in her younger days. I doubt if she knows one string from another
now. The only strings that she can play on are your heart strings,
or mine, or any other man's that comes into her neighborhood. I
shall rely upon your honor not to propose to her, because she is
already engaged to me; in fact, we have been engaged nearly twelve
years, and if she should become engaged to you, I will sue you for
stealing her affections and will engage the firm of Davis Kellogg
and Severance to prosecute my suit. If she says anything about a
desire to get back to school, you can put it down as a bluff, and
I trust that you will not swamp her with attentions and with
company lest it should turn her head. She is accustomed to the
simple life--a breakfast of oatmeal porridge, a luncheon of boiled
macaroni, and a dinner of hash--these are the three things that
she is used to. If she shows any disposition to be affectionate
toward you or Aunt Maidie, I trust that you will repress her with
an iron hand. The young women of this day, as you know, are very
forward, and these new dances seem to be especially designed to
destroy maiden modesty.
... You may tell her that her brother seems to be very anxious to
hear from her, being solicitous two or three times a day as to the
mail. I judge from this that he is expecting a letter from her--or
someone else.
You are very good to be giving my little one such a fine time. My
love to Maidie. Cordially yours,
F. K. L.
TO FREDERICK DIXON
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
Washington, October 7, 1915
DEAR MR. DIXON,--I have your letter of October 1st. You have asked
me a very difficult question, which is really this:--How to get
into a man's nature an appreciation of our form of government and
its benefits?
I cannot answer this question. There are certain natures which do
not sympathize with the exercise of or the development of common
authority, which is the essence of Democracy. They are
instinctively monarchists. They love order more than liberty. They
do not see how a balance can be struck between the two. By force
of environment and education their sons may see otherwise. I know
of no other way of making Americans, than by getting into them by
environment and education a love for liberty and a recognition of
its advantages. Cordially yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
TO ROBERT H. PATCHIN
Washington, November 27, 1915
MY DEAR PATCHIN,--Mrs. Lane and I would be delighted to join in
your fiesta to Mrs. Eleanor Egan, but we just can't. Why? Because
we have a dinner on December 2nd, also because we are neutral. ...
We can not countenance any one who has been in jail. To have been
in jail proves poverty. Nor do we regard it as fitting that a
young woman should have been torpedoed and spent forty-five
minutes in the water splashing around like Mrs. Lecks or Mrs.
Aleshine. If she was torpedoed why didn't she go down or up like a
heroine? Then she would have had an atrocious iron statue erected
in her honor among the other horrors in Central Park. After her
experience she will doubtless be more sympathetic toward those of
us who are torpedoed daily and weekly and monthly and have to
splash around for the amusement of a curious public.
I hope your dinner of welcome and rejoicing will be as gay as the
cherubic smile of the Right Honorable Egan. Cordially,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
TO FRANCIS R. WALL
Washington, November 27, 1915
MY DEAR WALL,--I wish that I had time for a long letter to you,
such as yours to me. But I am only to-day able to get at my
personal correspondence which has accumulated in the last six
weeks. These have been times of annual reports and estimates, and
we have a large number of internal troubles which need constant
attention.
I am afraid that we are going to have a great deal of trouble in
getting our preparedness program through, because of dissension in
our own ranks and because the Republicans are so anxious to take
advantage of this emergency to raise the tariff duties and to gain
credit for whatever is done in the way of preparation. We are too
much dominated by partisanship to be really patriotic. This is a
very broad indictment, but it seems to be justified. Of course,
the people like Bryan and Ford, and the women generally, are moved
by a philosophy that is too idealistic, and some of them are only
moved, I fear, by an intense exaggerated ego. If I would have to
name the one curse of the present day, I would say it is the love
of notoriety and the assumption by almost everyone that his
judgment is as good as that of the ablest. Of course, the trouble
with the ablest people is that they are so largely moved by forces
that do not appear on the surface, that one does not know that the
views they express are really their own judgment. Democracy seems
to be government by suspicion, in large part. We have faith in
ourselves, but not in each other. A man to be a good partisan
seems called upon to believe that every man of different view is a
crook or a weakling. This is the Roosevelt idea. And half of it is
the Bryan idea.
I wish that I could see you, old man, and have one of our old time
talks. ...
