Dear bill,—­Off to see you eventually, I trust, tomorrow.  Had my tonsils out, won’t do anything else till Spring.  Meantime I want to see no doctors.  Having tried twenty, and come “out by that same door wherein I went.”  An osteopath, yes.  Faith cure—­Indian Medicine men—­anything else, but no doctors!  I turn from Esculapius to Zoroaster, from medicine to the sun.  I want to “lie down for an aeon or two.” (Alice knows where that comes from.) With much love to you both.

FRANK

To V. C. Scott O’Connor

[Rochester, Minnesota], January 13, [1921]

My dear Scott O’CONNOR,—­It is a joy to get your letter and to know of your new book which I have not seen, for the very good reason that for five months I have been in hospitals.  Angina pectoris they call it, but where it comes from they don’t say, they don’t know.  Am off to California for a couple of months, then probably back to New York.

I have read Wells’ History, which seems to me the most remarkable thing of the historical essay kind ever hit off; and therein I discovered your friend Asoka, but I have been able to learn little else about him.

Buddhism attracts me greatly, as perhaps the most perfect attitude on the negative side that has ever been developed and largely lived.  It is not complete for a temperate zone people, who are and must be aggressive.  Nor does it reveal, so far as I know, the spiritual possibilities that Christianity does.  The constructive seems to be lacking.  But it is so far ahead of the purely opportunist attitude that Christianity takes that I should like to be a Buddhist, I verily believe.

I see that Lord Reading goes to India.  He is the greatest of diplomats, an oriental by nature, and will do good, if good can be done in that unhappy situation.  I admire the cheerful way Lloyd George keeps.  He is a great man.  Each six months I have looked to see him fall, but he keeps up, even with Ireland, India, Egypt, South Africa on his back.

Tell me what you are doing now, anything beside writing, and writing what next?  I wish that I had the literary endowment—­ ideas, plus style, plus energy.  Good fortune to you always.  Cordially yours,

FRANKLIN K. LANE

Letter sent to several friends

Rochester, Minnesota, January 10, 1921

“And when they came upon the Snark, they found it was a Boojum—­or words to that effect—­and so, my dear Jack, they couldn’t operate now.