… This is somewhere around your birthday time, isn't it? Well, if it is, you are about forty-nine years of age and I look upon you as the one real philosopher that I know. I'd trade all that I have by way of honors and office for the nobility and serenity of your character. You feel that you have not done enough for the world. So do we all. But you have done far more than most of us, for you have proved your own soul. You have made a soul. You have taught some of us what a real man may be in this devilish world of selfishness. What other man of your acquaintance has the affection of men who know him for the nobility of his nature? I don't know one. You know many who are lovable, like—sympathetic like myself, brilliant, sweet-tempered,—lots of them. But who are the noble ones? Who look at all things asking only, "What is worthy?" And doing that thing only. You tell the world that you will not conform to all its littlenesses. That, I haven't at all the courage to do. You tell the world that you are not willing to feed your vanity with your everlasting soul. Where are the rest of us, judged by that test?
Ah, my dear boy, you have inspired many a fellow you don't know anything about, with a desire to emulate you, and always to emulate something that is genuine and big in you—not a trick of speech or a small quality of mind or manner. I envy you—and so do many. Nancy could tell you why you are worth while. She knows the genuine from the spurious. She knows the metal that rings true when tests come.
So there, … put all this inside of your smooth noddle and take a drink to me—a drink of "cald, cald water."
And I just want you to understand that I am in no self- deprecatory mood right now, for I am in my office at eight o'clock of a Saturday evening, working away with all my might on some damned land cases, having had a dinner at my desk, consisting of two shredded-wheat biscuits with milk, and one pear. Now you can realize what a virtuous, self-appreciative mood I am in. No man denies himself dinner for the sake of work without being really vain.
And what is this I hear about your having neuritis and going to the hospital? Damn these nerves, I say! Damn them! I have to swelter here because I can't let an electric fan play on my face, nor near me, without getting neuralgia. And swelter is the word, for it has been 104-5 degrees, with humidity, to boot, this week.
Nerves—that means a wireless system, keen to perceive, to feel, to know the things hidden to the mass. I look forward to years of torture with the accursed things. The only thing that relieves, and of course it does not cure, is osteopathy, stimulating the nerve where it enters the spine. But never let them touch the sore place. That is fatal. It raises all the devils and they begin scraping on the strings at once.
Well, by the time this reaches you I hope you will be quite a bit fitter. Avoid strain. Don't lift. Don't carry. If you stretch the infernal wires they curl up and squeal.
May the God of Things as they Are be good to you. … Mother may know all about us. How I wish I could know that it was so. You have the philosophy that says—"Well, if it is best, she does." I wish I had it. My God, how I do cling to what scraps of faith I have and put them together to make a cap for my poor head. With all the love I have.
Frank
To Cordenio Severance