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.