batting school. You can take and give. But "may I not" say a word
of appreciation and perhaps of stimulation--give you a good
masculine thump on the shoulder by way of saying that for one who
lives in a mist you have lots of gimp. To love something better
than oneself is the first step, I guess, toward making that soul.
Please read the note, in special envelop, to Ralphie, when he will
be interested. By Jove, how fortunate that we could not leave. All
my force is sick. Three of my assistants are laid up. Six hundred
and eighty people in my Department are in bed. And I am struggling
to get out and leave my job up to date. Good fortune!
F. K. L.
[Katonah, August, 1920]
... You know that I love you--yes, just as much as Ralph Ellis,
who is a tough sailor man, and Anne Lane, who is a citizen of two
worlds, will let me. But I would love you more, much more, if you
did not have to be induced by my wife to write to me. Your love
letter was all right, but it was procured. Do you get that word--
procured--and my wife was the procuress. This may be de rigueur
and comme il faut and umslopogass on Long Island, but it does not
go in Katonah--peaceful, pure Katonah!
Here, in this sweet centre, if a lady wishes "for to make eyes" at
a man, by way of a letter, she does it without being told to do it
by the said man's wife. And then to open, "Dear Mr. Lane,"--Gosh
Lizzie! isn't that pretty warm!
My anger is so great that I am now sitting up in bed at the weary
hour of two to relieve myself--for otherwise I cannot sleep.
Your remarks upon the distraught condition of the public mind, the
unfortunate fix into which the Polacks have fixed themselves, the
heart-breaking cry that you send out for men to get together and
be sensible, before they are sadder,--these things have no
lodgement in my soul-center. For I am loved by a lady who speaks
much of free speech and courage and candor and other virtues of
prehistoric existence, but who talks of herself all through her
letter and never of me at all. How can the fire be kept burning
with a cold back-log like that? Talk about me! That's the first
principle of all conversation--even not amorous. Well, you are a
good woman, Mrs. Ellis, and I hope Mr. Ellis is well, and that you
are not having trouble with the help. Goodbye, Mrs. Ellis!
Come, sweet Elizabeth, let us join hands and go for a gay climb
over the piney hills--you can sing your minor note of sad
distress--your miserere, if you can, in the face of the puffy
clouds, and I will laugh at you for having too much of world
concern in your heart. The blessings do not come to those who are
"troubled about many things." The soul is an individual, you know.
We are saved by units not en masse. Every individual is a species
--isn't that what splendid Bergson says? So come away from
responsibilities and let your poor heart, which is so unselfish
that it cannot rest, indulge itself in the luxury of a peaceful
forgetting, for a few days.
Practically, this seems like a good place--the process is to
reduce you to a pulp and then gradually restore you to form. I am
just emerging from the mash.
Do give my greetings--graduated calorically as your judgment
suggests--to the many friends in your neighborhood who have
forgotten me.
Devotedly, yet very sore,
F. K. L.
[September]
This is a sentimental letter from a sentimentalist to a sent--,
for a sent--. It is by way of atonement, chiefly. I want to be
forgiven for all the hard things I have said to you. I feel that I
owe you much, at least a good word, for all the bad ones I have
given you.
You are a health-giver. That's not such a bad name, is it? In fact
I don't know a better. It doesn't sound sentimental, no husband
would be alarmed by it, and yet it carries in it implications of
gaiety and tenderness and rompishness with a touch of mysterious
adoration. Altogether it is a very real large word that does not
signify virtues but rather attractivenesses. Mind, I don't say
that you have not the virtues--all of them, offensive and
defensive, but the attractivenesses make life, don't they? And to
be a health-giver is not merely to have charm. That is the spell-
casting power, to be filled with witchery, to be a witch. Yes, I
believe it is something like that--very much in fact, but the
witchery must be balsamic, it must be radiant, it must go out in
rays or circles or waves, because it can't help going out, not
purposefully and selfishly, like the casting of a net--it must be
balsamic and radiant, the outbreathing of pines.
Now this is a very nice name I have called you--you can put it
into Latin or Greek or French and make it sound much better to the
unimaginative. But you deserve it, and I hope my little girl will
become one.
