Then I think of W. W. looking at the paper and seeing the same
headlines. Oh, what unhappiness! Not all the devices of Tumulty
for keeping alive illusions of grandeur could offset those
headlines. Ungrateful world! Un-understanding world!
I hope you like your new boss. He will be a good western
Secretary, and is quite likely to get into a row with our eastern
conservation friends. I am glad he is from the Senate, they care
for their own.
I don't like Harrison jumping on Harvey after confirmation. Looks
little, weakens his influence as "our" man, and is not
sportsmanlike. We must take our medicine and let Harding have his
own way, and it won't be such a bad way, but surely very
different.
... I should like to get back to Washington and loaf for a time
around Sheridan Circle. I know a woman there who intrigued me (as
you writers say) long, long ago with various fascinations of
spirit and mind and eye and voice. But I fear she would not know
me any more.
Now do not be discouraged because you have a bit of sickness. You
are youth, you can beat old whiskered Time. Life has many a laugh
in it yet for you. Why you look forty years younger than Joe
Redding--but don't tell him I told you.
LANE
To Mrs. Frederic Peterson
Rochester, Minnesota, April 26, [1921]
MY DEAR MRS. PETERSON,--... Once more I am going through the
grinding of the Mayo mill, and this time I hope to some concrete
purpose, and have an end to this coming out "by that same door
wherein I went" The dear old meditative, contemplative Orientals
threw up their hands in despair long years ago and found the
figure of the unending wheel to symbolize all processes and
procedures: a world, a universe, without termini. Sometimes I
think them right, but then again my western mind will not have it
that the riddle of the Sphinx may not be solved. Our assurance
meets every challenge; mystery may make us humble; we may be
baffled; but we do not despair because we know we are Gods to whom
all doors must open eventually. That seems to be the real
underlying strength of our position. Why men go on with research
excepting out of some such philosophy I cannot see--nor why they
go on with life.
Tell your good man that I long to look once more into the sweet
face of the Shepaug, and that while I have been wandering in the
delicious and rare places, I have not forgotten the fresh
wholesomeness of the Hoosatonic. My first visit shall be to the
meeting place of the Three Rivers. Why might not fortune lead us
to have a summer in Connecticut and a winter in California? "I
know a place where the wild thyme grows," many such places indeed,
and high hillsides of wild lilac and a wee mountain crowned with
the flowering manzanita. Oh, this world is a place to make souls
grow if one can get an apple tree, a pine and an oak, a few
lilies, a circle of crimson phlox, a stretch of moving water and a
sweep of sky, that can be called one's own.
We saw Cordy Severance's place on Sunday--went there from the
wedding of my boy to Catherine McCahill--and found a volume of the
Chinese Lyrics [Footnote: By Dr. Frederic Peterson.] in the big
room. Great chap Cordy, and a great room he has to play the organ
in, and more people love him than anyone else I know, for he loves
them with an aggressiveness that few men dare to show, that gives
him distinction and is a glory.
How far away the war seems--way back yonder with the fight for
Independence and the French Revolution, almost back to Caesar.
Well, I must quit mental meanderings. With all good will,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
To Roland Cotton Smith
Rochester, Minnesota, [April] 30
And you know that I cannot even write Spoon River! Vain man!
Strutting cock o' the walk! Knight of the Knickerbocker Club!
Gazer upon Fifth Avenue and the Foibles and Frivolities! Reveller
in things of life and Enjoyer of Gaiety!
Look thou upon me. To Minnesota driven. In a hospital-hotel.
Punched and tapped by every stray Knight of the Golden Fleecers.
Awaiting a verdict from puzzled doctors. ... Bless you, I have
been through years of watchful waiting but not of this kind, and a
few weeks of this is enough. But I am a patient, long-suffering,
Christian martyr upon whom the Pagans work their will.
And you, poor man. Tied to a woman's foot! Now that is what I call
humiliating. Worse than being tied to her apron strings or to her
chariot, (in the latter, they say, there is often much joy.) Why
should people have feet anyway in these days of autos? A mere
transportation convenience! Well, all our transportation
facilities seem to be out of order these days. Fallen arches, in
sooth! Reminds one of Rome. Very much more aristocratic than
infected gall-bladder after all. And I do hope they can be
restored, those arches, and the world once more put on its
peripatetic way.
