Dear Lucile:
N. B. This is not a letter. Only a note.

Here is a note that you may want. I send it before I forget about it. I have a Mary Susan Craig in Epic America who grew up knowing about me because she lived in Columbus, Nebraska, and knew Congressman Edgar Howard, who was, for many years owner and editor of the Columbus Daily Telegram. He was a personage, widely known for his progressive views and his courage. He was a radical in the strict sense, just as I was. For many years, Mary Susan Craig tells me, he ran editorials in the Daily Telegram from time to time on me and my work, and she was aware of them. Mary Susan brought me the one I enclose which, she believes appeared in the forties — the mid- or late-forties. He was then still in Congress, I believe. The editorial I enclose is reminiscent of a rather longish editorial he wrote when the Nebraska Legislature passed the law making me Poet Laureate. Howard was amused — and expressed his amusement — over the apparent fact that the Legislature did not know the kind of man and poet it had honored!! Then the cuss quoted The Red Wind Comes, and, I believe, something from The Cry of the People. Anything Howard wrote attracted attention in those days, but if his editorial harmed me in any way, I didn't hear about it. (At the time Nebraska had Geo. W. Norris; and, anyway, it was a progressive state).

(Those poems were prophetic, Lucile. They were written while Russia was still under the Czar).

I send also a copy of an inscription Howard wrote in a copy of House's Man and Poet presented to Susan Craig's brother, Robert.

I wonder if you have run across Edgar Howard in your research adventures.

Lucile, I do want to see you and talk to you.

The same violent dislike as always!

John N.

Inscription by Edgar Howard in Neihardt, Man and Poet presented to Robert Craig of Columbus, Nebraska.

"To Robert Craig, trusting at least one of Neihardt's poems may aid you in fighting the battle of life = not with physical fists or guns, but the one weapon — your resolution to master every mortal foe."


Edgar Howard"
See Inside
Evidently Howard did not keep up with me! Still, his inscription in the House book was done written in the 40's.