FRANKLIN K. LANE
Katonah, Sunday, [September 25, 1920]
... We leave here on Wednesday (D. V.) for Bethel because you said
to. Now how soon will you follow--a day--a week? Not more!
You made up your mind that you would go there, and there is now to
be proof given whether your mind is weak or riding strong.
Anne is to have H. Beale there, and they move in circles barred to
me. So I shall sorely need someone who knows my language. And I am
not frivolous when I say that you and I need nothing more than a
religious faith of some kind. Mohammedan, Christian Science, or
what you will. We are both religious--deeply. We pray--we do
things for the good of men and women,--but we do not relate
ourselves properly to the Great Enveloping, Permeating Spirit. I
have sought to, vainly, for many years, and yet I have not been
persistent. "Seek and ye shall find!" I want to believe that the
God of Things as They Are is not wilfully cruel. Is He
indifferent?
Are we mastering something? Tell me! Do you know? What philosophy
have you come to?
Well, all this we can talk over when we reach Bethel. Say, do you
ever answer letters or is it your Queenly prerogative to drop your
sweethearts down the public oubliette?
F. K. L.
Washington, 27 [December, 1920]
My wife won't let me call on you, "not now, anyhow," she says. Oh,
you have so many enemies! Adolph and Mary, Senator and Mrs.
Kellogg, Chief Justice and Mrs. White, Dr. and Mrs. Gehring. All
are against you, and against me--all plotting, planning, and
conspiring with my wife to keep us apart. They know the hold you
have on me, that I had rather have you as my doctor than any one
else in the whole vasty Universe--but why sigh? I am to be torn
away on Wednesday and rushed to Rochester, where the Mayos will
take me in hand, and do their worst. I have great hope that they
may cut me into happiness, and carve me into health, and slice me
into strength.
So, as Anne wired, we shall not see you in Camden, nor Ralph nor
the Junior nor anything that is Ellis--not for some moons anyway.
... The reason for going to Mayos? To see if it is true that my
stomach and my gall bladder have become too intimate. Rochester is
the Reno where such divorces are granted.
I'd like to say I love you and the whole kit and caboodle, but my
wife won't let me.
F. K. L.
XIV
FRIENDS AND THE GREAT HOPE
1921
Need for Democratic Program--Religious Faith--Men who have Influenced
Thought--A Sounder Industrial Life --A Super-University for Ideas
--"I Accept"--Fragment
To Mrs. Philip C. Kaujfmann
Rochester, Minnesota, January 1,1921
To that little Fairy with whom a young fellow named Frank Lane
used to wander in the woods, hunting the homes of the Fairies,--
Greetings on her birthday! Has she found where they live? I
believe she has. They live where eyes are bright with love, and
hands are gentle and kind, where feelings are not hurt and there
is song hummed, and Play, a very real God, still lives,
... I think that we have got to see each other some how,
somewhere, because life is passing awfully fast and there is one
best thing in it--supremely, overwhelmingly best--and that is
affection. I've chased around after fame and work for others, but
I just wish I had spent pretty much all my time loving you and
Mother and Ned, and let everything else come way down on the list.
The people who really love us are so few, aren't they? Lots of
them like us, lots of them are glad to be with us, but few can be
counted on "world without end, Amen."
... This is surely a very uncertain and unsatisfactory world for
me right now. How much we all do like definiteness and how few are
willing to trust the future to the Great Spirit. We fuss and fume
as if it would do good rather than ill. Happiness is the thing we
all desire and it is to be had easily through a most simple
philosophy; do your best and then have faith that things will come
right. Happy people are those who live with happy thoughts; those
who see good in people and by brave and cheerful thinking are
superior to depression and bitterness.
The longer I live the more I am convinced that it is our duty to
be gay; not reckless, never that; not boisterous, but light-
hearted. It saves doctor's bills, brings success, and is the one
method, the natural method, by which we become really big, and by
that I mean superior to the evil forces that try to break us down.