But you do not tell me of yourself. Can you chop wood or saw wood
or play golf or do aught else that doth become a man of muscle,
energy, life, vim, go, pep? Take a trip to the South Seas, a
knock-about trip, casting off clerical garb and living in the
open, mixing with the primitive peoples, seeing beauteous nature,
climbing mountains, swimming in soft waters, not seeing newspaper
or book. They tell me that in Burmah live a happy people who love
beauty, are always smiling and follow the Golden Rule far nearer
than those who live by trade and are blest by civilization. Ah,
that I might see such a people! The nearest I ever came was at
Honolulu, and there was the taint of the Christian, alack-a-day!
The White Man's Burden is the weight of the load of sin, disease,
death, and misfortune he has dropped on the happy ones who never
knew a Christian creed. We have given them bath tubs in exchange
for cheerful living!
I am as much in the air as to the future as I was in the russet
days of Bethel. But one of these days, let us hope we may gather
over a bottle of something sound and mellow, and laugh together
over our adventure into the land of the woebegone. I do not take
to it, tho' they say some people live in it by choice, for they
find something to talk of there, and feel saintly because they
suffer. Well, we will have more knowledge in that happy future and
more of sympathy. What a lot one must endure to gain a wee bit of
wisdom. And then to have it die with us. Maybe it does not, eh?
Maybe it somehow, somewhere finds a corner into which it drops and
carries someone over a hard place. I don't know what kind of
theology this is that I am dripping from my pen, but I cannot yet
be beaten to the point where I say it is all purposeless. And that
is the faith that may not save a soul but does save souls, I
guess.
I wish you the joy and elevation of spirit that you have many
times given to my sick soul and to others. Did I tell you my boy
is married--to a Catholic girl too, of much charm? They were
married on the ancestral farm with the ancestor of ninety years
present and in high spirits. A Dios, Padre mio,
F. K. L.
To John G. Gehring
Rochester, Minnesota, [April] 30, [1921]
Tomorrow will be May day--once, before the world became
industrial, a day of gladness, now a day of dread, another result
of mal-adjustment.
What ever would these doctors do if they had no cheeks in which to
hold their tongues while telling sick folk what ails them, and the
cure? You are learning, Sir, how much of wisdom some men lack who
have certain knowledge. And wisdom is what we are after, we
Knights of the Mystic Sign. Wisdom--the essence of lives lived;
knocks, blows, pains, tortures reduced to fears, and these
incorporated into a string or queue of people who have eyes,
nerves, and powers of inference, and the initiative to experiment
and the impulse to try, and try again. Result--a nugget no larger
than a mustard seed of intellectual or spiritual radium, y-clept
wisdom. It does not grow on ancestral trees or on college
campuses, nor does it come out of laboratories or hospitals, tho'
it is sometimes found in all these places. A Carpenter is known to
have possessed more of it than any other man; tho' most of us
don't possess enough wisdom to know that He did possess so much of
it. An Indian Prince is also celebrated for the richness of his
supply. These men have been followed by others who sometimes
carried mirrors, but some had tiny grains of the real thing also.
And those are called Optimists and Transcendentalists and
Idealists and Fools who think that more and more of these grains
will come into the hearts and minds of men; while those are called
sensible, and shrewd, and sane, who assert that the supply is
uniform, stationary in quantity but moved about from time to time,
producing nothing but the illusion that something is worth while.
But you and I say, "Suffer the Illusion to come into me, for of
such is the Kingdom of Heaven." Emerson says each man is an
"inlet" of the Divine Spirit--just a bit on the side, out of the
infinite ocean. Thus all of us are connected up, and thus there is
hope that some day doctors will be wiser than today. ...
I should like to hold your hand for a time. It's the best service
one man can give another. We are great hand-holders, we men,
natural dependents, transfusers of sympathy and understanding and
heartening stuff. They tell me here that your blood for purposes
of transfusion is 1, 2, 3 or 4. The last is common denominator
blood and will go into anyone safely, but is uncommon. All the
other three will kill if not put into those of corresponding
quality of blood. Well, you and I like each other because we have
the same wave-length to our nerve current, perhaps, and we could
hold hands without danger to the other fellow, and possibly with
some benefit to the world,--for human sympathy makes good
medicine.
