violating the statutes, are indifferent as to how big the law is and upon what sound principles it is based, provided they have a lot of speechmakers to enforce the law.  They don’t care what the law is; their only concern is as to its enforcement.  I am going to give the Democratic Party four years of honest trial, and then if it has not more precision, definiteness, and clearness of aim, am going to call myself a Progressive, or a Republican, or something else.

Wilson is strong, capable of keeping his own counsel, and capable of making up his own mind.  In these three respects he differs materially from our present President whose last flop on the arbitration of the Panama Canal proposition is characteristic. ...

Now, old man, let me say to you that you must take the very best of care of yourself, for we need you more than anybody else in this country, right at this time.  As always yours,

FRANKLIN K. LANE

To John H. Wigmore Washington, January 20, 1913

My dear John,—­I have received both of your letters, and I am very glad that you made that mistake regarding my address for it brought me two letters instead of one.  I received your Continental Legal History months ago and thought that I had acknowledged it with all kinds of appreciation, but perhaps I only thought the things. ...  I turned the book over to Minister Loudon of the Netherlands who knew the Dutch professor who had written one of the articles, and the rascal has not returned the book, but I shall get it from him one of these days. ...  Washington is now greatly stirred because Wilson has frowned upon the Inaugural Ball—­a very proper frown, to my way of thinking—­but inasmuch as all of the merchants who advance money for the inaugural ceremonies recoup themselves from the receipts from the Inaugural Ball, there is much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, and Wilson will enter Washington, in my judgment, a very unpopular president, locally.  The fact is, I think, he is apt to prove one of the most tremendously disliked men in Washington that ever has been here.

He has a great disrespect for individuals, and so far as I can discover a very large respect for the mass.  His code is a little new to us; and I feel justified in proceeding upon the theory that every man should help him, and that it is within his (Wilson’s) proper function to throw Mr. Everyman down whenever public good requires it, and that his silence never estops him from interfering at any time.  Perhaps you cannot make out just what this means.  I am dictating, sitting in my room at home with a very bad cold, and perhaps I do not know precisely what I mean myself; but I am trying to say that under all circumstances Wilson regards himself as a free man, and that he is bound by no ties whatever to do anything or to follow any course; that he recognizes no such thing as consistency, or logic, or gratitude, as in the slightest embarrassing him. ...