Now be wise and you can have this land for many years. But foolish
conceit will put you out in four. ...I wish you Republicans had
carried all the South. I am glad for Lenroot--very! ... But
Phelan's defeat has about broken my heart and for Henderson and
Chamberlain and Thomas I am especially grieved. Well, it will be a
changed world in Washington, and I'm sorry I can't be in it and of
it.
Anne has gone to Washington to see Nancy who has not been well, so
I am alone but not for long. I get on all right. God bless you, my
dear old chap, and do rest awhile beneath your own fig tree. My
love to Alice. Affectionately as always,
F. K. L.
To George Otis Smith
Bethel, [November] 18, [1920]
Dear George Otis,--I love this Maine of yours. It is beautiful,
and its people are good stuff--strong, wholesome, intelligent
young men. I like them greatly. I'd be content to sit right down
here and wait for whatever is to come. It is a place of serenity.
There is no rush, yet people live and the necessary things get
done. It doesn't have any Ford factories, but I rather fancy it
makes the men who go West and make the factories.
The autumn has been one long procession of gay banners on the
hillsides, and now that the snow has come the pines are blue and
the mountains purple; and mountains five thousand feet high are
just as good, more companionable, than mountains fifteen thousand
feet high. What is more lovely, stately and of finer color than a
line of these receding hills which walk away from you, as if they
continued clear across the continent?
I must get out against my wish, to have a lot more testing done--
for this doctor differs with the others--and I rather think he is
right. But I hope to get back here and enjoy this air. No wonder
this stock was for prohibition, the air itself is an intoxicant,
especially when the snow is on the ground and it comes to you
gently; it is as bracing as a cocktail, not a sensuous wine like
the Santa Barbara air--tell Vogelsang this--but I presume more
like the High Sierras, where the fishing is good.
I shall read your speeches with the deepest interest. Keep up the
publicity. It affects Congress and it justifies the good doctrine
we have preached. Cordially,
F. K. Lane
Have read the speeches and they are everything they should be.
Right theory, clear statement, conclusive facts. A few too many
figures perhaps, you should keep your prime figures in the air
longer so they can be visualized. This may be called juggling
figures in the right sense.
Lane
To George W. Wickersham
Bethel, Maine, 18 [November, 1920]
My dear G. W.,--I have your good letter. By 'good' I mean many
things--well done as a bit of sketchy composition, a welcome
letter, kindly also in spirit, cheering, timely, telling of things
that interest the receiver, one, too, having the flavor of the
household whence it comes, altogether a good letter. I had one
also from Her; which I brutally answered with a preachment--in
pencil, too, for I can't write with comfort at a desk and, after
all, what have white paper and ink in common with these woods? I
am for harmony--a reconciler, like Harding. ...
Root, as you say, would give a good smack to the meal. The country
would at once say Harding knows how to set a good table. But tell
me--will he be a Taft? a McKinley? a Hayes? or a Grant? Pshaw! why
should I ask such a question? Who knows what a man will turn out
to be! Events may make him greater than any, or less. A war, a
bullet, a timely word of warning to a foreign power, a fierce
fight with some unliked home group, the right sort of a deal on
postal rates with newspapers and magazines--any one of these might
lift him into a national hero; while a sneaking act revealed, a
little too much caution, a period of business depression, would
send him tumbling out of the skies.
These be indeed no days for prophesying--Wilson gone, Clemenceau
gone, Venizelos gone,--Lloyd George alone left! The wise boy had
his election at the right moment, didn't he? Surely statesmanship
is four-fifths politics. Harding's danger, as I see it, will lie
in his timidity. He fears; and fear is the poison gas which comes
from the Devil's factory. Courage is oxygen, and Fear is carbon
monoxide. One comes from Heaven--so you find Wells says,--and the
other would turn the universe back into primeval chaos. Wilson, be
it said to his eternal glory, did not fear. They send word to me
from the inside that he believed in Cox's election up to the last
minute, although the whole Cabinet told him defeat was sure. He
"was right, and right would prevail"--surely such faith, even in
oneself, is almost genius!
