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6. Is the [[underlined]]ash[[/underlined]] stick used in the feather stem reminiscent of the use of ash for bows?

7. Are the spots in the wild cat skin suggestive of the [[underlined]]stars[[/underlined]] (of ornamentation of children in the Shell Society ceremonial painting? And are the close dottings down the back bone to the head suggestive of the galaxy?

These questions may be unanswerable.  They are perhaps just fancies and poetic refinements that can be waived.  Still I should like your feeling about them, and which, if any, have merit.

This work of [[underlined]]translating[[/underlined]] is most delicate and requires to be done with devout reverence.  It is so impossible to put some of the finest intimations into words.  And have them clear, yet not prolix, and, therefore, absurdly un-Indian!  At all events I shall not [[underlined]]exploit[[/underlined]] the Hako for a holiday, as I feel Professor Alexander has done, -- however well and deserving of sympathetic appreciation!

What we need particularly is to bathe the whole in an unobtrusive nature worship -- a mystic unmetaphysic senseof God.

I like Hako better for this that the Upanishads, the greatest metaphysical religious work; I like it better than the Tao teh King, because more direct and childlike, less perplexing and paradozical!  I like it better than the New Testament -- for the purpose of stating [[underlined]]essential, primal religion[[/underlined]], because that holy book has been so long abused, and we read into it, and so, out of it, what it never meant to convey; and custom makes us superstitious or insensitive or we react to a cold hypercriticism.  If I could so help you set Hako among the great [[underlined]]intelligible[[/underlined]] Religious Works -- I should deem it indeed a holy if a humble service to the Cause of Religion in this our disturbed and confused age.

We must vivify the religious world.  The Tao teh King, the Upanishads, the New Testament and the Sacred Books of the Buddha -- they are all to sacred to some, and too [[underlined]]un[[/underlined]]sacred to others.  These scriptures always arouse our prejudice (that is, of some of us).  Even the Gathas, the Vedic Hymns, remote as they are, and universal, are in too peculiar or ancient form for our direct sympathy and acceptance.

But the Hako might be adopted as it were, [[underlined]]just for fun[[/underlined]] -- Since it has no institutionalized following and is uncontroversial, it does not challenge, like the Koran; or belong to one age only, as the Divina Commedia.  It is shy, simple, unobtrusive, and with its out-of-doors, Wordsworthian-Blakean naivete, it is more likely to steal into our confidence, and then reinforce and revivify, impartially for any of us, our own preferred scriptures!  Here, surely we outbid Christian Science with its new-fangled sectarian text-book, or Bahaism, with its ocean of rhetorical "tablets".  Maybe its only a dream, but it may help some dreamer to the [[underlined]]One God.[[/underlined]]

With affectionate regards,

Yours,
^[[W. N. Guthrie
pe G]]

^[[signed in absence]]