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

That really was a "lovely" letter, and I am so glad to know that you are able to be at work again. Good old Connie! What a real person!

You ask about my mother's religious convictions. She never was able to accept church dogmas. She and the girls joined the Methodist Church in K. C. in a mood of desperation and under the influence of the Fink family, our best friends there. The Finks were very orthodox, and, incidentally, as fine human beings as I ever knew. (Mrs. Fink was a sublimated female version of Abraham Lincoln!) In Wayne, my mother attended Methodist Church under the influence of the Cullers (my grandparents, my uncles & aunts). Later she the Cullers became Christian Scientists, and my mother tried hard for some years to be a good Christian Scientists I feel her efforts to practice C. S. were good for her. She was always intensely religous in the larger sense, but, try as she would, she could not accept church doctrine. When she & my sisters joined the Methodist church in K. C. I was not even approached on the matter. I was glad they joined, but I could not possibly think of joining. I was 10 or 11 years old!! No doubt, my father's influence on me was powerful, altho' he never talked against religion in my hearing, so far as I can remember. He was a follower of Ingersoll, Darwin, and Huxley.

I'm not the least bit interested in your lecture on me & my book — or am I?! I'll be I am! And I know it will be a fine thing! (O Lucile, Lucile!) Here is something especially interesting. I've just found the enclosed letter from Mrs. Boyles the medium. As you well note, it is dated Oct, 1956 — more than 5 years ago. Note especially what is said about the "long long steps" the "big white concrete bldg.", and me "walking up" — "like a Hall of Fame". This is on page 2.

I was especially impressed with the [spacious?] steps leading up to the Capitol as I was walking up to the cer ceremony. The other prophecies are mostly identified as having already happened. The New York trip also was delayed — but only 4 years. That about the election to the International Institute of Arts & Letters is clearly stated in another letter from Mrs. Boyles dated Nov. 11, 1947 — about 12 years ahead of the event.

Perhaps it would be just as well to enclose the Boyles letter with your next.

Alice, Hiddy, and Enid got up a big birthday party for me — twenty some present, counting us. And they all (including you!!) gave me a doggie-wog to love! A French Poodle with a mile-long pedigree, & the most beautifulest little booger I ever saw! He has begun to take up Yo-Yo's barking job already. He does not take Yo-Yo's place. He could not not; He's just next in the royal line. The Queen of blessed memory is dead! Long live the King!

I'll leave for Vermillion on Feb. 13 & return Feb. 16 — two days of talking up there.