But I do not think that we lost anything in the discussion of yesterday. There were not any Democrats there who were not on their toes at the end of the meeting; but, of course, practically everybody in Rhode Island is a Republican. It is the closest thing to a proprietary estate that I have ever seen.
... I left at 6 o'clock and on my way back met President Vincent, of Minneapolis, and George Foster Peabody. You knew that Frank Kellogg was nominated, [Footnote: For the United States Senate.] didn't you, Clapp running third? ...
FRANKLIN K. LANE
TO MRS. ADOLPH MILLER
Washington, July 4, 1916
... I see you with blooming cheeks and star-lit eyes peeping out from under a sun-bonnet, enshrined in all the glories of the mountain redwoods, and I long to be with you if only to get some of the freshness and joy of the California mountains into my rather desolate soul.
How is the old clam? Do his lips come together in that precise Prussian way, and does he order the universe about? Or does a new spirit come over him when he gets with nature? Is she a soothing mistress who smooths his stiff hair with her soft hand, and pats his cheek and nestles him in her arms, and with her cool breath makes him forget a federal, or any other kind, of reserve?
Why has nature been so unkind to me as to make me a lover but always from afar, never to come near her, never to compel me to a sweet surrender, never to give me peace and contentment, never to so surround me as to keep out the world of fools and follies and pharisees?
You know, I would like to write some servant girl novels. I believe I could do it. My love-making would either be rather tame and stiff or too intensely early Victorian. But I should like to swing off into an ecstasy of large turgid words and let my mind hear the mushy housemaid cry, "Isn't that just too sweet!" ...
I enclose a copy of my speech made at Brown University. Perhaps it will interest that old farmer potato bug. He does not deserve to have it said, but I miss him very much. Please obey him an you love me. Cut out all social activities, giving yourself up to the acquisition of a few more of the right kind of corpuscles in your too-blue blood. As always, yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
To Mrs. Franklin K. Lane
Essex-on-Champlain
Washington, July 4, 1916
... There is no news that I can give you. The weather is very warm. Politics is growing warmer. I think Heney will run for Senator in California, probably against Hiram Johnson. Will Crocker is also said to be a candidate for the Republican nomination. I could get the nomination by saying that I would accept. Phelan told me yesterday that he would see that all the necessary money was raised,--that I could win in a walk. Dockweiler says the same thing. The latter is here and we have seen much of each other. What do you say if I run for Senator? I really feel very much tempted to do it at times because things have been made so uncomfortable by some of my fool colleagues who have butted in on my affairs; and then I feel I would like the excitement of the stump and to make the personal appeal once more. You could go round with me over the State in an automobile. While I would not insist upon your making speeches for me, I know that your presence would add greatly to my success.
There is no telling what way this campaign may go. It may be a landslide for Wilson, it may be a landslide the other way. We have the hazards because we have the decision of questions. There is bound to be a lot of objection to whatever course we take with regard to Mexico. I fear from what Benjamin Ide Wheeler told me the other day that Germany any day may decide to put her submarines into active service again on the old lines, especially if things on land go as they have been going lately against the Teutons.
... I shall not decide in favor of accepting the nomination until I hear from you. In the meantime don't lose any sleep over it. And so my Nancy has a beau? Well, the little rascal must be given some good advice now. So I shall turn my attention to her ...
F.K.L.
Washington, July 24, 1916
... To-day I have spent most quietly,--had Bill Wheeler up for breakfast and then went to the Cosmos Club for lunch with Dockweiler. He is very anxious to get a Catholic on the Mexican Commission and so am I. I want Chief Justice White, but I fear the President won't ask him ...
Dear old Dockweiler is an awfully good man ... From youth he has gauged every act by his conception of the will of God, and in doubt has asked God's representative, the priest. What a comforting thing to have a church like that; it makes for happiness, if it does not make for progress. Why is it that progress must come from discontent? The latter is the divine spark in man, no doubt,
"O to be satisfied, satisfied, Only to lie at Thy feet."
is a hymn we used to sing in church. We yearn to be satisfied and yet we know because we are not satisfied we grow . ...
"The mystical hanker after something higher," is religion, and yet it should not be all of religion; for man's own sake there should be some cross to which one can cling, some Christ who can hear and give peace to the waves. I wish I could be a Catholic, and yet I can not feel that once you have a free spirit that it is right to go back into the monastery, and shut yourself up away from doubts, making your soul strong only through prayer. There are two principles in the world fighting all the time, and the one makes the other possible. There is no "perfect," there is a "better" only. And in this fight one does not become better by prayer-- prayer is only the ammunition wagon, the supply train, where one can get masks for poison gas and cartridges for the guns.
Pfeiffer said a good thing the other day, quite like him to say it, too. We were talking of churches and he said he never went to one because he did not believe in abasing or prostrating himself before God, he saw no sense in it; God didn't respect one for it, and moreover he was part of God himself and he couldn't prostrate himself before himself. I asked him if he didn't recognize humility as a virtue, and he said, "No, the higher you hold your head the more God-like you are."
Humility, to me, seems to be the basis of sympathy. We stoop to conquer in that we are not self-assertive and self-assured, for if we "know" that we are right we can not know how others think or feel. We can not grow.
You know there are two great classes of people, those who are challenged by what they see, and those who are not. Now the only kind who grow are the former. But what is it to grow? If we "evermore come out by that same door wherein we went" surely there is no object in being curious. Can there be growth when we are in an endless circle? ...
Now after all my struggle, I fall back not on reason but on instinct, on a primal desire, and perhaps this is my rudimentary soul, the mystical hanker after something higher. That is a real thing. The purpose of nature seems to be to put it into me and make it very important to me. That being so I can not overlook it, and must obey it. The thing that pleases me as I look back upon it, is the thing I must do; that sets the standard for me; that is morals and religion. If there is any chap who the day after sings with joy over being a devil--that man I never heard of--but if he takes delight in what he did that was fiendish, then he must follow and should follow that bent until he SEES that it is fiendish. He has to have more light. But I really don't believe there is any such fellow, who clearly sees what he did and rejoices in it. All of us sing, "I want to be an angel." THERE is the whole of revelation, and all things that tend to make us gratify that desire are good. I guess that is pragmatism, in words of one syllable.
You see that all religion comes from a desire to know something definite. We prayed logically, in the old time, to the devil and tried to propitiate him, so that harm would not come to us. That is stage number one in our climb. Then we find the good spirit and pray to him to whip the devil, which is stage number two. Then we ask the good spirit to give us strength to whip the devil ourselves. That is stage number three. Buddha and Christ come in the number three stage, and that is where we are. We may find, as stage number four, that the good spirit is only a muscle in our brain or a fluid in our nerves, which we strengthen, and become masters of ourselves--greater, stronger, more clear-sighted-- without any OUTSIDE Great Spirit. That we are all things in ourselves, and that we are, in making ourselves, making the God. I fancy that is Pfeiffer's idea. It is Mezes', I believe. Then comes in the mystery of transmitting that highly developed spirit. A woman of such a super-soul may marry a man of most carnal nature whose children are held down to earth and gross things, and her fine spirit is lost, unless it lives elsewhere. So we come back to the question, how is the good preserved? "Never any bright thing dies," may be true, but if so it means an immortality of the spirit. This is all confusion and despair. We do not see where we are going. But we must climb, we must grow, we must do better, for the same reason that our bodies must feed. The rest we leave with all the other mysteries ...