Part 32
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.
There is the whole story. Details there are, of course. But Meissonier's style never did appeal to me. After peering into, and probing, all known and unknown parts of the Mortal Man, they found that the heart in one part changed its polarity,--turned over, by George, or tried to,--hence the Devil's clutch. But why did it do this vaudevillian act? Bugs, bugs, of course. But where? So they chased them to their lair in that wicked, nasty-named and most vulgar organ known as the gall-bladder. Damn the gall-bladder! Out it must come! On with the knifing! But soft, not so swift. Suppose the heart should try to play its funny stunt in the midst of the operation? Or suppose again in this icy weather, pneumonia should ensue and the naughty heart should take to turning? Eh, what then, my brave Bucko? "No," they said, "We are experts in eliminating this same appropriately named organ from the system--eight thousand times have we done it. It is a twenty-five minute job, A mere turn of the wrist and out the viper comes. And it never comes back! This is positively its last appearance, save as a memento for the morbid-minded in a bottle of alcohol. But hearts that do somersaults and lungs that choke up, fill us with fear. So out with the tonsils where bugs accumulate and men decay, and then off with you to California where bugs degenerate and men rejuvenate. Then come back when the sun shines and the trees begin to burgeon and the trick will be done. Hold yourself where you are, grow better if you can, and we'll have to take the risk of the tumbling heart, but the pneumonia risk will be gone."
Thus saith the Prophets! And this day, therefore, will be spent with the Master of the mysterious fluoroscope, who reverses Edward Everett Hale and looks "in and not out," and with the dentist who must fill a pesky tooth, and then with the surgeon who tears out tonsils. Rather a full day, eh? And after two days in hospital, or three, over the hills to 8 Chester Place, Los Angeles,--by no means a poor-house,--but alas! carrying the malevolent bugs and their nesting place with me. Then I shall rest, "and faith I shall need it, lie down for an aeon or two, till the Master of all good workmen shall put me to work anew."
I am disappointed. I would take the risk if it were left to me. But I shall go West--why did those soldier boys ever use that phrase with such sinister meaning, or did it signify a better land to them? I shall go West in good hope that I shall return, and meantime will try to develop a strong propaganda in favor of race suicide in the land of the bothering bacteria, Adios.
F. K. L.
To John G. Gehring
Rochester, Minnesota, January 13, [1921]
MY DEAR PADRE,--I wrote you an impressionistic sketch of what the politicians call the "local situation," a couple of days since. ... It is subject to attack on every possible ground as to details, for no man can know from it what these doctors found. But it is a perfect picture from the artist's standpoint, because it produces the result on the viewer or reader that is truth, and that result is a large, purple befuddlement. I am whole, but I have a pain. ...
After I had practically been declared one hundred per cent pluperfect I gave the electric cardiograph man a picture or exhibition performance under an attack. This revealed to him a change in polarity in the current passing through, which signified something, but what that something was, other than that I was having a spasm, I don't know. ...
The smug, mysterious gentleman who made this picture was much pleased, apparently at nothing more than that he had proved that I had a clutch of the heart, which I had announced, by wire, before arriving here.
Am I impatient or am I a damn fool?
Well, with my tonsils out I am in Royal Baking Powder condition and tomorrow we start for California. I cannot hope to be out there till May or June, when you would come. But Heaven knows I'd like to introduce you to the Yosemite! ...
Do you know I am beginning to admire myself. Now many have thought that that was my favorite sport. But I can assure you that no one ever felt more humble than I have, any appearance to the contrary being a bluff for success--effect. But now that I have been wisely and scrupulously and unscrupulously examined by the most exalted rulers of the Inner Temple, and they pronounce me all that man should be, why shouldn't I strut some? But, damn it, strutting brings that Devil's clutch--and a man cannot be anything more strutty than a dish-rag then. In William James you will find a questionnaire, "Why do I believe in immortality? 'Because I think I'm just about ready to begin to live.'" There speaks self- justifying age--I'm there, too.
I'd love to look on Bethel this morning, and see what your poet- partner calls the hills in their wine bath. Good luck.
LANE
To Lathrop Brown
Los Angeles, [January] 15, [1921]
MY DEAR LATHROP,--I have yours of the eleventh. First question, as to men and women for the Executive Committee,
Answer: Get men who can make a program, something that the party can push, outside Congress, if too cowardly in. People who don't want anything, if possible.
Think of these! (I don't say they will do, but they stand for something.)
