After I had practically been declared one hundred per cent pluperfect I gave the electric cardiograph man a picture or exhibition performance under an attack.  This revealed to him a change in polarity in the current passing through, which signified something, but what that something was, other than that I was having a spasm, I don’t know. ...

The smug, mysterious gentleman who made this picture was much pleased, apparently at nothing more than that he had proved that I had a clutch of the heart, which I had announced, by wire, before arriving here.

Am I impatient or am I a damn fool?

Well, with my tonsils out I am in Royal Baking Powder condition and tomorrow we start for California.  I cannot hope to be out there till May or June, when you would come.  But Heaven knows I’d like to introduce you to the Yosemite! ...

Do you know I am beginning to admire myself.  Now many have thought that that was my favorite sport.  But I can assure you that no one ever felt more humble than I have, any appearance to the contrary being a bluff for success—­effect.  But now that I have been wisely and scrupulously and unscrupulously examined by the most exalted rulers of the Inner Temple, and they pronounce me all that man should be, why shouldn’t I strut some?  But, damn it, strutting brings that Devil’s clutch—­and a man cannot be anything more strutty than a dish-rag then.  In William James you will find a questionnaire, “Why do I believe in immortality?  ’Because I think I’m just about ready to begin to live.’” There speaks self-justifying age—­I’m there, too.

I’d love to look on Bethel this morning, and see what your poet-partner calls the hills in their wine bath.  Good luck.

LANE

To Lathrop Brown

Los Angeles, [January] 15, [1921]

My dear Lathrop,—­I have yours of the eleventh.  First question, as to men and women for the Executive Committee,

Answer:  Get men who can make a program, something that the party can push, outside Congress, if too cowardly in.  People who don’t want anything, if possible.

Think of these! (I don’t say they will do, but they stand for something.)

Charles W. Eliot.  Benjamin Ide Wheeler. (Ex-President of the University of California.  Ex-Chairman, Democratic Committee, Elmira, New York.) E. M. House.  Frank L Cobb.  John W. Davis.  Robert Lansing.  R. Walton Moore. (Congressman from Virginia, big fellow.) Gavin McNab.  Governor Parker, of Louisiana.  James D. Phelan.  Van-Lear Black.

For solid thought I’d choose out of that bunch—­Eliot and Moore.  For cleverness—­Black and McNab.  For diplomacy—­House and Davis.  For progressiveness—­House and Parker.  For Conservative Democracy —­Wheeler and Lansing.  For writing ability—­Cobb and Eliot.

I know no women who think, particularly. ...