AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED (ALS)

Hamden, CT, 31 July 1972. Letter. Crease from folding, otherwise Fine in a Near Fine envelope. A charming two-page AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED (ALS) to William J. Sarno on both sides of his 6" x 6-7/8" Deepwood Drive stationery thanking him for his letter and generous words. In part: "You may be amused to learn that when you saw me at Cortina I was under a shadow. I discovered only on the bus from Venice to Cortina that my passport was several weeks invalid.... We crossed the border to Innsbruck by waving our passports boldly in the air.... So we crossed the border of Lichtenstein and Switzerland (said to be very rigorous in such matters) by sheer bluff and got the new passport in Zurich.... A friend of mine now 101 -- long a professor of Latin at the Univ. of Pennsylvania -- has kept young by his passion for collecting fossil shells. He has found (in quarries, railway cuttings, excavating for wells, etc.) several unknown to science-- They are recorded in the Smithsonian and named 'in perpetuity' after his successive wives." With the envelope addressed in Wilder's hand.