Charles W. Eliot. Benjamin Ide Wheeler. (Ex-President of the University of California. Ex-Chairman, Democratic Committee, Elmira, New York.) E. M. House. Frank L Cobb. John W. Davis. Robert Lansing. R. Walton Moore. (Congressman from Virginia, big fellow.) Gavin McNab. Governor Parker, of Louisiana. James D. Phelan. Van-Lear Black.
For solid thought I'd choose out of that bunch--Eliot and Moore. For cleverness--Black and McNab. For diplomacy--House and Davis. For progressiveness--House and Parker. For Conservative Democracy --Wheeler and Lansing. For writing ability--Cobb and Eliot.
I know no women who think, particularly. ...
The kind of publicity we need is the advocacy by the National Committee, and by Democrats in Congress of first class measures, known to be Democratic measures, part of a program.
I'll tell you how to get all the publicity you want when I see you--or White--a new kind, cheap, but requiring brains. ...
F. K L.
To Lathrop Brown
Los Angeles, January, [1921]
DEAR LATHROP,--(1) You are right as to standardization. The Devil devised it as a highway to socialism. It is the Bible of the great Tribe of Flatfoot, not for artists like you and myself. And speaking of programs, please read what Wells says in his first volume of Outline of History, on David, Solomon, Moses. It will delight your anti-semitic soul. ...
Yes, standardization is like all else, good--for a distance. The whole bally outfit of life is a matter of balance, maintained by war among the unintelligent bacilli and other primitives, and by will among men (goat feed for men, eh?) But do you get my point? Something to it!
(2) George White will be eaten up first thing he knows, unless he moves. Your friend McAdoo is here declining the next nomination daily, speaking much, and, I understand, well. ... Why doesn't G. W. get Frank Cobb and Hooker, of the Springfield Republican, and Van-Lear Black, and Senator Walsh, and Phelan, and Congressman Walton Moore together, or any other group, and put up his plan and ask them what they think of it tentatively,--just a quiet chat, but start.
He doesn't need to resign, if he can get someone as a quiet organizer "who will give all his time" to take up that job under him, with sub-organizers. Who is this genius who can organize inorganic matter, and give it life? Thought He was dead sometime!
"Wanted--A Miracle Man who can overcome a majority of seven million votes with a hearty handshake and a warm brown eye. Need have no program, no money. Must be a hypnotist who can make the people forget a few things and believe a few things that are not true. Must be able by reciting poetry to make the cunning capitalist see that he is safer in the hands of the Democrats than elsewhere, and at the same time educate the worker by a pass of the hand to know that it is decent to stay bought. Must have received the Gift of Tongues on the Day of Pentecost, so as to talk Yiddish, in New York; Portuguese and Gaelic, in Massachusetts; Russian and German, in Chicago; Scandinavian, in the Northwest; Cotton and Calhoun, in the South; John Brown and wheat, in Kansas; gold and Murphy, on 14th Street; and translate Jesus Christ into Bolshevism, Individualism, Capitalism, Lodgeism, Wilsonism! Must be as honest as old Cleveland and as clear of purpose as Abraham Lincoln."
Put this want ad. in the papers and send me, by freight car, the replies. With my warmest,
F. K. L.
To Adolph C. Miller
Los Angeles, January 26, [1921]
DEAR ADOLPH,--I see that Harding [Footnote: Governor Harding of the Federal Reserve Board--a rumor of resignation.] is to leave you, and this is a note of sympathy. What will you do? Poor chap! I know the satisfaction you have had out of working with him and now he follows Warburg, Delano, and Strauss. By Jove, that's why we can't make things go as other countries do--because we can't give our people enough to live on. This is at once the meanest and most generous of Republics. Mean collectively, generous individually.
He will wait until after March 4th. "Right oh!" I expect you to have some say as to his successor, especially as to the new Governor. And if you can't work with the new man you can lift your skirts and skip! Freedom of movement, assured as to all by Adam Smith, is exclusively the prerogative of the fortunate few. Don't be downhearted! You can't be as badly off as you were for several years. Just think how unlucky I am as compared with you, and pat yourself on the back and take one of the old time struts. Good belly! Good brains! Good pocket-book! Good friends near you! Good dog to walk with in the woods--and woods in which you can walk! Good house, with your own books to look at you friendly-like. Oh boy, rejoice and be glad!
February 17, [1921]
We are most terribly disappointed. Your promised visit was a bright spot,--a sunshiny place--to which we have looked forward as to nothing else since we came here. Well, life is a series of such jars, and child-like I submit, but am not reconciled.