I shall bear in mind what you say as to the availability of your
service, but I hope it may not be necessary to take you from that
land of sunshine and dreams that seems so remote from this center
of intrigue and trouble. Affectionately yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
TO JOHN H. WIGMORE
Washington, December 8, 1915
MY DEAR JOHN,-- ... Things are not looking at all nice as to
Germany and Austria. I know that the country is not satisfied, at
least part of it, with our patience, but I don't see just what
else we can do but be patient. Our ships are not needed anywhere,
and our soldiers do not exist. To-day brings word of the blowing
up of an American ship. Of course, we do not know the details but
the thing looks ugly.
Wasn't the President's message on the hyphenated gentlemen bully?
You could not have beaten that yourself. And your dear friend T.
Roosevelt, did certainly write himself down as one large and
glorious ass in his criticism of the message. He hates Wilson so,
that he has just lost his mind. I wish I didn't have to say this
about Roosevelt, because I am extremely fond of him (which you are
not), but a poorer interview on the message could not have been
written. ... As always yours,
F. K. L.
The following letter was written to Mrs. Adolph Miller when she
was in a hospital in New York.
TO MRS. ADOLPH C. MILLER
Washington, December 12, [1915]
MY DEAR MARY,--We have just returned from Church and all morning I
have been thinking of you and Adolph--praying for you I suppose
in my Pagan way.
Poor dear girl, I know you are brave but I'd just like to hold
your hand or look steadily into your eyes, to tell you that you
have the best thing that this world gives--friends who are one
with you. I can see old Adolph with his grimness and his great
love, which makes him more grim and far more mandatory, what a
sturdy old Dutch Calvinist he is! He really is more Dutch than
German--Dutch modified by the California sun--and Calvinist
sweetened by you and Boulder Creek, and Berkeley and William James
and B. I. Wheeler and his Saint of a Mother. Well, let him pass,
why should I talk of him when you really want me to talk of
myself!
Last night we had the GRIDIRON dinner, and the President made an
exalted speech. He is spiritually great, Mary, and don't you dare
smile and think of the widow! We are all dual, old Emerson said it
in his ESSAY ON FREE WILL, and Adolph can tell you what old Greek
said it. And this duality is where the fight comes in, and the two
people walk side by side, to-day is Jekyll's day, and tomorrow is
Hyde's, and so they alternate.
Well, the GRIDIRON was a grind on Bryan and Villard and Ford, and
a boost for preparedness and Garrison and the Army and Navy. Tell
Adolph they had a Democratic mule, two men walking together under
a cover, the head end reasonable, the hind end kicking--the front
end of course represented the Wilson crowd and the hind end the
Bryan-Kitchin,--and the two wouldn't work together. The whole
thing was splendidly done and was a lesson to the few Democrats
who were there--which they won't learn.
Nancy went to her second party last night--a joyous thing in a new
evening cloak of old rose, which made her feel that Cleopatra and
the Queen of Sheba and Mrs. Galt and all other exalted ladies had
nothing on her. What a glorious thing life would be if we could
remain children, with all the simple joys and none of the horrors
that age brings on. There is certainly a good fifty per cent
chance that this fine spirit will marry some damn brute who will
worry and harass the soul out of her. For so the world goes. I
hope she'll be as fortunate as you have been.
To-night we go to the Polks to see Mrs. Martin Egan who was on a
torpedoed ship in the Mediterranean, and although she couldn't
swim floated forty-five minutes till rescued. You must know the
Polks well. She has very real charm and your old Mormon of a
husband will desert his other fairies for her.
Now I have gossiped and preached and prophesied and mourned and
otherwise revealed what passes through a wandering mind in half an
hour, so I send you, at the close of this screed, my blessing,
which is a poor gift, and I would send you the parcel post limit
of my love if it weren't for Anne and Adolph, who are narrow-
minded Dutch Calvinists. May good fortune betide you and bring you
back very soon to the many whose hearts are sympathetic.