Good fortune betide you! My brother, who is sitting by, wishes his
affectionate regards to go with mine, and he hopes you will some
day see him in that vale of Paradise where he lives.
F. K. L.
To Adolph C. Miller Federal Reserve Board
Rochester, Minnesota, May 1, [1921]
May Day, Glad Day, Day of Festival and Frolic,--once. Now Day of
Portent, of Threats and the Evil Eye. Such is the miracle worked
by Steam Engine, Mechanics, Quick Exchanges, Industry!
With this happy opening let me to your letter in which you love me
a little, which I very much like, calling me baby,--child,
anyway. And so I am. I laugh at myself. I cannot think of myself
as Grandad or possible Grandad. In fact, I should not be Grandad
or Dad, notwithstanding the beauty and noblemindedness and
capacity of my dear kids. But I have always been a priest, married
to things undomestic, and without the time which every father
should have to train and educe the mind of his offspring;
especially to give sound and substantial bread and meat to their
subconscious mind when they are young. Then, too, a father should
have a religion, a sense of relation between himself and the
Master, and be able to instill this by gentle and non-didactive
method into his bairns, so that they may steer by the North Star
and not by shiftier, flashier stars.
Yes, altho' I am now tottering, bruised, battered, down on the
floor like a prostrate prize-fighter "taking the count" and hoping
for strength enough to rise, altho' an "aged man" as I was once
described in my hearing, I am the youngest thing inside that I
know; in my curiosity and my trustfulness and my imagination, and
my desire to help and my belief in goodness and justice. I want to
strike right out now and see the world, and having found the good
bring it back and distribute it. And I see every day things that
should be done which make me long to live, even tho' I only tell
others that they should be done. And one thing that bothers me
right now is our money scheme. I know I am far off from your
standpoint, but there is something wrong when there is so great a
variation in the purchasing power of things produced. Why is not
Irving Fisher on the right road? I should like to lay a quieting
hand upon the feverish desire for things which so possesses our
people. So few things will do, rich, beautiful, solid things, but
not many; and then to live with them, proud of them, revelling in
them, and making them to shine like well-handled bronze--not
glossily but deeply. The great luxury we will not allow ourselves
is repose; that is because we are not essentially dignified. The
soul is not respected sufficiently; it is not given that food on
which it grows. Curious, the turn of my mind now, too. Having been
thinking, and while I still am thinking, in large terms,--the
city, the state, the nation, all peoples (I have grown through
them all, never really thinking of the family unit)--I am now
thinking of a nest, a roof of my own, a bit of garden, a tree of
my planting--little things, indeed, on which the mind can rest,
after casting an eye over the world and talking in terms of
continents. (And I wonder if the gardens of the British--their
week-ends at home with flowers and birds, may not bring them down
to those little things which make for good sense, sanity, wisdom!)
But I fear me I may never so indulge myself, and that is wrong--
that a man should live for fifty-seven years and never thrust his
hand into his own bit of his country's soil--such condition makes
against loyalties that are essential.
Now I have talked with you for a long time, but not long enough.
How I should like to sit in the big re-upholstered chair beside
the lamp, beyond the fire, and throw a match into your brain stuff
that would start it blazing. Yes, and I would like to gather
around that fire a few whom I love. You and Aleck and Sid. and
Pfeiffer and Jack Hallo well and John Burns and Brydon Lamb and
Lathrop Brown and Cotton Smith and John Finley and Dr. Gehring and
John Wigmore--the real world is very small, isn't it?
It just may be that the verdict here will be one of exile to
California, to my brother George's farm; ah, yes he should be with
the few great, and I say 'exile' for I wonder if I should ever see
any of you then? My doctor in Pasadena said that I should live as
a country gentleman, and I answered, "But that takes money." Yet I
would not know where the farm should be, for climate is not all.
So long, old man.
F.K.
Many months later, writing to Mrs. Lane this friend of many years
says, "I want also to recall the remark Frank made when you and
Mary, and he and I, were rain-bound in the little chalet at St.