... Are you coming later? How is Mary? We really seem far away from our friends. The land is beautiful, but friends convert a shack into a palace, a desert into a heaven.
F. K. L.
To John G. Gehring
Pasadena, near Paradise, February 18
Before breakfast this morning, indeed before dressing, I sent you a message which was a combined confession, apologia, report, and appeal. I said, "I have done wrong, I apologize, I am slightly better, and I hope and pray you will not become downhearted." I also promised to write and here I am at it. But you would have had this letter just as early anyway, for this morning was to be yours and mine. All other mornings for two weeks and more have belonged to someone else. I have been pretending to work, by going to the office each day. And last night I said good-bye to the Napoleon of our institution, who took his private car and rolled away to Mexico, to Galyeston first, thence by private yacht to Tampico, there to see his properties and spend two or three weeks.
... They desired us to go greatly, and ours would have been every possible comfort that one can have while traveling, ... but the tyrant Anne thought that as I was picking up a bit it was wrong to change conditions, and I yielded, hardly against my judgment, but strongly against my desire.
So here I am, the first hour after release, sitting on the porch of a villa, looking across a valley at amethyst mountains, crowned with a sprinkling of blue and white snow. The noises that come to me are not raucous;--the twitter of birds, a rooster crowing, a well-pump throbbing its heart out, the shouts of some children at play, a distant school bell, with no silver in its alloy, however, the swish of a wood-sawing machine in some back-yard. So my ears are not lonesome. Immediately before me is the gray-lavender bole of a tall eucalyptus, not a leaf or branch for fifty feet, and then a drooping cascade of blue-green feathers. Beyond it a few feet a red-blue eucalyptus, sturdy, branching almost at the ground and in blossom. These stand near the border of a drive which is marked by a cypress hedge, trimmed and proper, and beyond the drive, on the front of the terrace are magnolia and iron-wood and avocado and palm and spruce, rising up out of beds of carnations and geraniums, jasmine and pansies (all violet), and cherokee roses, five-petaled, white with golden centers, and rose colored-- (the wild rose with a university education, a year or two in Italy, and the care of a good maid). While beyond this terrace are orange, and tangerine, and lemon, and grapefruit with their green, yellow, and deep red-golden fruit pendant; and still further on, a fringe of blossoming pear trees tell you that this is not the tropics after all. The breeze is a gentle woman's hand, a soft touch, kindly, tender, emotional, but not disturbing. It is not lotus-eating time. I don't know that that time ever comes here. Autos whisk through the woods, buildings are going up, the air is dry and has tang; it has challenge in it, but it does not give off the heady champagne of the air that the snow breathes out on your Millbrook hillside.
I remember as I looked from my window at the sunset at Bethel saying to myself, "Can there be any fairer spot than this?" And this morning as I saw the sun rise into the pink and blue of the sky, empurpling the shadowed hills and splashing rose leaves on the snowy mountains, I again said "Is there anything lovelier, anywhere?" Great blessing, these catholic eyes! Should the heart be equally catholic? There is a real problem in philosophy and sociology for you!
And now that you know how happily circumstanced I am as to environment your doctorial demand is for something as to the behavior of the organs and nerves which we call the physical man. Well, I can't tell you much. I do not rise and walk half a block without that trigger being pulled, but the explosion is not dynamite, rather poor black powder, I should say. If I walk half a dozen blocks I stop a half a dozen times, and once or twice nibble at a precious pellet of nitro. At night I am wakened as of yore, but the agonizing, crushing pains do not come every night. ... I eat prunes and bran biscuit and coffee for breakfast; a bit of cooked fruit (and that in this land of oranges and alligator pears and ripe raspberries!), chicken and green peas, and bran biscuit and tea for lunch; a couple of green vegetables and bran biscuit and a small black, for dinner. And all this I write with a supreme sense of virtue, which Simon Stylites or St. Benedict could not more than parallel. As to smoking--a pipe, generous in size but of the mildest possible tobacco, after breakfast. A mild, large cigar after lunch, and pause here and worship--no cigar after dinner. (But this latter is a Lenten innovation. I would not have you think I am preparing for immediate ascension.)
As to treatment, an osteopath and a Christian Scientist are my present complement. Each morning the former, and each evening the latter. The former to gratify myself, the latter to gratify a dear friend who "believed and was saved." The osteo is rational, the C. S., with limitations and reservations. ...