January 23.I HAVE eaten my dinner.I have had, among other things, fine, rare-broiled porterhouse steak from Omaha, and some fresh, green young onions from California. And just now I am a philosopher, pure and simple—except that there’s nothing very pure about my philosophy, nor yet very simple.Let the Devil come and go; let the wild waters rush over me; let nations rise and fall; let my favorite theories form themselves in line suddenly and run into the ground; let the little earth be bandied about from one belief to another; but, I say in the midst of my young peripatetic philosophy, I need not be in complete despair—the world still contains things for me, while I have my fine rare porterhouse steak from Omaha—and my fresh green young onions from California.Fame may pass over my head; money may escape me; my one friend may fail me; every hope may fold its tent and steal away; Happiness may remain a sealed book; every remnant of human ties may vanish; I may find myself an outcast; good things held out to me may suddenly be withdrawn; the stars may go out, one by one; the sun may go dark; yet still I may hold upright my head, if I have but my steak—and my onions.I may find myself crowded out from many charmed circles; I may find the ethical world too small to contain me; the social world may also exclude me; the professional world may know me not; likewise the worlds of the arts and the sciences; I may find myself superfluous in literary haunts; I may see myself going gladly back to the vile dust from whence I sprung—to live in a green forest like the melancholy Jacques; but fare they well, I will say with what cheerfulness I can summon,while I have my steak—and my onions.Possibly I may grow old and decrepit; my hair may turn gray; my bones may become rheumatic; I may grow weak in the knees; my ankle-joints which have withstood many a peripatetic journey may develop dropsical tendencies; my heart may miss a beat now and then; my lungs may begin to fight shy of wintry blasts; my eyes may fail me; my figure that is now in its slim gracefulness may swathe itself in layers of flesh, or worse, it may wither and decay and stoop at the shoulders; my red blood may flow sluggishly; but if I still have left teeth to eat with, why need I lament while I have my steak—and my onions?I am obscure; I am morbid; I am unhappy; my life is made up of Nothingness; I want everything and I have nothing; I have been made to feel the “lure of green things growing,” and I have been made to feel also that somethingof them is withheld from me; I have felt the deadly tiredness that is among the birthrights of a human being; but with it all the Devil has given me a philosophy of my own—the Devil has enabled me to count, if need be, the world well lost for a fine rare porterhouse steak—and some green young onions.For which I thank thee, Devil, profoundly.Who says the Devil is not your friend? Who says the Devil does not believe in the all-merciful Law of Compensation?And so it is—do you see?—that all things look different after a satisfying dinner, that the color of the world changes, that life in fact resolves itself into two things: a fine rare-broiled porterhouse steak from Omaha, and some fresh green young onions from California.January 24.I AM charmingly original. I am delightfully refreshing. I am startlingly Bohemian. I am quaintly interesting—the while in my sleeve I may be smiling and smiling—and a villain. I can talk to a roomful of dull people and compel their interest, admiration, and astonishment. I do this sometimes for my own amusement. As I have said, I am a rather plain-featured, insignificant-looking genius, but I have a graceful personality. I have a pretty figure. I am well set up. And when I choose to talk in my charmingly original fashion, embellishing my conversation with many quaint lies, I have a certain very noticeable way with me, an “air.”It is well, if one has nothing else, to acquire an air. And an air taken in conjunction with my charming originality, my delightfully refreshing candor,is something powerful and striking in its way.I do not, however, exert myself often in this way; partly because I can sometimes foresee, from the character of the assembled company, that my performance will not have the desired effect—for I am a genius, and genius at close range at times carries itself unconsciously to the point where it becomes so interesting that it is atrocious, and can not be carried farther without having somewhat mildly disastrous results; and then, again, the facial antics of some ten or a dozen persons possessed more or less of the qualities of the genus fool—even they become tiresome after a while.Always I talk about myself on an occasion of this kind. Indeed, my conversation is on all occasions devoted directly or indirectly to myself.When I talk on the subject of ethics, I talk of it as it is related to Mary MacLane.When I give out broad-minded opinions aboutNinon de l’Enclos, I demonstrate her relative position to Mary MacLane!When I discourse liberally on the subject of the married relation, I talk of it only as it will affect Mary MacLane.An interesting creature, Mary MacLane.As a matter of fact, it is so with every one, only every one is far from realizing and acknowledging it. And I have not lacked listeners, though these people do not appreciate me. They do not realize that I am a genius.I am of womankind and of nineteen years. I am able to stand off and gaze critically and dispassionately at myself and my relation to my environment, to the world, to everything the world contains. I am able to judge whether I am good and whether I am bad. I am able, indeed, to tell what I am and where I stand. I can see far, far inward. I am a genius.Charlotte Bronté did this in some degree, and