I’d like to say I love you and the whole kit and caboodle, but my wife won’t let me.

F. K. L.

XIV

FRIENDS AND THE GREAT HOPE

1921

Need for Democratic Program—­Religious Faith—­Men who have Influenced Thought—­A Sounder Industrial Life —­A Super-University for Ideas —­“I Accept”—­Fragment

To Mrs. Philip C. Kaujfmann

Rochester, Minnesota, January 1,1921

To that little Fairy with whom a young fellow named Frank Lane used to wander in the woods, hunting the homes of the Fairies,—­ Greetings on her birthday!  Has she found where they live?  I believe she has.  They live where eyes are bright with love, and hands are gentle and kind, where feelings are not hurt and there is song hummed, and Play, a very real God, still lives,

...  I think that we have got to see each other some how, somewhere, because life is passing awfully fast and there is one best thing in it—­supremely, overwhelmingly best—­and that is affection.  I’ve chased around after fame and work for others, but I just wish I had spent pretty much all my time loving you and Mother and Ned, and let everything else come way down on the list.  The people who really love us are so few, aren’t they?  Lots of them like us, lots of them are glad to be with us, but few can be counted on “world without end, Amen.”

...  This is surely a very uncertain and unsatisfactory world for me right now.  How much we all do like definiteness and how few are willing to trust the future to the Great Spirit.  We fuss and fume as if it would do good rather than ill.  Happiness is the thing we all desire and it is to be had easily through a most simple philosophy; do your best and then have faith that things will come right.  Happy people are those who live with happy thoughts; those who see good in people and by brave and cheerful thinking are superior to depression and bitterness.

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.