August, 1904, will be an excellent time to begin. I should like to go South with you,—possibly to Cuba,—but as for California, I fear the expense. I am sending you a decidedly moving book by a mulatto ex-student of mine, Du Bois, professor of history at Atlanta (Georgia) negro College.[52] Read Chapters VII to XI for local color, etc.
We have been up here for ten days; the physical luxury of the simplification is something that money can't buy. Every breath is a pleasure—this in spite of the fact that the whole country is drying up and burning up—it makes one ashamed that one can be so happy. The smoke here has been so thick for five days that the opposite shore [of the Lake] is hidden. We have a first-rate hired man, a good cow, nice horse, dog, cook, second-girl, etc. Come up and see us in August, 1904! Your ever loving
W. J.
To Henry W. Rankin.
CHOCORUA, June 10, 1903.
My dear Rankin,—Once more has my graphophobia placed me heavily in your debt. Your two long letters, though unanswered, were and are appreciated, in spite of the fact that, as you know, I do not (and I fear cannot) follow the gospel scheme as you do, and that the Bible itself, in both its testaments (omitting parts of John and the Apocalypse) seems to me, by its intense naturalness and humanness, the most fatal document that one can read against the orthodox theology, in so far as the latter claims the words of the Bible to be its basis. I myself believe that the orthodox theology contains elements that are permanently true, and that such writers as Emerson, by reason of their extraordinary healthy-mindedness and "once-born"-ness, are incapable of appreciating. I believe that they will have to be expressed in any ultimately valid religious philosophy; and I see in the temper of friendliness of such a man as you for such writings as Emerson's and mine (magnus comp. parvo) a foretaste of the day when the abstract essentials of belief will be the basis of communion more than the particular forms and concrete doctrines in which they articulate themselves. Your letter about Emerson seemed to me so admirably written that I was on the point of sending it back to you, thinking it might be well that you should publish it somewhere. I will still do so, if you ask me. I have myself been a little scandalized at the non-resisting manner in which orthodox sheets have celebrated his anniversary. An "Emerson number" of "Zion's Herald" strikes me as tant soit peu of an anomaly, and yet I am told that such a number appeared. Rereading him in extenso, almost in toto, lately, has made him loom larger than ever to me as a human being, but I feel the distinct lack in him of too little understanding of the morbid side of life.
I have been in the country two weeks, delicious in spite of drought and smoke, and still more delicious now that rain has come, and I cannot bear to think of you still lingering in Brooklyn. Perhaps you are already at Northfield. Indeed I hope so, and that the long Brooklyn winter will have put you in a condition for its better enjoyment, and for better cooperation with its work.
I shall get at Shields some day—but I'm slow in getting round! Yours ever faithfully,
WM. JAMES.