Across the Spectrum:The Interdisciplinary Life and Letters of John G. Neihardt (‘Flaming Rainbow’)

The "cuss" who might write you an article on the drama is Mr. Harold T. Meek, Post-Dispatch, ST. Louis. Write him. I told him you would. He could give you a good article with independent thinking in it. What you could say of the doctor and his desire to have me return is vastly pleasing. It might be possible for me to arrange a trip. If I can work out certain plans for Sig and Enid, so as not to harm them, I may give up my job here early next year. Or I may ask for a leave of absence in order to complete the MESSIAH. Might come to you when I'm free. Does it look foolish for me to leave a $6,000 job? Well, certainly our civilization at present is about the funniest mixup this world has ever known, and a bit more funniness won't matter! I plan to flivver through the Sioux country, dreaming back the Messiah days and talking to old Indians. A U. S. Indian commissioner will give me the inside with the agency authorities, and I'll get whatever I want from the Indians. Believe me, they'll tell me a lot too. I want all this, of course, only by way of becoming saturated with the true mood of the whole affair.

I think so highly of the potentialities of Bolton's mind that I can not praise what he sent me. Has he read the great things to any considerable extent? Save him for our army, if you can. We are half licked right now. But in the long run we win, even though it be somewhere on the far side of the Great Darkness that we have entered and that is certainly deepening steadily.

The secret theme of the MESSIAH poem is this: The highest wins only through defeat. Or, as Cunninghame Graham has said#: "Success touches nothing that it does not vulgarize." But there will be a whirlwind of strange glory toward the end of the poem. It is worth writing, and there are some thousands of genuine human beings who sincerely want me to write it, or would if they knew of it.

I've been remodelling our Branson home, making it modern and comfortable and beautiful. We have planned to turn the large space to the back of the house into a formal garden just for the fun of doing it.

Have you written to Thomas S. Jones, Jr.? Do! He is a light.

I've surely won a strong position in this town. Really rather surprising! Rather saddening, in a way, to think of leaving.

Get Cunninghame Graham's "Thirty Tales and Sketches" from Viking Press. Great stuff of its kind! "Niggers" (in the volume) is a wow!