Thank you for your kindness and write me as often as you can. ...

F. K. L.

TO ROBERT LANSING

Bethel, Maine, November 10, [1920]

My dear Lansing,—­It is good to see that letter-head, but aren’t you afraid to enter into competition with Mr. Tumulty, who has now, I see, bought the old Shepard mansion and will settle in Washington.  How do they do it with the high cost of living what it is? ...  The transmutation of brass into gold is becoming a commonplace.

To-night’s paper speaks of Knox as probable Secretary of State. ...  Tell me where the opposition is to come from—­who are to lead us? ...  All possible leaders have been submerged, squelched, drowned out, in the past eight years.  I wish the whole country had gone unanimously for Harding.  Then we might have started on a fresh, clean footing to create two parties that represent liberal and conservative thought.  As it is, I think you will see Hearst and Johnson and La Follette try to capture the radicals of both parties and make a new party of their own.  Then I shall be with all the rascals I have been fighting since boyhood—­the Wall Street rascals—­as against the other group.  But maybe the Lord cares a bit for us after all.

I mend very slowly, but I delight in your recovery and wonder at it. ...  I do beg you will give me all the gossip of Washington that you can, for I am here in a wilderness, beautiful but not exciting.  As always,

F. K. L.

To Carl Snyder

Bethel, November 13, [1920]

Dear Carl,—­This is extremely disagreeable business, this of repairs and restoration.  I suppose I am doing fairly well considering that I have been more than half a century getting my gearings askew and awry.  But I am taking orders now and say “Thank you,” when I get them.  Just when I shall be well enough to take hold again is not yet discoverable.

Strange how little news there is when you are above the clouds.  One must be local to be interested in ninety percent of what the papers print.  Make me a hermit for a year and I could see things in the large I believe, and ignore the trifles which obscure real vision.  But a monk must be checked by a butcher.  The ideal must be translated into the possible.  “Man cannot live on bread alone”—­ nor on manna.

Outside it is snowing beautifully, across an insistent sun, the fire is crackling and I do not know that I am ill but for the staring bottles before me.

Give me a line when you have a free minute—­and take to your Beautiful Lady my warm regards.

F. K. L.

 To William R. Wheeler

Bethel, 17 [November], 1920

My dear Bill,—...I am mighty sorry to hear about the Lady Alice Isabel.  Funny that these women are like some damn fools, like myself, and do things too strenuously, and then go bang.  Damn that Irish temperament, anyway!  O God, that I had been made a stolid, phlegmatic, non-nervous, self-satisfied Britisher, instead of a wild cross between a crazy Irishman, with dreams, desires, fancies, and a dour Scot, with his conscience and his logical bitterness against himself,—­and his eternal drive!