... To be gay one must see how very little some things are, and
how very big other things are. And the big things are things like
love and goodness and unselfishness; and the little things are the
selfish mean things, self-indulgent things, things generally that
come out of one's vanity, one's love of one's self. Get rid of
that and life becomes a pretty good place. Envy, vanity, self-
indulgence--these are devils.
... I wish you would really sink yourself into some religion. To
start right is so important. You will miss much joy in life, I am
convinced, by not having a faith; something to live by, something
that explains the questions that rise each hour. Buddhism does not
claim to be supernatural, is not founded on miracles, and yet
Buddha taught the philosophy of Christ five hundred years before
He came. The central note is getting above self--real self-
mastery. Possessing, mastering your body and mind so that you do
not allow envy or hatred to possess you, and do not hanker after
"things," possessions, or fame or popularity, and keep strong hold
on wilfulness and anger and your passions. Its fundamental maxim
is that unhappiness and sorrow come from ignorance of Truth--and
Truth is found by submerging self. The body is not bad, the lusts
of the body and the mind are not bad, but the body is no more than
an envelop for the soul, its master.
Good-night to you both, you are fast asleep by now. ... In my long
days and nights I think so much about you, wondering what the Gods
have in store for her who has been so much to me. Much, much love
little one.
DAD
To Benjamin Ide Wheeler
Rochester, Minnesota, January I, 19L1
To the Wheelers with the warmest greetings of the Lanes! A bonny
year be this to you--a year of sunny faces--may you live
surrounded by those whom you love and damned indifferent to all
the rest!
I, Franklin K. Lane, am trying to find out if the last doctor in
New York was right. He said my trouble came from an improper
alliance between my gall-bladder and my pyloric orifice, and that
here in Rochester they could be summarily divorced. (If you don't
know where the pylorus is you may locate it as the N. W. 1/4 of
the N. W. 1/4 of the stomach. Until you reach fame you never have
a pylorus--and then it is most costly.) So here I am in a real
Reno, hoping that a knife will be able to "put me to work anew,"
... and writing this as a proof of "love and affection," whatever
the legally great may mean by the distinction. ...
And talking of language, have you read what Wells has to say in
his Outline of History on this subject? I found it very
interesting; probably all old stuff to you, however. Can there be
a science of language, or of anything that a human creates? I am
rather Bergsonian in my idea of the individual man--each is a
species.
Miller is very unhappy because [Governor] Harding may leave the
Board. He [Miller] will go if the new man is not satisfactory. But
I think he will be. For Harding will be conservative and a great
respecter of wealth. And Miller while a radical in many things is
a classicist as to Finance.
If Harding leaves out Hoover he will do himself and the country
harm, and Hoover good. At last the sun shines!
F. K. L.
To Lathrop Brown
Rochester, Minnesota, January 3, [1921]
Well, my dear young Spirit of the Renaissance, I am not yet dead,
not even dying. Slowly I am doing the stations of the Cross in
this most thorough institution. I am delighted with my experience.
Here is concentrated every form of torture and annoyance to which
one can be legally subjected. Cruel and unusual punishments are
forbidden by the Constitution, but I take it that one may yet take
torture and punishment, if he pays for it. All that I have ever
done, been or thought has been revealed--probed for, and found
out. ...
Truly, this is the most scientifically organized organization of
scientists that ever was. Henry Ford could not improve upon it.
Combine him with M. Pasteur, add a touch of one Edison, and a dose
of your friend, Charlie Schwab, and you have the Mayo Clinic, big,
systematized, modernized, machinized, doctorial plant, run by a
couple of master workmen. I am seeing it all, and am prepared for
any fate. Thus far I am no more than twenty-one years of age. My
organs seem to be working union hours and to react with proper
promptitude, self-respect and authority. Tomorrow I am to be
photographed and fluoroscoped--and then will come the verdict. If
it is the guillotine I shall go gaily, like one of your ancestors
in those tumbril days of France. What I fear is an order to
"rest," on a new diet. But I guess whatever is said will be the
last word--the Supreme Court decision. Fine reputation, that, for
two young chaps who never went to Harvard, eh, what?
Well, tell me the news. You have been silent too long. I long to
know of your further adventures in politics with one G. White. ...