she was a genius; and also Marie Bashkirtseff, and Olive Schreiner, and George Eliot. They are all geniuses.And so, then, I am a genius—a genius in my own right.I am fundamentally, organically egotistic. My vanity and self-conceit have attained truly remarkable development as I’ve walked and walked in the loneliness of the sand and barrenness. Not the least remarkable part of it is that I know my egotism and vanity thoroughly—thoroughly, and plume myself thereon.These are the ear-marks of a genius—and of a fool. There is a finely-drawn line between a genius and a fool. Often this line is overstepped and your fool becomes a genius, or your genius becomes a fool.It is but a tiny step.There’s but a tiny step between the great and the little, the tender and thecontemptuous, the sublime and the ridiculous, the aggressive and the humble, the paradise and the perdition.And so is it between the genius and the fool.I am a genius.I am not prepared to say how many times I may overstep the finely-drawn line, or how many times I have already overstepped it. ’Tis a matter of small moment.I have entered into certain things marvelously deep. I know things, I know that I know them, and I know that I know that I know them, which is a fine psychological point.It is magnificent of me to have gotten so far, at the age of nineteen, with no training other than that of the sand and barrenness. Magnificent—do you hear?Very often I take this fact in my hand and squeeze it hard like an orange, to get the sweet, sweet juice from it. I squeeze a great deal ofjuice from it every day, and every day the juice is renewed, like the vitals of Prometheus. And so I squeeze and squeeze, and drink the juice, and try to be satisfied.Yes, you may gaze long and curiously at theportraitin the front of this book. It is of one who is a genius of egotism and analysis, a genius who is awaiting the Devil’s coming,—a genius, with a wondrous liver within.I shall tell you more about this liver, I think, before I have done.January 25.I CAN remember a time long, oh, very long ago. That is the time when I was a child. It is ten or a dozen years ago.Or is it a thousand years ago?It is when you have but just parted from your friend that he seems farthest from you. When I have lived several more years the time when I was a child will not seem so far behind me.Just now it is frightfully far away. It is so far away that I can see it plainly outlined on the horizon.It is there always for me to look at. And when I look I can feel the tears deep within me—a salt ocean of tears that roll and surge and swell bitterly in a dull, mad anguish, and never come to the surface.I do not know which is the more weirdly and damnably pathetic: I when I was a child, or I when I am grown toa woman, young and all alone. I weigh the question coldly and logically, but my logic trembles with rage and grief and unhappiness.When I was a child I lived in Canada and in Minnesota. I was a little wild savage. In Minnesota there were swamps where I used to wet my feet in the spring, and there were fields of tall grass where I would lie flat on my stomach in company with lizards and little garter snakes. And there were poplar leaves that turned their pale green backs upward on a hot afternoon, and soon there would be terrific thunder and lightning and rain. And there were robins that sang at dawn. These things stay with one always. And there were children with whom I used to play and fight.I was tanned and sunburned, and I had an unkempt appearance. My face was very dirty. The original pattern of my frock was invariably lost in layers and vistas of the native soil. Myhair was braided or else it flew about, a tangled maze, according as I could be caught by some one and rubbed and straightened before I ran away for the day. My hands were little and strong and brown, and wrought much mischief. I came and went at my own pleasure. I ate what I pleased; I went to bed all in my own good time; I tramped wherever my stubborn little feet chose. I was impudent; I was contrary; I had an extremely bad temper; I was hard-hearted; I was full of infantile malice. Truly I was a vicious little beast.I was a little piece of untrained Nature.And I am unable to judge which is the more savagely forlorn: the starved-hearted child, or the woman, young and all alone.The little wild stubborn child felt things and wanted things. She did not know that she felt things and wanted things.Now I feel and I want things and I know it with burning vividness.The little vicious Mary MacLane suffered, but she did not know that she suffered. Yet that did not make the suffering less.And she reached out with a little sunburned hand to touch and take something.But the sunburned little hand remained empty. There was nothing for it. No one had anything to put into it.The little wild creature wanted to be loved; she wanted something to put in her hungry little heart.But no one had anything to put into a hungry little heart.No one said “dear.”The little vicious child was the only MacLane, and she felt somewhat alone. But there, after all, were the lizards and the little garter snakes.The wretched, hardened little piece of untrained Nature has grown and developed into a woman, young and alone.For the child there was a Nothingness, and for the woman there is a great Nothingness.Perhaps the Devil will bring me something in my lonely womanhood to put in my wooden heart.But the time when I was a child will never come again. It is gone—gone. I may live through some long, long years, but nothing like it will ever come. For there is nothing like it.It is a life by itself. It has naught to do with philosophy, or with genius, or with heights and depths, or with the red sunset sky, or with the Devil.These come later.The time of the child