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
Yes, altho' I am now tottering, bruised, battered, down on the
floor like a prostrate prize-fighter "taking the count" and hoping
for strength enough to rise, altho' an "aged man" as I was once
described in my hearing, I am the youngest thing inside that I
know; in my curiosity and my trustfulness and my imagination, and
my desire to help and my belief in goodness and justice. I want to
strike right out now and see the world, and having found the good
bring it back and distribute it. And I see every day things that
should be done which make me long to live, even tho' I only tell
others that they should be done. And one thing that bothers me
right now is our money scheme. I know I am far off from your
standpoint, but there is something wrong when there is so great a
variation in the purchasing power of things produced. Why is not
Irving Fisher on the right road? I should like to lay a quieting
hand upon the feverish desire for things which so possesses our
people. So few things will do, rich, beautiful, solid things, but
not many; and then to live with them, proud of them, revelling in
them, and making them to shine like well-handled bronze--not
glossily but deeply. The great luxury we will not allow ourselves
is repose; that is because we are not essentially dignified. The
soul is not respected sufficiently; it is not given that food on
which it grows. Curious, the turn of my mind now, too. Having been
thinking, and while I still am thinking, in large terms,--the
city, the state, the nation, all peoples (I have grown through
them all, never really thinking of the family unit)--I am now
thinking of a nest, a roof of my own, a bit of garden, a tree of
my planting--little things, indeed, on which the mind can rest,
after casting an eye over the world and talking in terms of
continents. (And I wonder if the gardens of the British--their
week-ends at home with flowers and birds, may not bring them down
to those little things which make for good sense, sanity, wisdom!)
But I fear me I may never so indulge myself, and that is wrong--
that a man should live for fifty-seven years and never thrust his
hand into his own bit of his country's soil--such condition makes
against loyalties that are essential.
Now I have talked with you for a long time, but not long enough.
How I should like to sit in the big re-upholstered chair beside
the lamp, beyond the fire, and throw a match into your brain stuff
that would start it blazing. Yes, and I would like to gather
around that fire a few whom I love. You and Aleck and Sid. and
Pfeiffer and Jack Hallo well and John Burns and Brydon Lamb and
Lathrop Brown and Cotton Smith and John Finley and Dr. Gehring and
John Wigmore--the real world is very small, isn't it?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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