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

- So I take my pen in hand to write you a lovely letter!

First, I'm so glad you are truly and veridically coming to the Library dinner on April 21st! Hurrah!! Are you coming just for that?? And a beautiful new dress too!! It's almost too good to be true.

And many thanks for the excerpts from Black Elk reviews. I did not want you to do the job. What you sent would, of course, be all rightalright; but I'd like very much to have a copy of that chapter of the Lemmons dissertation. Can you find a girl who would copy the chapter for, say, five [?]? (I enclose the [?], or, as the Sioux say, the magaska, in the hope that some poor but honest girl may be willing to do the job.) Be sure that I do appreciate your copying excerpts for me. You are dear and good, and I want to see you in that new dress - or an old one, for that matter.

Here's a funny thing. A movement is going in Nebraska to have my bust placed in the Hall of Fame of the Nebraska State Building in Lincoln. An old student (10 years back) runs a newspaper in western Nebraska, and he started the idea on its way. The World-Herald of Omaha and the State-Journal of Lincoln favor the proposition and the Governer has endorsed it. The old loyalty seems to persist up there. You know I was for some years the big noise in Nebraska. The other day I received a check from up there to be bound to our people here, in payment for an additional bronze casting!! I returned the check, and gave them Dr. Atherton's address. But I have no doubt the plan will succeed. The old student who started the idea in his paper wrote me recently that he has received and is receiving many, many letters from all over Nebraska, [?] the suggestion. Isn't this funny and nice? And maybe a little pathetic? If it only means the [?] will go on exercising a good influence, even in a small way, "when I have gone weird ways".

O Lucile, dear lady! There are "tears in things", as Vergil remarked, bless him!

Second Folio of a lovely letter ___________

I'm wondering if we'll have any time together when you come. I infer that you'll be zizzing back by plane almost as soon as you arrive. But I'll be out there during the summer, and we should be able to make a lot of bio-literary hay while I'm there.

You speak highly of my neologisms. I'll bet you didn't even notice the big 75¢ word I used at the beginning of this lovely letter. I'm full of such words, but I'm stingy with them, so that's why I make up words. I'll bet you don't even know what glakid and clatty mean! Or throughother! My old grandmother knew a lot of words like that, and she bequeathed them to me; but if no one knows their rich meanings, what good are they? I'll be glad, of course, to explain them to you, if you're curious.

Yesterday I signed the amended agreement with the University giving away my library and papers forever and ever if not longer. In a way it was a bit saddening, but I'm glad too. Lucile, you'll be surprised when you read the checklist of my library which will be issued when the books have been catalogued (separately) and collated. It is a rich collection containing many valuable items. I've been reading extensively in it with the idea of realizing its commercial as well as cultural value. I don't think $10,000 would reproduce it if it ever burned. So many volumes are offered in catalogs at premium prices And there are so many inscribed by authors.

If I ever seem not to have noted something you tell me, be sure that I miss nothing you write. Everything you say means much to me. I had things to say about the biography — some notes, I mean. I'll send them in my next.