Bless you, Lady Dear of the Understanding Eye.  May we yet meet upon the gentle banks of the Shepaug and there make medicine for our poetic souls.

Anne has been a trump through these ten days of anxiety.  Yours affectionately,

F. K. L.

To Mrs. William Phillips

Rochester, Minnesota, January 11, [1921]

The black cat, yellow-eyes, came, dear Lady Caroline—­came to me here in a hospital and I put him on my table alongside my tiny bust of Lincoln, which is the sacred place.  I wish indeed those eyes could see within this shell of mine and tell what it is that twists my heart, physically turns it on its axis, so that its polarity is changed.  From mystery to mystery we have traveled the past year, Anne, with her unfaltering trust, and I, a doubting Thomas.  We came here for an operation, but the doctors somewhat doubt its wisdom at all, certainly not now, when pneumonia might befall.  So after ten hard days of closest examination I go forth from this, the Supreme Court of Surgery in the Land, with no decision.  “Wait and see what good it has done to live without tonsils, and in the California sunshine until spring.” ...  But they live in the Land of Guess!

And so another baby has come to bless you and William!  Truly you are a confident couple!  Age would hesitate to bring into a world, so filled with shadow, an increasing number of our species.  What a supreme act of faith the continuance of the race is. ...  Oh, the cunning of Nature—­how empty the heart of man or woman who has not felt the clutch of a baby’s hand, or drunk deep of the heaven-made perfume of a baby’s breath.  And the impulse that babies give to life, the challenge that they make to the father is always a noble one.  It is not so as to women; less, as to ourselves.  We are urged to courses that are petty, unworthy, selfish, debasing, supine, and brutal by our own natures or those of our mates.  But for the child we act nobly, its call to us is always to our finer side, and so gradually we are lifted higher.  Did any man in history ever do a cruel or wicked thing because of the appeal made to him by the smile of his child?  He may have accredited his action to the prompting of love for his baby, but I believe it would be found that there was another motive, generally an overwhelming personal vanity; so great a lust for power, perhaps, that it would carry across the gulf of death.

I hardly believe that you need fear immediate expulsion from your new-found Eden.  My expectation is that you will be treated with kindness by the new Administration, which will act most cautiously on all things.  I shall know how to get a word, any word you wish, to the new President, I think, and my services as you know are at your order at any time.  But if you are sent into the Limbo of private life you will be welcomed by a host who have preceded you and who will selfishly rejoice.