And now, my dear Lathrop, may I extend to you the greetings of the
New Year. May you have a continuous and abiding and keen sense
that you are doing good, likewise doing well.
F. K. L.
To Mrs. George Ehle
Rochester, Minnesota, January, [1921]
It is only a little below freezing. The sky is grey. Snow, hard
and frozen over, covers the ground, sleighs go through the
streets, jingling their merry way. Boys throw each other down upon
the encrusted snow. Girls in red woolen caps pick their way
cautiously. Farm horses drawing sleds make their heavy way. And in
these sleds, families sitting on the heaped straw in the bed of
the wooden box, smiling mothers and happy babies, lined up
together, warm, protected from the wind. Trees outlined against
the sky, looking like dark coral rising out of a sea of snow into
the dull light. An old man, gaunt, bewhiskered, trudges along
confidently although he looks over eighty. A younger man,
evidently a stranger, feels his cautious way over the slippery
walk, covered with furs, hands, head, and body. After him a still
younger man, without an overcoat--a postman.
Can you see it all? Do you recognize the picture? Was it once part
of your life? This world is not so very bad when nature challenges
every one to fight for life. Nothing doing for me now! That's the
word. Too much risk. ...
Bless you, Lady Dear of the Understanding Eye. May we yet meet
upon the gentle banks of the Shepaug and there make medicine for
our poetic souls.
Anne has been a trump through these ten days of anxiety. Yours
affectionately,
F. K. L.
To Mrs. William Phillips
Rochester, Minnesota, January 11, [1921]
The black cat, yellow-eyes, came, dear Lady Caroline--came to me
here in a hospital and I put him on my table alongside my tiny
bust of Lincoln, which is the sacred place. I wish indeed those
eyes could see within this shell of mine and tell what it is that
twists my heart, physically turns it on its axis, so that its
polarity is changed. From mystery to mystery we have traveled the
past year, Anne, with her unfaltering trust, and I, a doubting
Thomas. We came here for an operation, but the doctors somewhat
doubt its wisdom at all, certainly not now, when pneumonia might
befall. So after ten hard days of closest examination I go forth
from this, the Supreme Court of Surgery in the Land, with no
decision. "Wait and see what good it has done to live without
tonsils, and in the California sunshine until spring." ... But
they live in the Land of Guess!
And so another baby has come to bless you and William! Truly you
are a confident couple! Age would hesitate to bring into a world,
so filled with shadow, an increasing number of our species. What a
supreme act of faith the continuance of the race is. ... Oh, the
cunning of Nature--how empty the heart of man or woman who has
not felt the clutch of a baby's hand, or drunk deep of the heaven-
made perfume of a baby's breath. And the impulse that babies give
to life, the challenge that they make to the father is always a
noble one. It is not so as to women; less, as to ourselves. We are
urged to courses that are petty, unworthy, selfish, debasing,
supine, and brutal by our own natures or those of our mates. But
for the child we act nobly, its call to us is always to our finer
side, and so gradually we are lifted higher. Did any man in
history ever do a cruel or wicked thing because of the appeal made
to him by the smile of his child? He may have accredited his
action to the prompting of love for his baby, but I believe it
would be found that there was another motive, generally an
overwhelming personal vanity; so great a lust for power, perhaps,
that it would carry across the gulf of death.
I hardly believe that you need fear immediate expulsion from your
new-found Eden. My expectation is that you will be treated with
kindness by the new Administration, which will act most cautiously
on all things. I shall know how to get a word, any word you wish,
to the new President, I think, and my services as you know are at
your order at any time. But if you are sent into the Limbo of
private life you will be welcomed by a host who have preceded you
and who will selfishly rejoice.
My gayest greetings to Sir William and, in cloudy Holland, may the
sun shine in your hearts always.
FRANKLIN K. LANE
To James H. Barry
San Francisco Star
Rochester, Minnesota, January 12, [1921]
DEAR JIM,--The Star has set--it goes the way of Nature--the
circle must be completed. The only question one may ask is, "Was
it useful?" I think it was, Jim, it held many to the true course,
it was an honest guide in a bewildering world.