is a thing apart. It is the Planting and Seed-time. It is the Beginning of things. It decides whether there shall be brightness or bitterness in the long after-years.I have left that time far enough behind me. It will never come back. And it had a Nothingness—do youhear, aNothingness! Oh, the pity of it! the pity of it!Do you know why it is that I look back to the horizon at the figure of an unkempt, rough child, and why I feel a surging torrent of tears and anguish and despair?I feel more than that indeed, but I have no words to tell it.I shall have to miss forever some beautiful, wonderful things because of that wretched, lonely childhood.There will always be a lacking, a wanting—some dead branches that never grew leaves.It is not deaths and murders and plots and wars that make life tragedy.It is Nothing that makes life tragedy.It is day after day, and year after year, and Nothing.It is a sunburned little hand reached out and Nothing put into it.January 26.I SIT at my window and look out upon the housetops and chimneys of Butte. As I look I have a weary, disgusted feeling.People are abominable creatures.Under each of the roofs live a man and woman joined together by that very slender thread, the marriage ceremony—and their children, the result of the marriage ceremony.How many of them love each other? Not two in a hundred, I warrant. The marriage ceremony is their one miserable, petty, paltry excuse for living together.This marriage rite, it appears, is often used as a cloak to cover a world of rather shameful things.How virtuous these people are, to be sure, under their different roof-trees. So virtuous are they indeed that they are able to draw themselves up in thepride of their own purity, when they happen upon some corner where the marriage ceremony is lacking. So virtuous are they that the men can afford to find amusement and diversion in the woes of the corner that is without the marriage rite; and the women may draw away their skirts in shocked horror and wonder that such things can be, in view of their own spotless virtue.And so they live on under the roofs, and they eat and work and sleep and die; and the children grow up and seek other roofs, and call upon the marriage ceremony even as their parents before them—and then they likewise eat and work and sleep and die; and so on world without end.This also is life—the life of the good, virtuous Christians.I think, therefore, that I should prefer some life that is not virtuous.I shall never make use of the marriage ceremony. I hereby register a vow, Devil, to that effect.When a man and a woman love one another that is enough. That is marriage. A religious rite is superfluous. And if the man and woman live together without the love, no ceremony in the world can make it marriage. The woman who does this need not feel the tiniest bit better than her lowest sister in the streets. Is she not indeed a step lower since she pretends to be what she is not—plays the virtuous woman? While the other unfortunate pretends nothing. She wears her name on her sleeve.If I were obliged to be one of these I would rather be she who wears her name on her sleeve. I certainly would. The lesser of two evils, always.I can think of nothing in the world like the utter littleness, the paltriness, the contemptibleness, the degradation, of the woman who is tied down under a roof with a man who is really nothing to her; who wears the man’s name, who bears the man’s children—who playsthe virtuous woman. There are too many such in the world now.May I never, I say, become that abnormal, merciless animal, that deformed monstrosity—a virtuous woman.Anything, Devil, but that.And so, as I look out over the roofs and chimneys, I have a weary, disgusted feeling.January 27.THIS is not a diary. It is a Portrayal. It is my inner life shown in its nakedness. I am trying my utmost to show everything—to reveal every petty vanity and weakness, every phase of feeling, every desire. It is a remarkably hard thing to do, I find, to probe my soul to its depths, to expose its shades and half-lights.Not that I am troubled with modesty or shame. Why should one be ashamed of anything?But there are elements in one’s mental equipment so vague, so opaque, so undefined—how is one to grasp them? I have analyzed and analyzed, and I have gotten down to some extremely fine points—yet still there are things upon my own horizon that go beyond me.There are feelings that rise and rush over me overwhelmingly. I am helpless,crushed, and defeated, before them. It is as if they were written on the walls of my soul-chamber in an unknown language.My soul goes blindly seeking, seeking, asking. Nothing answers. I cry out after some unknown Thing with all the strength of my being; every nerve and fiber in my young woman’s-body and my young woman’s-soul reaches and strains in anguished unrest. At times as I hurry over my sand and barrenness all my life’s manifold passions culminate in utter rage and woe. Waves of intense, hopeless longing rush over me and envelop me round and round. My heart, my soul, my mind go wandering—wandering; ploughing their way through darkness with never a ray of light; groping with helpless hands; asking, longing, wanting things: pursued by a Demon of Unrest.I shall go mad—I shall go mad, I say over and over to myself.But no. No one goes mad. TheDevil does not propose to release any one from a so beautifully-wrought, artistic damnation. He looks to it that one’s senses are kept fully intact, and he fastens to them with steel chains the Demon of Unrest.It hurts—oh, it tortures me in the days and days! But when the Devil brings me my Happiness I will forgive him all this.When my Happiness is given me, the Unrest will still be with me, I doubt not, but the Happiness will change the tenor of