The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, Personal and Political Part 27

This is a Christmas letter and is addressed:--"To a Brave Young Woman." I am afraid it is not just as cheery and merry as it should be because, you see, it's like this, I am poor--very, very poor, and I have very good taste--very, very good taste. Now those two things can't get on together at Christmas. Then, too, I am busy--very, very busy, so I don't have time to shop. Now if you were very, very poor and had very, very good taste and were very, very busy and couldn't shop--how in heaven could you buy anything for anyone?

I did take half an hour or so to look at things, and things were so ugly that were cheap that of course I couldn't buy them without confessing poor taste, or they were so very expensive that I couldn't buy them without confessing bankruptcy. Now there you are! So what could a poor boy do but come home empty-handed, nothing for Anne or Nancy or Ned or you--not even something for myself! And I need things, socks and pipe, and better writing paper than this, and music and toothpaste and some new clothes, and a house near your palace, and a more contented spirit and another job and Ah.e.l.lofalotof things. Don't get nervous about me, because I'm not going to kill myself for lack of all these things, although a true-born Samurai, loyal to Bushido might do so. For it is dishonor not to be rich at Christmas time; not to feel rich, anyway. But then let me see what I've got! There's Anne! I expect if sold on the block, at public auction, say in Alaska, where women are scarce, she would bring some price; but her digestion isn't very good and her heart is quite weak and her hair is falling out. But these things, of course, the auctioneer wouldn't reveal. She would make a fine d.u.c.h.ess, but the market just now is overstocked with d.u.c.h.esses. And she is a good provider when furnished with the provisions.

Now there is Ned--he could hire out as a male a.s.sistant to a female dancer and get fifty a week, perhaps. Nancy couldn't even do that. They are both liabilities. So there you are, with d.u.c.h.esses on the contraband list, and Nancy not old enough to marry a decayed old Pittsburg millionaire, I will be compelled to keep on working. For my a.s.sets aren't what your n.o.ble husband would call quick, though they are live. I really don't know what to do. I shall wait till Anne comes home and then, as usual, do what she says.

I really did look for something for you. But the only thing I saw that I thought you would care for was a brooch, opal and diamonds for seven hundred and seventy-five dollars, so I said you wouldn't care for it. But I bought it for you A LA Christian Science. You have it, see? I think you have it, that I gave it to you. And that Adolph doesn't know it, see?

Well you have the opal and I am happy because you are enjoying it.

Such fire! What a superb setting! And such refined taste, platinum, do you notice! oh, so modest! No one else has any such jewel. How Henry will admire it--and how mystified Adolph is!

Tell him you bought it out of the money you saved on corned beef.

How I shall enjoy seeing you wear it, and knowing that it bears in its fiery heart all the ardent poetry that I would fain pour out, but am deterred by my shyness. But you will understand! Each night you must take it out just for a glimpse before saying your prayers. The opal is from Australia, the platinum from Siberia, the diamonds from Africa, the setting was designed in Paris. And here it is, the circle of the world has been made to secure this little thing of beauty for you. What symbolism!

I hope it will make you happy, and cause you to forget all your pain and weakness. It has given me great happiness to give you this little gift. And so we will both have a merry Christmas.

FRANK

VIII

AMERICAN AND MEXICAN AFFAIRS

1916

On Writing English--Visit to Monticello--Citizenship for Indians--On Religion--American-Mexican Joint Commission

TO WILLIAM M. BOLE

GREAT FALLS TRIBUNE

Washington, December 29, 1915

DEAR BOLE,--I am very much gratified by the manner in which you treated my annual report. Certainly my old newspaper training has stood me in good stead in writing my reports. In fact it always has, for while I was Corporation Counsel in San Francisco, and a member of the Interstate Commerce Commission, I wrote legal opinions that were intelligible to the layman, and I tried to present my facts in such manner as to make their presentation interesting. The result was that the courts read my opinions and sustained them, but whether they were equally impressive upon the strictly legal mind, I have my doubts, because you know inside the "union" there is a strong feeling that the argot of the bar must be spoken and the simplest legal questions dealt with in profound, philosophic, latinized vocabulary.

I remember that after I was elected Corporation Counsel, when I was almost unknown to the bar of San Francisco, I began to hear criticism from my legal friends that my opinions were written in English that was too simple, so I indulged myself by writing a dozen or so in all the heavy style that I could put on, writing in as many Latin phrases and as much old Norman French as was possible. This was by way of showing the crowd that I was still a member of the union.

I find that all our scientific bureaus suffer from the same malady. These scientists write for each other, as the women say they dress for each other. One of the first orders that I issued was that our letters should be written in simple English, in words of one syllable if possible, and on one page if possible.

