Dear Anne has been improving here.  She now is jolly, tho’ it has been hot.  Responsibility kills her, and I thrive on it.

I believe I will take that place we went to see on the Shepaug.  Ryan, my friend, is to manage it.  Well, we have a place of refuge, eh? where the wicked and the boring and the ununderstanding cannot pursue.

But oh! my dreams do not come true these days, the magic touch is lost, the Fairies have been hurt in their feelings, my Daemon has deserted, and instead of beauty and joy and power, sweet content and warm friendship, I am struggling merely to live—­and to what end?

Please go into my room some morning early and look out to the gate, the cobwebs must be diamond-sprinkled on the circle at the doorway, the catalpa trees must stand like stiff, prim, proper, knickerbockered footmen, on either side of the hedge, the ground must rise in a very gradual swell and culminate in the rose-covered gate.  Throw it a kiss for me—­(I wonder if there could be any roses left?).  All of it is a lovely bit of man’s handiwork, and Mr. Eno should have been born poor so that his planning mind, conceiving things of beauty in regular and balanced form, could have been used by many.

Tell him I got his nice letter and will drop him a line one day.  With much love,

FRANK LANE

TO ISADORE B. DOCKWEILER

Washington, September 25, 1920

My dear Dockweiler,—­It is a great disappointment that I am not able to speak in California this year, I wished so much to say a word that might be helpful to Senator Phelan.  I helped in his election six years ago, and I wanted to be able to say to those whom I then addressed, that Phelan had thoroughly made good in Washington.  He has been strong, honest, courageous, loyal to California and the country, and at every minute he has been at the service of his constituents.  That is much to say, isn’t it?  Well, every word is true. ...

These things I know, for I have watched him through the past six years and for many years before.  Indeed, it is more than thirty years now since we first joined with boyish enthusiasm in the activities of the Young Men’s Democratic League, and always I have wondered at his willingness to make himself the target of so much criticism because of his loyalty to convictions that have not pleased those in political or social power.  He thinks; he does not take orders.  And you can rely on his being superior to the partisan phase of any real issue.  This self-respecting, or self-owned individual is the sort of man we need to promote in our political life, or else we will soon find ourselves back in the pre-Roosevelt days of political invertebrates.  I found in Washington the secret of the exceeding great authority which the older states carry in Congress, they return their Senators and Congressmen, term after term, and give them opportunity