I am glad you put Lincoln first in your list of great Americans. I
decided that question for myself when I came to hang some pictures
in my library. Washington or Lincoln on top? And Lincoln got it. I
have recently read all his speeches and papers, and the man is
true from the first day to the last. The same philosophy and the
same reasoning were good in 1861 as in 1841. He was large enough
for a great day--could any more be said of any one?
Lincoln made Seward and Chase and Stanton and Blair his mates. He
did not fear them. He wished to walk with the greatest, not with
trucklers and fawners, court satellites and panderers. His great
soul was not warm enough to fuse them--they were rebellious ore--
but his simplicities were not to be mastered by their elaborate
cogencies.
McKinley was simple in his nature, at bottom a dear boy of kind
heart, who put his hand into the big fist of Mark Hanna and was
led to glory.
Is Harding great and masterful in his simplicity, or trustful and
yielding? and if the latter where is the Hanna? Well, I don't want
to die in these next few months, anyway, till some questions are
answered. This would be a part of my Cabinet if I were Harding:--
Root, State; Hoover, Treasury; Warren of Michigan, Attorney-
General; Wood, War; Willard (of Baltimore)
You enviously write of my opportunity to read and contemplate. I
have done some of both. But that's a monk's life, and even a monk
has a cell of his own, and a bit of garden to play with; and he
can think upon a God that is his very own, an Israelitish
Providence; and, in his egotism, be content. Yes, with a cell and
a book and a garden and an intimate God, one should be satisfied
to forego even health. But I hold with old Cicero that the "whole
glory of virtue is in activity," and therefore I call my
discontent divine.
You speak of great Americans, and have named all four from
political life. I concur in your selection. Now what writers would
you say were most distinctly American in thought and most
influential upon our thought, men who a hundred years hence will
be regarded not great as literary men but as American social,
spiritual, and economic philosophers? It occurs to me that this
singular trio might be selected--Emerson, Henry George, and
William James. What say you?
Say "Hello" to the young Colonel for me.
F. K. L.
Lincoln haunted Lane's imagination, the humor, friendliness,
loneliness, and greatness of the man. This--written for no formal
occasion but to express part of his feeling--has found its way to
others who, too, reverence the great American.
Lincoln's Eyes
I never pass through Chicago without visiting the statue of
Lincoln by St. Gaudens and standing before it for a moment
uncovered. It is to me all that America is, physically and
spiritually. I look at those long arms and long legs, large hands
and feet, and I think that they represent the physical strength of
this country, its power and its youthful awkwardness. Then I look
up at the head and see qualities which have made the American--the
strong chin, the noble brow, those sober and steadfast eyes. They
were the eyes of one who saw with sympathy and interpreted with
common sense. They were the eyes of earnest idealism limited and
checked by the possible and the practicable. They were the eyes of
a truly humble spirit, whose ambition was not a love for power but
a desire to be supremely useful. They were eyes of compassion and
mercy and a deep understanding. They saw far more than they looked
at. They believed in far more than they saw. They loved men not
for what they were but for what they might become. They were
patient eyes, eyes that could wait and wait and live on in the
faith that right would win. They were eyes which challenged the
nobler things in men and brought out the hidden largeness. They
were humorous eyes that saw things in their true proportions and
in their real relationships. They looked through cant and pretense
and the great and little vanities of great and little men. They
were the eyes of an unflinching courage and an unfaltering faith
rising out of a sincere dependence upon the Master of the
Universe. To believe in Lincoln is to learn to look through
Lincoln's eyes.
To Benjamin Ide Wheeler
Bethel, 18 [November, 1920]
MY DEAR B. I.,--From both ends of this continent we talk to each
other. We have both retired from active things and can with some
degree of removal, and from some altitude, look upon the affairs
of men. Frankly, it challenges all my transcendental philosophy to
convince me that "deep love lieth under these pictures of time."
And yet I must so believe or die. It is a disheartening time--
Wilson, a wreck and beaten. Clemenceau, beaten and out. And now
Venizelos gone. Only Lloyd George, the crafty, quick-turning,
sometimes-lying, never-wholly-frank politician left, because he
called his election when spirits had not fallen.
And little men take their places, while Bolshevism drives Wrangel
into the sea, possesses all Russia and Siberia, and is a success
politically and militarily, tho' a failure economically and
socially. We have passed the danger of red anarchy in America, I
think, tho' no one should prophesy as to any event of to-morrow.