Mary's in Glacier Park, nine years ago. That was an outstanding
experience in my long friendship with Frank. We had many hours to
discuss things, and no matter on what road we started, we always
came back to a discussion of life; what it was all for, and what
it was about, and what principle a chivalrous man should take in
adjusting himself usefully to the going world. I remember late one
night we sat in the dimly lighted room after a long discussion, he
arose, and turning to me said: 'Doesn't it, after all, just come
to this,--To spend and to be spent--isn't that what life is?'
Every subsequent experience with Frank confirmed me in the belief
that that was his personal philosophy. That is why he lived
greatly while he lived, and died nobly when his life was spent."
To Robert Lansing
Rochester, Minnesota, May 2, [1921]
MY DEAR LANSING,--I am to be operated on on Friday and so send you
this line that you may know that I have yours of April sixteenth,
and have rejoiced very much at its good news, that you were
better, and that you were not bitter because of the come-back
campaign.
Really, I think Harding is doing well, or rather that the whole
administration is being supported well by the country. Oh, these
Republicans have the art of governing, and we do so much better at
talking! No one knows just what his foreign policy is, but
something will work through that will satisfy a very tired people.
There seem to be comparatively few out of work now. We are not out
of the woods yet. But the Lord will take care of them. He may even
keep Johnson from bolting Harding. They will temporize through;
that's my guess.
Good English the people don't know. Ideality they have had enough
of for a time. They just want to get down to brass tacks and make
some money, so that the Mrs. can have more new dresses. I do
earnestly wish them luck. God gave us the great day, and you and
I, anyway, are not ashamed of the parts we played. In fact, the
party loomed pretty large those days--the whole country breathed
lung-fuls and felt heroic. We shall not look upon such another
time nor act for a people so nobly inspired.
Please give to Mrs. Lansing my very best regards--fine spirit,
that she is--and to you, as always, dear Lansing, my affection and
esteem.
LANE
To James D. Pkelan
Rochester, Minnesota, May 2, 1921
MY DEAR JIM,--Glad to hear from you and to get so cheerful a word,
for surely you are justified in looking upon the world as very
much of a friend of yours. You have a rare home, in which to
gather your many friends, and you have had honors in abundance,
and now may rest and write and speak and adjust yourself to
things--terrestrial and celestial--and other service will call
you. There must be some Democrats appointed to adjust European or
other difficulties, even by a Republican, and you will be the
prominent one. So I can look across the mountains to Montalvo and
find you ripening into a fine old mellow age, conscious of
usefulness, in health and in happiness. May it be so!
Just as soon as my boy gets here, I shall be operated on. ... Ned
is now on his honeymoon with his darling little bride, a Catholic
Irish girl named Catherine McCahill, whose grey-whiskered
grandfather of ninety quite took the shine off the bride at the
wedding. He is a Democrat (State Senator for thirty years) a Sinn
Feiner of the most robust sort, and a fanner of many acres.
Poor Anne, she is in for a bad time, with Nancy sick, but she has
a good stout heart and a most adequate and comfortable religious
faith, which throws things that are personal into a very minor
place. The theory of relativity has more than one expression
indeed, and things are small when looked at from a height. And it
is good to find one who can be both religious and large.
The country seems to be liking Harding and his cabinet more and
more. They do have a faculty for getting things done, those
Republicans, and they are subjected to so little criticism. It is
really good to see them do their work and get away with things so
neatly. ... As always,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
To Mr. and Mrs. Louis Hertle Gunston Hall on the Potomac
Rochester, Minnesota, May 2
DEAR PEOPLE,--What good angel ever put it into your heart to wire
us--and such a warm electric message!
I tell you this is not Gunston Hall--so few birds, flowers, trees
--but I like the great sweep of the sky out here. There is nothing
mean about this land of ours. It gives you something, and gives it
to you generously, something lovable wherever you are.
The Doctors have not decided what to do with me. ... But we'll be
out of suspense this week, I expect.
I can see your garden now--fountain, hedge, roses, bird-boxes,
pergola, box and all--with the dignified, stately Potomac way out
yonder, beyond the cleared fields and the timber. Lucky people,
and you deserve it all. No one, not even the Bolsheviks, would
take it from you. Cordially yours always,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
To Alexander Vogelsang
Rochester, Minnesota, May 4, 1921
DEAR ALECK,--I must pass under the knife, that is the verdict. On
Friday morning the act takes place. And out will come gall-
bladder, adhesions, appendix and all things appertaining thereto,
including hereditaments, reversions, lives in posse, and
sinecures. So that's that!
