"I have never known any one who could with equal facility follow an intricate line of thought through repeated interruptions. I have seen Mr. Lane, when interrupted in the middle of an involved sentence of dictation, talk on some other subject for five or ten minutes and return to his dictation, taking it up where he left it and completing the sentence so that it could be typed as dictated, and this without the stenographer's telling him at what point he had been interrupted." His letters are peculiarly autobiographical, for whenever his active mind was engaged on some personal, political, or philosophical problem, his thought turned naturally to that friend with whom he would most like to discuss the subject, and, if he could possibly make the time, to him he wrote just what thoughts raced through his mind. To Ambassador Page he wrote in 1918, "I have a very old-fashioned love for writing from day to day what pops into my mind, contradicting each day what I said the day before, and gathering from my friends their impressions and their spirit in the same way." And in another letter he says, "Now I have gossiped, and preached, and prophesied, and mourned, and otherwise revealed what passes through a wandering mind in half an hour, so I send you at the close of this screed, my blessing, which is a poor gift." At home on Sunday morning before the fire, he would often write many letters--some of them twenty pages in length and some mere scrappy notes. He wrote with a pencil on a pad on his knee, rapidly stripping off the sheets for me to read, in his desire to share all that was his, even his innermost thoughts. To the many correspondents who have generously returned to me their letters, and with no restrictions as to their use, I wish particularly to express here my profound gratitude. The limits of one volume have made it possible to use only a part of those received, deeply as I have regretted the necessity of omitting any of them. In making these acknowledgments I wish especially to thank John H. Wigmore, since to him we owe all the early letters-- the only ones covering that period. For possible future use I shall be grateful for any letters that I have not already seen, and if in the preparation of these letters for publication we have allowed any mistakes to slip in, I hope that the error will be called to my attention. Anne Wintermute Lane March, 1922 CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION Youth--Education--Characteristics II. POLITICS AND JOURNALISM. 1884-1894 Politics--Newspaper Work--New York--Buying into Tacoma News --Marriage--Sale of Newspaper LETTERS: To John H. Wigmore To John H. Wigmore To John H. Wigmore To John H. Wigmore III. LAW PRACTICE AND POLITICAL ACTIVITIES. 1894-1906 Law--Drafting New City Charter--Elected as City and County Attorney-- Gubernatorial Campaign--Mayoralty Campaign--Earthquake --Appointment as Interstate Commerce Commissioner