Do let us meet when I am West, and talk of Henry George and John
Marble and Arthur McEwen, who have gone on, and left not their
like. ...
F. K. L.
To Michael A. Spellacy
Rochester, Minnesota, January 12, [1921]
MY DEAR MIKE,-- ... I shall await your re-coming with great
interest. Truly you should write up what you see. Get good
pictures and I will get it all in the National Geographic
Magazine, and then we'll see what the Cosmos Club will say! I am
in earnest about this--keep a diary in which you write, in your
own gay style, what you see, and you will soon have fame as well
as fortune.
The news from Mexico is not very encouraging. Obregon is sick so
much, and without policy, without dependable friends. Cardinal
Gibbons came near dying, but, thank God, pulled through! A very
wonderful man. I am very fond of him and he likes me I know, for I
handled the Indians for seven years and had no trouble, because he
and I had a flat understanding that I should take my church
troubles, if any arose, to him.
The old Chief Justice called on us in Washington. He is seventy-
five and almost totally blind. And the greatest Chief since John
Marshall.
De Valera has landed and I expect things to be doing pretty soon.
The British are greatly mystified as to how he got over and back.
You see you are not the only adventurer on the face of the globe.
We used to think that these were prosey, stoggy, flat-footed days,
but there is any amount of adventure--from the fields of Flanders
to the mountains of Colombia--even the Spanish main has had its
rebirth.
Mrs. Lane wants me to thank you for your thought of her. As you
know no one holds a deeper, surer place in her heart than you and
Tim.
Well, old chap, I am sitting in bed--four in the morning--with a
devilish sore throat and without anything to eat or much sleep for
thirty-six hours, so if this screed is not one of great
illumination or information you will know that it was only a
message of cheer and good-will from one who is fond of you, but
who warns you to be careful for all of our sakes. As always,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
To William R. Wheeler
Rochester, Minnesota, January 13, [1921]
DEAR BILL,--Off to see you eventually, I trust, tomorrow. Had my
tonsils out, won't do anything else till Spring. Meantime I want
to see no doctors. Having tried twenty, and come "out by that same
door wherein I went." An osteopath, yes. Faith cure--Indian
Medicine men--anything else, but no doctors! I turn from
Esculapius to Zoroaster, from medicine to the sun. I want to "lie
down for an aeon or two." (Alice knows where that comes from.)
With much love to you both.
FRANK
To V. C. Scott O'Connor
[Rochester, Minnesota], January 13, [1921]
MY DEAR SCOTT O'CONNOR,--It is a joy to get your letter and to
know of your new book which I have not seen, for the very good
reason that for five months I have been in hospitals. Angina
pectoris they call it, but where it comes from they don't say,
they don't know. Am off to California for a couple of months, then
probably back to New York.
I have read Wells' History, which seems to me the most remarkable
thing of the historical essay kind ever hit off; and therein I
discovered your friend Asoka, but I have been able to learn little
else about him.
Buddhism attracts me greatly, as perhaps the most perfect attitude
on the negative side that has ever been developed and largely
lived. It is not complete for a temperate zone people, who are and
must be aggressive. Nor does it reveal, so far as I know, the
spiritual possibilities that Christianity does. The constructive
seems to be lacking. But it is so far ahead of the purely
opportunist attitude that Christianity takes that I should like to
be a Buddhist, I verily believe.
I see that Lord Reading goes to India. He is the greatest of
diplomats, an oriental by nature, and will do good, if good can be
done in that unhappy situation. I admire the cheerful way Lloyd
George keeps. He is a great man. Each six months I have looked to
see him fall, but he keeps up, even with Ireland, India, Egypt,
South Africa on his back.
Tell me what you are doing now, anything beside writing, and
writing what next? I wish that I had the literary endowment--
ideas, plus style, plus energy. Good fortune to you always.
Cordially yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
Letter sent to several friends
Rochester, Minnesota, January 10, 1921
"And when they came upon the Snark, they found it was a Boojum--or
words to that effect--and so, my dear Jack, they couldn't operate
now.