There is no way to make the fight excepting to believe that the fight is the thing—the one, only, greatest thing. (To deny this is to leave all in a welter, and drift into purposeless cynicism, —blackness.) To determine that this is the way, the truth, and the life, is to get serenity. Then the winds may howl and the seas roll, but there can be no wreck.
I know you don't like to be coddled. You are not of the cotton- batting school. You can take and give. But "may I not" say a word of appreciation and perhaps of stimulation—give you a good masculine thump on the shoulder by way of saying that for one who lives in a mist you have lots of gimp. To love something better than oneself is the first step, I guess, toward making that soul.
Please read the note, in special envelop, to Ralphie, when he will be interested. By Jove, how fortunate that we could not leave. All my force is sick. Three of my assistants are laid up. Six hundred and eighty people in my Department are in bed. And I am struggling to get out and leave my job up to date. Good fortune!
F. K. L.
[Katonah, August, 1920]
… You know that I love you—yes, just as much as Ralph Ellis, who is a tough sailor man, and Anne Lane, who is a citizen of two worlds, will let me. But I would love you more, much more, if you did not have to be induced by my wife to write to me. Your love letter was all right, but it was procured. Do you get that word— procured—and my wife was the procuress. This may be de rigueur and comme il faut and umslopogass on Long Island, but it does not go in Katonah—peaceful, pure Katonah!
Here, in this sweet centre, if a lady wishes "for to make eyes" at a man, by way of a letter, she does it without being told to do it by the said man's wife. And then to open, "Dear Mr. Lane,"—Gosh Lizzie! isn't that pretty warm!
My anger is so great that I am now sitting up in bed at the weary hour of two to relieve myself—for otherwise I cannot sleep.
Your remarks upon the distraught condition of the public mind, the unfortunate fix into which the Polacks have fixed themselves, the heart-breaking cry that you send out for men to get together and be sensible, before they are sadder,—these things have no lodgement in my soul-center. For I am loved by a lady who speaks much of free speech and courage and candor and other virtues of prehistoric existence, but who talks of herself all through her letter and never of me at all. How can the fire be kept burning with a cold back-log like that? Talk about me! That's the first principle of all conversation—even not amorous. Well, you are a good woman, Mrs. Ellis, and I hope Mr. Ellis is well, and that you are not having trouble with the help. Goodbye, Mrs. Ellis!
Come, sweet Elizabeth, let us join hands and go for a gay climb over the piney hills—you can sing your minor note of sad distress—your miserere, if you can, in the face of the puffy clouds, and I will laugh at you for having too much of world concern in your heart. The blessings do not come to those who are "troubled about many things." The soul is an individual, you know. We are saved by units not en masse. Every individual is a species —isn't that what splendid Bergson says? So come away from responsibilities and let your poor heart, which is so unselfish that it cannot rest, indulge itself in the luxury of a peaceful forgetting, for a few days.