The longer I live the more I am convinced that it is our duty to be gay; not reckless, never that; not boisterous, but light- hearted. It saves doctor's bills, brings success, and is the one method, the natural method, by which we become really big, and by that I mean superior to the evil forces that try to break us down. ... To be gay one must see how very little some things are, and how very big other things are. And the big things are things like love and goodness and unselfishness; and the little things are the selfish mean things, self-indulgent things, things generally that come out of one's vanity, one's love of one's self. Get rid of that and life becomes a pretty good place. Envy, vanity, self- indulgence--these are devils. ... 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 passions. 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 lusts 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 Gods 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 damned 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. ...