You don't often receive a ltetter from me, but you should, in one way or another, receive my thoughts; they go to you every day.
Hilda, Alice & I left Branson June 14. I lectured at Wayne & Chadron, & we have been in camp here on Wounded Knee Creek near Ben Black Elk's place for over a month. Wonderful place to work. It goes with surprising ease. I've done my regular Post-Dispatch work & have pushed the Messiah far along. Sitting Bull is dying now. A few more days, & I'll be working on the final & relatively short section -- "Wounded Knee" ". That will be like eating dessert after a meal of many courses. I'm happy. The work is good. And how many years it has held me, years when I had no opportunity to go ahead!
Now "The Song of Jed Smith" remains -- ten times as easy to do as any other, the character of it being Odyssean, a tale of adventure.
I'm happy about the Messiah, & had to tell you that I am. I think that glow I love to remember will come into your face now & then when you read the complete poem.
Dr. Plank of Omaha, a very distinguished Unitarian preacher, and a man of light and learning, read the MS last spring when he visited me in Branson & was enthusiastic. Said it was "by far" my best. I think so in many ways.
We will stay here nearly three weeks more. Hilda will attend the Wayne State College, & we will leave her there Sept. 8th. Then Alice & I will strike for home.
I have strange things to tell you about the ad lleged power Black Elk "gave" me. Really hard to explain as coincidence. Too many coincidences -- forty now and more -- all in a row without a miss! I'm still the sceptic
, of course, being made so; but deep down in me something knows. Mona is a firm believer. We think quantitatively, hardly suspecting that reality may be wholly in the nature of the qualitative, in our crude terms. Anyway, it's a wonderful i universe -- all holy in some sense mostly beyond us.
Jno.