Communism, and socialism with it, have been made to pause. Yet
nothing constructive is opened by the world for men to think upon,
as a means of bettering their lot and answering the questions
flung to them by Russia, Germany, England, and our own home
conditions.
I can see no evidence of constructive statesmanship on this side
the water, excepting in Hoover. The best man in Congress is
Lenroot, and he writes me that unless the Republicans do something
more than fail to make mistakes that the Democrats will take the
power from them in another four years. But I am nothing for
parties. I cannot wait for an opposition to come in. I would like
to see the Republicans now address themselves to the problems of
the world at large and of this land. If Knox is to be Secretary of
State, as the rumor is, we will have Steel Trust Diplomacy,--which
will give us safety abroad, which is more than we have had for
some years--but it will be without vision, without love for
mankind. Root would give the Republicans great assurance and
confidence. He would make them smack their lips and feel that
Harding was not afraid of the best near him. Hoover may or may not
have a Cabinet place, but his brain is the best thing working in
America to-day, on our questions. If Penrose and Co. beat him they
will regret it,
If I were Harding I'd put Root, Lowden, Wood, Hoover, and Johnson
if he wanted it, into my Cabinet and I'd gather all the men of
mind in the country and put them at work on specific questions as
advisors to me, under Cabinet officers. One group on Taxes and
Finance, one on Labor and Capital, one on Internal Improvements,
one on Education and Health. And have a program agreeable to
Congress, which is sterile because it is a messenger-boy force for
constituents.
The Democrats could do this if they had the men,--but look over
the nation and see how short we are of talent of any kind. It may
be an opposition party but it has no force, no will, no self-
confidence. It hopes for a miracle, vainly hopes. It cannot gather
twenty first-rate minds in the nation to make a program for the
party. I tried it the other day--men interested in political
affairs, outside Congress--try it yourself. Get twenty big enough
to draft a national program of legislation for the party. I sent
the suggestion to George White, chairman of the National
Committee, and gave him a list, and at the head I put you and
President Eliot, classing you both as Democrats, which probably
neither of you call yourselves now, tho' both voted for Cox. ...
If I get to California I must see you. But I shall play my string
out here before trying the Western land. My best regards to the
Lady. Yours always, LANE
To Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt
Bethel, Maine, [November, 1920]
To THE DEAR ROOSEVELTS,--... You realized what was coming, but I
fear Cox did not; could not believe that his star would not pull
through. I wish Georgia and Alabama had gone, too. The American
born did not like Wilson because he was not frank, was too selfish
and opinionated. The foreign born did not like his foreign
settlements. So they voted "no confidence" in his party. What we
will do in this land of mixed peoples is a problem. Our policies
now are to be determined by Fiume and Ireland--not by real home
concerns. This is dangerous in the extreme. Demagogues can win to
power by playing to the prejudices of those not yet fully
American. ... As always,
F. K. L.
To Lathrop Brown
Bethel, [November] 20, [1920]
MY DEAR LATHROP,--You are wrong, dead wrong, viciously, wilfully
wrong. I do like this exact science business. I worked at it and
in it on the railroad problems for seven years. There is only one
thing that beats it, puts it on the blink, and that is inexact
human nature which does wicked things to figures and facts and
theories and plans and hopes. Prove, if you will, that there is no
margin at all over wages, and a nominal return on capital, and you
do not kill the desire of someone to run the shop. ... Talking of
business men, what about the Shipping Board? O, my boy, they have
something to explain--these Hurleys and Schwabs! ... How does this
sound to you? They let their own tanks lie idle, commandeered
those of Doheny and rented them to the Standard Oil--so that they
could bid when Doheny couldn't--eh, what? ...
F. K. L.
To Timothy Spellacy
Bethel, [November] 22, [1920]
MY DEAR TIM,--I hear from Mike that you are not in New York, and
so I am writing you out of "love and affection," as I hope to see
Mike but won't see you when I go to New York for Thanksgiving. It
was my hope that we three could have a good talk over Mike's
Colombia plans, but do not trouble yourself with these business
concerns. Get well--that's the job for both you and me. We have
been too extravagant of ourselves, and especially you, you big-
hearted, energetic, unselfish son of Erin! Eighteen years I have
known you and never a word or an act have I heard of or seen that
did not make me feel that the campaign for Governor was worth
while, because it gave me your acquaintance, friendship,
affection. And Ned and George love you as I do. When I get mad, as
I do sometimes, over something that the Irish do, I always am
tempted to a hard generalization that I am compelled to modify,
because of you and Mike and Dan O'Neill, in San Francisco--and a
few more of the Great Irish--. ...