Soon after I came here I found a letter from one of our lawyers to an Indian, explaining the conditions of his t.i.tle, that was so involved and elaborately braided and beaded and fringed that I could not understand it myself. I outraged the sensibilities of every lawyer in the Department, and we have five hundred or more of them, by sending this letter back and asking that it be put in straightaway English. ... Cordially yours,

FRANKLIN K. LANE

TO MRS. ADOLPH C. MILLER

Washington, [January 1, 1916]

Having just sent a wire to you I shall now indulge myself in a few minutes talk with that many-sided, multiple-natured, quite obvious-and-yet-altogether-hidden person who is known to me as Mary Miller.

The flash of brilliant crimson on the eastern side of the opal, do you catch it? Now that is the flash of courage, the brilliant flame that will lead you to hold your head high. ... I like very much what you say as to wearing our jewel "discreetly but constantly." No combination of words could more perfectly express the relationship which this bit of sunrise has established between us--devotion, loyalty, telepathic communication without publicity.

I am sure you are belittling yourself. ... you are a game bird,-- good, you understand, but with a tang, a something wild in flavor, a touch of the woods and mountain flowers and hidden dells in bosky places, and wanderings and sweet revolt against captivity.

This is my first line of the New Year. Anne is a true daughter of Martha this morning--her heart is troubled with many things, getting ready for the raid of the Huns this afternoon. She says she will write when she repossesses herself of her right arm. Good health!

Some days later

... I have been receiving your wireless messages all week, my dear Mary, and not one was an S. O. S. Good! The fair ship MARY MILLER is safe. Hurrah! She never has been staunch, but she was the gayest thing on the sea, and when her sails were all set from jib to spanker she made a gladsome sight, and some speed.

Of course, being so gay she was venturesome. That's where the Devil comes in. He is always looking about for the gay things. He hates anything that doesn't make medicine for him. If you are gay you are likely to be venturesome, and if venturesome, you can be led astray. So the good ship MARY MILLER instead of hugging the sh.o.r.e took a try at the vasty deep and got all blown to pieces.

Then she sent out a cry for help. The wireless worked and now with a little puttering along in the sunshine and a lazy sea, she will be her gay self once more, and like Kipling's Three Decker will "carry tired people to the Islands of the Blest."

That was a most charming letter you sent me, a real bit of intimate talk. Anne read it first. She is very careful as to my reading. And I was glad to know that she could discover nothing in it which might injuriously affect my trustful young mind. Anne is really a good woman. I don't believe in husband's abusing their wives, publicly. Good manners are essential to happiness in married life. We are short on manners in this country, and that explains the prevalence of divorce. How much better, as our friend L. Sterne once said, "These things are ordered in France."

F. K L.

TO EDWARD F. ADAMS

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Washington, January 11, 1916

MY DEAR ADAMS,--I have yours of the 2nd. Of course, you can not sue the United States to get possession of its property without the consent of the United States; but I will forgive you for all your peculiar and archaic notions regarding government lands and schools and sich, because I love you for what you are and not because of your inheritance of old-fashioned ideas.

As I am dictating this letter I look up at the wall and discover there the head of a bull moose, and that bull moose makes me think of all the things you said four years ago about Roosevelt. And now he is to be again the master of your party--perhaps not a candidate, because he may be guilty of an act of self-abnegation and put away the crown, or take it in his own hands and place it upon some one else's brow.

I remember the manner--the scornful, satirical, sometimes pitiful and sometimes abusive manner--in which you treated the Bull Moose; and so we are going to have a great spectacle, the Bull Moose and the Elephant kissing each other at Chicago; and seated on the Elephant's shoulders will be the crowned mahout with the big barbed stick in his hand, telling you which way to turn and when to kneel!

Of course, you will abuse us all for our land policies, but overlook the fact that the brutalities of these policies were committed in other days--those good, old Republican days. It really is a wonder that you are not cynical and that you still have enthusiasm. I should not be surprised if you said your prayers and had belief in another world, where all the bad Democrats would sizzle to the eternal joy of the good Republicans.

In those days I shall look up to you and I know that you will not deny me the drop of cold water.

I shall be very much interested in seeing what kind of a fist our man Claxton makes out of your school system, and I hope you can use him as a means of arousing interest in the schools. That is one trouble with the public school system, because we get our education for nothing we treat it as if it was worth nothing--I mean those of us who are parents. We never know that the school exists except to make some complaint about discipline or taxes.

May you live long and be happy. Always yours,

FRANKLIN K. LANE

From time to time as vacancies occurred on the Supreme Bench, letters and telegrams came to Lane from friends that begged him to allow them to urge his appointment to this office. In 1912, 1914, and 1916 the newspapers in different parts of the country mentioned him as a probable appointee. While, as a young lawyer, this office had seemed to him to be one greatly to be desired, after he came to Washington and knew more of the nature of the cases that necessarily formed the greater part of the work pa.s.sed upon by the Supreme Court, his interest waned. As early as 1913 he wrote of the decisions of the Interstate Commerce Commission, "If we are wise, we are not to be terrorized by our own precedents."

An office in which there was little opportunity for constructive or executive work grew to have less and less attraction for him.