The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, Personal and Political Part 53

I know you don't like to be coddled. You are not of the cotton- 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 a.s.sistants 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 umslopoga.s.s 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 ma.s.se. 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 G.o.d 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.

Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 G.o.d, still lives,

... I think that we have got to see each other some how, somewhere, because life is pa.s.sing 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.