Well, my dear fellow, drop me a line when you feel like it and be
sustained in your weakness by the unfaltering affection of
thousands who know you, among them--
FRANKLIN K. LANE
To Frank I, Cobb New York World
New York, December 6, [1920]
DEAR FRANK,--You are right, but too far ahead. We must come to
Cabinet responsibility, and I am with you as an agitator. Twenty
years may see it.
This morning you chide the Republicans for not having a program.
Good God, man, why so partisan? What program have we? Will we just
oppose; vote "Nay," to all they propose? That way insures twenty
years as "outs"--and we won't deserve to be in. What we lack is
just plain brains. We have a slushy, sentimental Democracy, but
don't have men who can concrete-ize feeling into policy, if you
know what that means. A program--a practicable, constructive
program--quietly drawn, agreeable to the leaders in both Houses,
pushed for, advocated loudly! That's our one hope--Agree? Yours
cordially,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
To John G. Gehring
New York, December 9, [1920]
Well, my dear Doctor, here I am at another cross-roads. ... I
leave ... in a day or two with a new dietary and some good advice.
The latter in tabloid form being:--"Drop business for a time, go
into it again slowly, and gradually creep into your job." All of
which is wise, and commends itself greatly to my erstwhile mind,
but is much like saying, "Jump off the Brooklyn bridge, "slowly."
... I am not resigned, of course. Because I cannot see the end.
Definiteness is so imperative to some natures. However, I think
that I have done all that an exacting Deity would demand, and
cannot be accused of suicide, if things go badly.
Our plan is to go to Washington to see some old friends thence
south and so to California, for a couple of months. Delightful
program if one had health, but in exchange I would gladly take a
sentence to three months in a chain-gang on the roads.
One of my friends has suggestively sent me Burton's Anatomy of
Melancholy. To offset it I went out at once and bought a new suit
of bright homespun clothes and a red overcoat--pretty red. In
addition I have a New Thought doctor giving me absent treatment. I
am experimenting with Hindu deep breathing, rhythmical breathing,
in which the lady who runs this hospital is an adept. And what
with an osteopath and a regular and a nurse and predigested food,
I am not shirking. If melancholy gets the better of me now--
Kismet!
Tell your dear Lady that it was infinitely good of her to write,
(and she has, I may say, quite as brilliant a pen-style as
speech.) And one day I shall write her when the world looks
better. My best reading has been William James' Letters; and that
which amused me most a new novel, entitled Potterism, by Rose
Macauley, which cuts into the cant and humbug of the world right
cruelly. I see your beautiful serene landscape and envy you. And I
envy those who hear your hearty chuckle each morning in the Inn.
As always,
F. K. L.
To John W. Hallowell
New York, December 9, [1920]
DEAR JACK,--I have tried out New York again and find it lacking as
before. No help! They do not know. ... So I am going to
Californi...A. I wish I were to be near you--you really have a
special old corner in all that is left of my heart. And one of
these days well indulge ourselves in a good time--a long pull
together again.
I have been reading William James' Letters--and real literature
they are--far better than all your novels. What a great Man--a
mind, plus a man. Not to have known James in the last generation
is to have missed its greatest intellect; Roosevelt and James and
Henry George were the three greatest forces of the last thirty
years. Sometime when you come across a good photo or engraving or
wood-cut, or something, of James, will you buy it and send it to
me? I want a human one--not a professional one. I guess he
couldn't be the pedantic kind anyway.
Billy Phillips has a new baby-boy born Monday.
My plan is to leave here in a week, go to Washington and see
Nancy, and get a glimpse of some of my old people in the
Department, thence to South Carolina and then probably California
for two or three months. Ah me--most people would think this
luxury--I think it hell! But it may be for my great spiritual
good. Certainly if I could have you to walk with for these months,
and more of William James to read, I could take a step or two
forward.
