Rochester, Minnesota, January 3, [1921]

Well, my dear young Spirit of the Renaissance, I am not yet dead, not even dying.  Slowly I am doing the stations of the Cross in this most thorough institution.  I am delighted with my experience.  Here is concentrated every form of torture and annoyance to which one can be legally subjected.  Cruel and unusual punishments are forbidden by the Constitution, but I take it that one may yet take torture and punishment, if he pays for it.  All that I have ever done, been or thought has been revealed—­probed for, and found out. ...

Truly, this is the most scientifically organized organization of scientists that ever was.  Henry Ford could not improve upon it.  Combine him with M. Pasteur, add a touch of one Edison, and a dose of your friend, Charlie Schwab, and you have the Mayo Clinic, big, systematized, modernized, machinized, doctorial plant, run by a couple of master workmen.  I am seeing it all, and am prepared for any fate.  Thus far I am no more than twenty-one years of age.  My organs seem to be working union hours and to react with proper promptitude, self-respect and authority.  Tomorrow I am to be photographed and fluoroscoped—­and then will come the verdict.  If it is the guillotine I shall go gaily, like one of your ancestors in those tumbril days of France.  What I fear is an order to “rest,” on a new diet.  But I guess whatever is said will be the last word—­the Supreme Court decision.  Fine reputation, that, for two young chaps who never went to Harvard, eh, what?

Well, tell me the news.  You have been silent too long.  I long to know of your further adventures in politics with one G. White. ...

And now, my dear Lathrop, may I extend to you the greetings of the New Year.  May you have a continuous and abiding and keen sense that you are doing good, likewise doing well.

F. K. L.

To Mrs. George Ehle

Rochester, Minnesota, January, [1921]

It is only a little below freezing.  The sky is grey.  Snow, hard and frozen over, covers the ground, sleighs go through the streets, jingling their merry way.  Boys throw each other down upon the encrusted snow.  Girls in red woolen caps pick their way cautiously.  Farm horses drawing sleds make their heavy way.  And in these sleds, families sitting on the heaped straw in the bed of the wooden box, smiling mothers and happy babies, lined up together, warm, protected from the wind.  Trees outlined against the sky, looking like dark coral rising out of a sea of snow into the dull light.  An old man, gaunt, bewhiskered, trudges along confidently although he looks over eighty.  A younger man, evidently a stranger, feels his cautious way over the slippery walk, covered with furs, hands, head, and body.  After him a still younger man, without an overcoat—­a postman.

Can you see it all?  Do you recognize the picture?  Was it once part of your life?  This world is not so very bad when nature challenges every one to fight for life.  Nothing doing for me now!  That’s the word.  Too much risk. ...