FRANK
TO MRS. MAGNUS ANDERSEN
Washington, D.C., December 24, [1915]
MY DEAR MAUDIE,--It is Christmas eve, and while Nancy and Anne are
filling the mysterious stockings, I am writing these letters to
the best of brothers and sister. It has been a long, a
disgracefully long time since I wrote you, but I have kept in
touch pretty well through George and Anne. ... So you have now a
philosophy--something to hang to! I am glad of it. The standpoint
is the valuable thing. There are profound depths in the idea that
lies under Christian Science, but like all other new things it
goes to unreasonable lengths. "Be Moderate," were the words
written over the Temple on the Acropolis, and this applies to all
things. This world is curiously complex, and no one knows how to
answer all our puzzles. Sometimes I think that God himself does
not. There is a fine poem by Emerson called, THE SPHINX, which is
the most hopeful thing that I have found, because it recognizes
the dual world in which we live, for everything goes not singly
but in pairs--good and evil, matter and mind. Then, too, you may
be interested in his essay on FATE.
Dear Fritz--dear, dear boy, how I wish I could be there with him,
though I could do no good. ... Each night I pray for him, and I am
so much of a Catholic that I pray to the only Saint I know or ever
knew and ask her to help. If she lives her mind can reach the
minds of the doctors just as surely as there is such a thing as
transmission of thought between us, or hypnotism. I don't need her
to intercede with God, but I would like her to intercede with man.
Why, oh why, do we not know whether she is or not! Then all the
universe would be explained to me. The only miracle that I care
about is the resurrection. If we live again we certainly have
reason for living now. I think that belief is the foundation hope
of religion. Anne has it with a certainty that is to me nothing
less than amazing. And people of noble minds, of exalted spirits,
not necessarily of greatest intellects have it. George has it in
his own way, and he is certainly one of the real men of the earth.
The President has it strongly. He is, in fact, deeply, truly
religious. The slanders on him are infamous.
... We are to have the quietest possible Christmas. No one but
ourselves at dinner--I give no presents at all--for financially
we are up to our eyebrows. I probably will work all day except for
an hour or two which I shall use in playing with Nancy, for her
gay spirit will not allow anything but the Christmas spirit to
prevail. She is so like our Dear One, so determined, cheerful,
hopeful, courageous, yet very shy. Ned will be out all night at
dances and tomorrow too, for he is a most popular chap and very
well-behaved indeed. His manners are excellent and he has plenty
of dash. He is learning these things now which I learned only
after many years, the little things which make the conventional
man of the world.
I hope that you will find the New Year one of great peace of mind
and real serenity of soul. May you commune with the Spirit of the
Infinite and find yourself growing more and more in the spiritual
image of the Dear One.
My tenderest love to you and to your good high-hearted man, and to
the Boy.
FRANK
TO MRS. ADOLPH C. MILLER
Washington [1915]
This is a Christmas letter and is addressed:--"To a Brave Young
Woman." I am afraid it is not just as cheery and merry as it
should be because, you see, it's like this, I am poor--very, very
poor, and I have very good taste--very, very good taste. Now
those two things can't get on together at Christmas. Then, too, I
am busy--very, very busy, so I don't have time to shop. Now if you
were very, very poor and had very, very good taste and were very,
very busy and couldn't shop--how in heaven could you buy anything
for anyone?
I did take half an hour or so to look at things, and things were
so ugly that were cheap that of course I couldn't buy them without
confessing poor taste, or they were so very expensive that I
couldn't buy them without confessing bankruptcy. Now there you
are! So what could a poor boy do but come home empty-handed,
nothing for Anne or Nancy or Ned or you--not even something for
myself! And I need things, socks and pipe, and better writing
paper than this, and music and toothpaste and some new clothes,
and a house near your palace, and a more contented spirit and
another job and Ahellofalotof things. Don't get nervous about me,
because I'm not going to kill myself for lack of all these things,
although a true-born Samurai, loyal to Bushido might do so. For it
is dishonor not to be rich at Christmas time; not to feel rich,
anyway. But then let me see what I've got! There's Anne! I expect
if sold on the block, at public auction, say in Alaska, where
women are scarce, she would bring some price; but her digestion
isn't very good and her heart is quite weak and her hair is
falling out. But these things, of course, the auctioneer wouldn't
reveal. She would make a fine Duchess, but the market just now is
overstocked with Duchesses. And she is a good provider when
furnished with the provisions.
Now there is Ned--he could hire out as a male assistant to a
female dancer and get fifty a week, perhaps. Nancy couldn't even
do that. They are both liabilities. So there you are, with
Duchesses on the contraband list, and Nancy not old enough to
marry a decayed old Pittsburg millionaire, I will be compelled to
keep on working. For my assets aren't what your noble husband
would call quick, though they are live. I really don't know what
to do. I shall wait till Anne comes home and then, as usual, do
what she says.