They say that my heart has grown much worse in the last three
months, but that I probably have four chances out of five of
pulling through, which is more chance than I ever had in politics
in California. I believe I am to be operated on while conscious,
as they fear to give ether. I trust my curiosity will not
interfere with the surgeon's facility.
Ah well, this old shell is not myself, and I have never felt that
the world's axis was located with reference to my habitat. But
this is so interesting an old world that I don't want to leave it
prematurely, because one does run the risk of not coming upon one
equally interesting. So I shall think of you and try to see you
later, in the new offices in the Mills Building. May clients come
thick as dogwood in Rock Creek Park; and trout streams in hidden
places be revealed unto you, within an hour's flight by aero.
Affectionately,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
P. S. Give my regards to the boys with you and in the office, when
you see them--and to Wade Ellis and Ira Bennett and others who may
be interested. Love to your dear Lady!
To John Finley New York Times
Rochester, Minnesota, May 4, [1921]
MY DEAR FINLEY,--I have your postal from London and it cheereth
me--Yea, thou hast done a kindly act to one who is sore beset. ...
When you and I can talk together I want to urge a new field upon
your great paper. Perhaps you can take it up with Mr. Ochs and
perhaps he can see how he can add to his usefulness and to the
glory of his paper's name.
My thought is that there should be somewhere--and why not in New
York?--a Place of Exchange for the New Ideas that the world
evolves each year, a central spot where all that is new in
science, philosophy, practical political machinery, and all else
of the world's mind-products shall be placed on exhibition where
those interested may see. Why should not the Times do this?
It would cost very little. All the plant needs would be a building
which would contain one or two fine halls for public speaking, and
a few properly appointed apartments. No faculty--but a super-
university with all the searchers and researchers, inventors,
experimenters, thinkers of the world for faculty. No students--but
every man the world round interested in the theme under
consideration, welcome, as student without pay. The only executive
officer a Director, whose business would be to see that the great
minds were tapped,--a high class impresario, who would know who
had thought thoughts, developed a theory, found a new problem, or
a new method of solving an old one, and [would] bring the thinker
on the stage and present him to those who knew of what he talked;
and could intelligently, quickly, distribute it to the ends of the
earth.
Money? The lecturer would get his expenses from his home and back
again, and be cared for appropriately in one of the apartments.
Otherwise the incidental expenses of administration. Aside from
the single and simple building the whole thing should not cost
more than $100,000 a year.
To illustrate--it took years for the world to know what Rutherford
was doing with radium. Why should he not have been brought to some
central place and there, before all the students who might choose
to come, tell his story? Pasteur, Einstein, Bergson, Wright
Brothers, Wells (theory of Education). These names are suggestive.
The great of the world could walk, as it were, in the groves with
their pupils and critics, and we could have a new Athens. Whatever
progress the world had made, in whatever line, would be reported
at that time. And the world would know in advance that this was to
be so. Germany has been the world thought center for forty years.
England is now planning to take Germany's place. Why not America?
But the government has not the imagination, and this must be done
quickly.
Why not the Times? And why shouldn't you start it for the Times--
be the first Director?
Then I want someone to take over another of my ideas--a sort of
Federal Reserve Board on the good of the nation, an unofficial
group of men with foresight, who would be a spur to government and
suggest direction. Somebody whose business it would be to attend
to that which is nobody's business and so waits, and waits, until
sometimes too late. Why should we have had no plans for caring for
our soldiers as to employment and giving them the right bent on
their return?
There was no one to concentrate attention--the attention of
Congress and the public--on any definite plan. I tried it with my
scheme for making farms for soldiers, but Congress, as soon as it
found that I was really agitating, passed laws making it
impossible for me to use a sheet of paper or the frank for the
purpose. I do not say my plan was the best possible. Then someone
should have come forward with another, and pushed it against a
Congress made up of Republicans who feared that Democrats would
get the credit, and Democrats who feared Republicans would. Hence,
deadlock, and a great opportunity lost! ...