The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, Personal and PoliticalLane, Franklin K.
History
The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, Personal and Political
Lane, Franklin K.
United States -- Politics and government -- 1913-1921; World War, 1914-1918 -- United States
I received your Christmas present in the spirit that sent it. I
can't say "No! No!"--for I preach mixing pleasure with business.
Things are all wrong when we don't. I will never repay you. If I
could, or did, you would receive none of the blessings that come
from giving gifts. The truth is, we knew each other years ago,
perhaps centuries ago, and you have done a good turn to an old
friend for which the old friend is glad, because it makes the tie
more binding.
I told you I would send Wells' history to you, and to it I have
added one of the greatest of human documents, William James'
Letters. I hope you love the largeness of the man, to be large and
playful and useful, I say, man, can you beat that combination? I
believe I know another beside James who meets the specifications.
And strangely enough he, too, evolved from physician to
psychologist, to philosopher.
Well, here's hoping that he and his High-Souled Partner meet with
many joys and few sorrows in 1921.
F. K. L.
XIII
LETTERS TO ELIZABETH 1919-1920
To Mrs. Ralph Ellis
[Camden, North Carolina, March, 1919]
MY DEAR ELIZABETH,--And so they call you a Bolshevik! a parlor
Bolshevik! Well, I am not surprised for your talk gives
justification for calling you almost anything, except a dull
person. When one is adventurous in mind and in speech--perfectly
willing to pioneer into all sorts of mountains and morasses--the
stay-at-homes always furnish them with purposes that they never
had and throw them into all kinds of loose company. I have
forgotten whether or no there was a Mrs. Columbus, but if the Old
Man on his return spoke an admiring word of the Indian girls he
saw on Santo Domingo you may be sure that he was at once regarded
as having outdone that Biblical hero who exclaimed, "Vanity of
Vanities, all is Vanity!," after having run his personal attachees
up into the thousand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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