I really did look for something for you. But the only thing I saw
that I thought you would care for was a brooch, opal and diamonds
for seven hundred and seventy-five dollars, so I said you wouldn't
care for it. But I bought it for you A LA Christian Science. You
have it, see? I think you have it, that I gave it to you. And that
Adolph doesn't know it, see?
Well you have the opal and I am happy because you are enjoying it.
Such fire! What a superb setting! And such refined taste,
platinum, do you notice! oh, so modest! No one else has any such
jewel. How Henry will admire it--and how mystified Adolph is!
Tell him you bought it out of the money you saved on corned beef.
How I shall enjoy seeing you wear it, and knowing that it bears in
its fiery heart all the ardent poetry that I would fain pour out,
but am deterred by my shyness. But you will understand! Each night
you must take it out just for a glimpse before saying your
prayers. The opal is from Australia, the platinum from Siberia,
the diamonds from Africa, the setting was designed in Paris. And
here it is, the circle of the world has been made to secure this
little thing of beauty for you. What symbolism!
I hope it will make you happy, and cause you to forget all your
pain and weakness. It has given me great happiness to give you
this little gift. And so we will both have a merry Christmas.
FRANK
VIII
AMERICAN AND MEXICAN AFFAIRS
1916
On Writing English--Visit to Monticello--Citizenship for Indians--On
Religion--American-Mexican Joint Commission
TO WILLIAM M. BOLE
GREAT FALLS TRIBUNE
Washington, December 29, 1915
DEAR BOLE,--I am very much gratified by the manner in which you
treated my annual report. Certainly my old newspaper training has
stood me in good stead in writing my reports. In fact it always
has, for while I was Corporation Counsel in San Francisco, and a
member of the Interstate Commerce Commission, I wrote legal
opinions that were intelligible to the layman, and I tried to
present my facts in such manner as to make their presentation
interesting. The result was that the courts read my opinions and
sustained them, but whether they were equally impressive upon the
strictly legal mind, I have my doubts, because you know inside the
"union" there is a strong feeling that the argot of the bar must
be spoken and the simplest legal questions dealt with in profound,
philosophic, latinized vocabulary.
I remember that after I was elected Corporation Counsel, when I
was almost unknown to the bar of San Francisco, I began to hear
criticism from my legal friends that my opinions were written in
English that was too simple, so I indulged myself by writing a
dozen or so in all the heavy style that I could put on, writing in
as many Latin phrases and as much old Norman French as was
possible. This was by way of showing the crowd that I was still a
member of the union.
I find that all our scientific bureaus suffer from the same
malady. These scientists write for each other, as the women say
they dress for each other. One of the first orders that I issued
was that our letters should be written in simple English, in words
of one syllable if possible, and on one page if possible.
Soon after I came here I found a letter from one of our lawyers to
an Indian, explaining the conditions of his title, that was so
involved and elaborately braided and beaded and fringed that I
could not understand it myself. I outraged the sensibilities of
every lawyer in the Department, and we have five hundred or more
of them, by sending this letter back and asking that it be put in
straightaway English. ... Cordially yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
TO MRS. ADOLPH C. MILLER
Washington, [January 1, 1916]
Having just sent a wire to you I shall now indulge myself in a few
minutes talk with that many-sided, multiple-natured, quite
obvious-and-yet-altogether-hidden person who is known to me as
Mary Miller.
The flash of brilliant crimson on the eastern side of the opal, do
you catch it? Now that is the flash of courage, the brilliant
flame that will lead you to hold your head high. ... I like very
much what you say as to wearing our jewel "discreetly but
constantly." No combination of words could more perfectly express
the relationship which this bit of sunrise has established between
us--devotion, loyalty, telepathic communication without publicity.
I am sure you are belittling yourself. ... you are a game bird,--
good, you understand, but with a tang, a something wild in flavor,
a touch of the woods and mountain flowers and hidden dells in
bosky places, and wanderings and sweet revolt against captivity.
...
This is my first line of the New Year. Anne is a true daughter of
Martha this morning--her heart is troubled with many things,
getting ready for the raid of the Huns this afternoon. She says
she will write when she repossesses herself of her right arm. Good
health!