Have also been reading a bit of Buddhism lately. It is too
negative--that is almost its chief if not its only defect, as an
attitude toward life. It won't make things move but it will make
souls content. And I can't get away from the thought that we are
here as conquerors, not as pacifists. I can't be the latter, save
in the desire.
Peabody dropped in yesterday from Chicago. (I have forgotten
whether you knew him well or not.) Able chap, fond of me, as I of
him. My boy works for him. He sent me a gorgeous edition of
Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy which I have always wanted, largely
because it is one of the curiosities of the world. ...
Write me as often as your Quaker spirit moves you to utterance.
Your dinner got quite a send-off in these papers, which is
something, for New York to recognize Boston! Terribly tough job
though. Poor babies! Hard to believe in a good God and a kind God,
isn't it?
I hear talk of shoving Hoover outside the breastworks. Fools!
Fools! Best for him but worse for the country. Whole question of
Republican success turns on the largeness of Harding. I don't ask
a Lincoln--much less will do. If he is only a smooth-footed
politician he will fail. So far he has been the gentleman. ...
My love to your whole circle, from Grandmother down.
Affectionately,
F. K. L.
To John G. Gehring
Rochester, Minnesota, December 31, [1920]
MY DEAR PADRE,--It is the last night of an unhappy year. Never do
I wish for such another. No joy--defeat, dreary waiting. These
words describe not merely my personal history and attitude but
fairly picture those of the world. It took guts to live through
such an unillumined, non-productive, soul-depressing year. Did
any good come out of it? Yes, to me just one thing good--I came to
know you, your Lady and the beauteousness of Bethel. And after all
a man does not do any better in any year than make a friend. No
man makes seventy friends in a life-time, does he? So I must not
repine nor let the year go out in bitterness. On the credit side
of my account book I have something that can be carried over into
1921, whereas most people can only carry over Hope.
I hope there is something significant and more than suggestive in
my turning up here on the last day of the year for examination--
"Getting a ready on" for a New Year--that's what you would
optimistically shout if you were here, I know. And that is my
Goodbye word to 1920--"You haven't beaten me, and I have lived to
take your brush."
I am being ground and wound and twisted and fed into and out of
the Mayo mill, and a great mill it is. Of course they are giving
me a private view, so to speak. Distinguished consideration is a
modest word for the way in which I am treated--not because of my
worth but because of my friends--. Those men are greater as
organizers, I believe, than as workmen, which is saying much
indeed, for they are the surgeons supreme. ... Two to three
hundred people, new people, a day pass through [their shop]. Sixty
to seventy thousand a year received, examined, diagnosed, treated
perhaps, operated on (fifty per cent), and cared for. The
machinery for this is colossal and superbly arranged.
Dr. Mayo told me to come over at two o'clock and register. ... I
stood in line and was duly registered, telling name, and other
such facts, non-medical. Then a special guide took me to Dr. Mayo,
who had already heard my story at the hotel but who, wished it in
writing. Accordingly, I was presented to a group of the staff and
one man assigned as my escort. I answered him a thousand
questions, touching my physical life for fifty-six years. Then to
the tonsil man, who saw a distinct "focus," now there, a focus in
the tonsils! Nose and ears without focus or focii or focuses. Down
an elevator, through a labyrinth of halls, down an inclined plane,
up a flight of steps, two turns to the left and then a group of
the grumpiest girls I ever saw or heard or felt. They were good
looking, too, but they didn't care to win favor with mere males.
They had a higher purpose, no doubt. They openly sneered at my
doctor escort. They lifted their eyebrows at my good-looking young
son, and they told me precisely where to sit down. I was not
spoken to further. My ear was punched and blood was taken in tubes
and on slides by young ladies who did not care how much of my
blood they spilled or extracted. They were so business-like, so
mechanical, so dehumanized, these young ladies with microscopes!
One said cryptically "57," another said "53." I was full of
curiosity but I did not ask a question. They tapped me as if I
were a spring--a fountain filled with blood--and gave me neither
information, gaiety or entertainment in exchange. Each one I am
convinced has by this life of near-crime, which she pursues for a
living, become capable of actual murder.