The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, Personal and Political Part 54

... 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 pa.s.sions. 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 l.u.s.ts 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 G.o.ds 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 d.a.m.ned 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 cla.s.sicist 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 inst.i.tution. 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 Const.i.tution, 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 prompt.i.tude, 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 sh.e.l.l 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 n.o.ble 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 n.o.bly, 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 l.u.s.t 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 G.o.d, 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.