, anywhere away from the east. I am like the man in Life who was shocked by the rawness of the west, deprecated the women — 'attractive of course but crude,' supposed that shoe polish had been cut off by the war and then when the frogs' legs were served, the smile appeared, so rare in an easterner but on second thought he said 'though superbly cooked, it strikes me that they are a little more bowed than those we get in the east.' Well, the main thing is that the climate has agreed with you and that you have all had time to think and follow your own devices secure from the inroads of eastern harpies."
— Marianne Moore to H.D., January 11, 1921, in The Selected Letters of Marianne Moore, 138-139
