NURSE'S DIARY ON DISPLAY

The diary of the woman who inspired Ernest Hemingway to write "A Farewell to Arms" is now on display at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston. A 19-year-old Hemingway had a crush on Agnes von Kurowsky, a 26-year-old nurse who helped him recover from hepatitis in Milan during World War I, but it was unrequited. "All I know is `Ernie' is far too fond of me," she wrote in the diary, "and speaks in such a desperate way every time I am cool, that I dare not dampen his ardor as long as he is here in the hospital. Poor kid, I am sorry for him. Everybody seems to be down on him for some reason, and he gets raked over the coals right & left." The diary is part of the library's Hemingway collection, which also includes an exhibit of some of the 44 pages of draft endings that Hemingway wrote for "A Farewell to Arms." In January, 216 never-before-seen Hemingway letters to family members in the 1940s and 1950s will be opened at the library.