Some days later
... I have been receiving your wireless messages all week, my dear
Mary, and not one was an S. O. S. Good! The fair ship MARY MILLER
is safe. Hurrah! She never has been staunch, but she was the
gayest thing on the sea, and when her sails were all set from jib
to spanker she made a gladsome sight, and some speed.
Of course, being so gay she was venturesome. That's where the
Devil comes in. He is always looking about for the gay things. He
hates anything that doesn't make medicine for him. If you are gay
you are likely to be venturesome, and if venturesome, you can be
led astray. So the good ship MARY MILLER instead of hugging the
shore took a try at the vasty deep and got all blown to pieces.
Then she sent out a cry for help. The wireless worked and now with
a little puttering along in the sunshine and a lazy sea, she will
be her gay self once more, and like Kipling's Three Decker will
"carry tired people to the Islands of the Blest."
That was a most charming letter you sent me, a real bit of
intimate talk. Anne read it first. She is very careful as to my
reading. And I was glad to know that she could discover nothing in
it which might injuriously affect my trustful young mind. Anne is
really a good woman. I don't believe in husband's abusing their
wives, publicly. Good manners are essential to happiness in
married life. We are short on manners in this country, and that
explains the prevalence of divorce. How much better, as our friend
L. Sterne once said, "These things are ordered in France."
F. K L.
TO EDWARD F. ADAMS
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Washington, January 11, 1916
MY DEAR ADAMS,--I have yours of the 2nd. Of course, you can not
sue the United States to get possession of its property without
the consent of the United States; but I will forgive you for all
your peculiar and archaic notions regarding government lands and
schools and sich, because I love you for what you are and not
because of your inheritance of old-fashioned ideas.
As I am dictating this letter I look up at the wall and discover
there the head of a bull moose, and that bull moose makes me think
of all the things you said four years ago about Roosevelt. And now
he is to be again the master of your party--perhaps not a
candidate, because he may be guilty of an act of self-abnegation
and put away the crown, or take it in his own hands and place it
upon some one else's brow.
I remember the manner--the scornful, satirical, sometimes pitiful
and sometimes abusive manner--in which you treated the Bull Moose;
and so we are going to have a great spectacle, the Bull Moose and
the Elephant kissing each other at Chicago; and seated on the
Elephant's shoulders will be the crowned mahout with the big
barbed stick in his hand, telling you which way to turn and when
to kneel!
Of course, you will abuse us all for our land policies, but
overlook the fact that the brutalities of these policies were
committed in other days--those good, old Republican days. It
really is a wonder that you are not cynical and that you still
have enthusiasm. I should not be surprised if you said your
prayers and had belief in another world, where all the bad
Democrats would sizzle to the eternal joy of the good Republicans.
In those days I shall look up to you and I know that you will not
deny me the drop of cold water.
I shall be very much interested in seeing what kind of a fist our
man Claxton makes out of your school system, and I hope you can
use him as a means of arousing interest in the schools. That is
one trouble with the public school system, because we get our
education for nothing we treat it as if it was worth nothing--I
mean those of us who are parents. We never know that the school
exists except to make some complaint about discipline or taxes.
May you live long and be happy. Always yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
From time to time as vacancies occurred on the Supreme Bench,
letters and telegrams came to Lane from friends that begged him to
allow them to urge his appointment to this office. In 1912, 1914,
and 1916 the newspapers in different parts of the country
mentioned him as a probable appointee. While, as a young lawyer,
this office had seemed to him to be one greatly to be desired,
after he came to Washington and knew more of the nature of the
cases that necessarily formed the greater part of the work passed
upon by the Supreme Court, his interest waned. As early as 1913 he
wrote of the decisions of the Interstate Commerce Commission, "If
we are wise, we are not to be terrorized by our own precedents."
An office in which there was little opportunity for constructive
or executive work grew to have less and less attraction for him.
To Carl Snyder
Washington, January 22, 1916
MY DEAR CARL,--I am your most dutiful and obedient servant; the
aforesaid modest declaration being induced by your letter of
January fifth, offering to place me on the Bench. I regret greatly
that you are not the President of the United States, but he seems
to have a notion that it would be a shame to spoil an excellent
Secretary of the Interior.