Buddhism attracts me greatly, as perhaps the most perfect attitude on the negative side that has ever been developed and largely lived. It is not complete for a temperate zone people, who are and must be aggressive. Nor does it reveal, so far as I know, the spiritual possibilities that Christianity does. The constructive seems to be lacking. But it is so far ahead of the purely opportunist attitude that Christianity takes that I should like to be a Buddhist, I verily believe. I see that Lord Reading goes to India. He is the greatest of diplomats, an oriental by nature, and will do good, if good can be done in that unhappy situation. I admire the cheerful way Lloyd George keeps. He is a great man. Each six months I have looked to see him fall, but he keeps up, even with Ireland, India, Egypt, South Africa on his back. Tell me what you are doing now, anything beside writing, and writing what next? I wish that I had the literary endowment-- ideas, plus style, plus energy. Good fortune to you always. Cordially yours, FRANKLIN K. LANE Letter sent to several friends Rochester, Minnesota, January 10, 1921 "And when they came upon the Snark, they found it was a Boojum--or words to that effect--and so, my dear Jack, they couldn't operate now. There is the whole story. Details there are, of course. But Meissonier's style never did appeal to me. After peering into, and probing, all known and unknown parts of the Mortal Man, they found that the heart in one part changed its polarity,--turned over, by George, or tried to,--hence the Devil's clutch. But why did it do this vaudevillian act? Bugs, bugs, of course. But where? So they chased them to their lair in that wicked, nasty-named and most vulgar organ known as the gall-bladder. Damn the gall-bladder! Out it must come! On with the knifing! But soft, not so swift. Suppose the heart should try to play its funny stunt in the midst of the operation? Or suppose again in this icy weather, pneumonia should ensue and the naughty heart should take to turning? Eh, what then, my brave Bucko? "No," they said, "We are experts in eliminating this same appropriately named organ from the system--eight thousand times have we done it. It is a twenty-five minute job, A mere turn of the wrist and out the viper comes. And it never comes back! This is positively its last appearance, save as a memento for the morbid-minded in a bottle of alcohol. But hearts that do somersaults and lungs that choke up, fill us with fear. So out with the tonsils where bugs accumulate and men decay, and then off with you to California where bugs degenerate and men rejuvenate. Then come back when the sun shines and the trees begin to burgeon and the trick will be done. Hold yourself where you are, grow better if you can, and we'll have to take the risk of the tumbling heart, but the pneumonia risk will be gone."