it, will make it an instrument of joy, will clasp hands with it and mingle itself with it,—the while I, with my wooden heart, my woman’s-body, my mind, my soul, shall be in transports. I shall be filled with pleasure so deep and pain so intense that my being’s minutest nerve will reel and stagger in intoxication, will go drunk with the fullness of Life.When my Happiness is given me I shall live centuries in the hours. And we shall all grow old rapidly,—I andmy wooden heart, and my woman’s-body, and my mind, and my soul. Sorrow may age one in some degree. But Happiness—the real Happiness—rolls countless years off from one’s finger-tips in a single moment, and each year leaves its impress.It is true that life is a tragedy to those who feel. When my Happiness is given me life will be an ineffable, a nameless thing.It will seethe and roar; it will plunge and whirl; it will leap and shriek in convulsion; it will guiver in delicate fantasy; it will writhe and twist; it will glitter and flash and shine; it will sing gently; it will shout in exquisite excitement; it will vibrate to the roots like a great oak in a storm; it will dance; it will glide; it will gallop; it will rush; it will swell and surge; it will fly; it will soar high—high; it will go down into depths unexplored; it will rage and rave; it will yell in utter joy; it will melt; it will blaze; it will ride triumphant;it will grovel in the dust of entire pleasure; it will sound out like a terrific blare of trumpets; it will chime faintly, faintly like the remote tinkling notes of a harp; it will sob and grieve and weep; it will revel and carouse; it will shrink; it will go in pride; it will lie prone like the dead; it will floatbuoyantlyon air; it will moan, shiver, burst—oh, it will reek with Love and Light!The words of the English language are futile. There are no words in it, or in any other, to express an idea of that thing which would be my life in its Happiness.The words I have written describe it, it is true,—but confusedly and inadequately.But words are for everyday use.When it comes my turn to meet face to face the unspeakable vision of the Happy Life I shall be rendered dumb.But the rains of my feeling will come in torrents!January 28.I AM an artist of the most artistic, the highest type. I have uncovered for myself the art that lies in obscure shadows. I have discovered the art of the day of small things.And that surely is art with a capital “A.”I have acquired the art of Good Eating. Usually it is in the gray and elderly forties and fifties that people cultivate this art—if they ever do; it is indeed a rare art.But I know it in all its rare exquisiteness at the young slim age of nineteen—which is one more mark of my genius, do you see?The art of Good Eating has two essential points: one must eat only when one is hungry, and one must take small bites.There are persons who eat for the sake of eating. They are gourmands,and partake of the natures of the pig and the buzzard. There are persons who take bites that are not small. These also are gourmands and partake of the natures of the pig and the buzzard. There are persons who can enjoy nothing in the way of eating except a luxurious, well-appointed meal. These, it is safe to say, have not acquired the art of anything.But I—I have acquired the art of eating an olive.Now listen, and I will tell you the art of eating an olive:I take the olive in my fingers, and I contemplate its green oval richness. It makes me think at once of the land where the green citron grows—where the cypress and myrtle are emblems; of the land of the Sun where human beings are delightfully, enchantingly wicked,—where the men are eager and passionate, and the women gracefully developed in mind and in body—and their two breasts show round and fulland delicately veined beneath thin drapery.The mere sight of the olive conjures up this charming picture in my mind.I set my teeth and my tongue upon the olive, and bite it. It is bitter, salt, delicious. The saliva rushes to meet it, and my tongue is a happy tongue. As the morsel of olive rests in my mouth and is crunched and squeezed lusciously among my teeth, a quick, temporary change takes place in my character. I think of some adorable lines of the Persian poet: “Give thyself up to Joy, for thy Grief will be infinite. The stars shall again meet together at the same point in the firmament, but of thy body shall bricks be made for a palace wall.”“Oh, dear, sweet, bitter olive!” I say to myself.The bit of olive slips down my red gullet, and so into my stomach. There it meets with a joyous welcome. Gastric juices leap out from the walls andswathe it in loving embrace. My stomach is fond of something bitter and salt. It lavishes flattery and endearment galore upon the olive. It laughs in silent delight. It feels that the day it has long waited for has come. The philosophy of my stomach is wholly epicurean. Let it receive but a tiny bit of olive and it will reck not of the morrow, nor of the past. It lives, voluptuously, in the present. It is content. It is in paradise.I bite the olive again. Again the bitter salt crisp ravishes my tongue. “If this be vanity,—vanity let it be.” The golden moments flit by and I heed them not. For am I not comfortably seated and eating an olive? Go hang yourself, you who have never been comfortably seated and eating an olive! My character evolves farther in its change. I am now bent on reckless sensuality, let happen what will. The fair earth seems to resolve itself into a thing oval and crisp and good andgreen and deliciously salt. I experience a feeling of fervent gladness that I am a female thing living, and that I have a tongue and some teeth, and salivary glands.Also this bit slips down my red gullet, and again the festive Stomach lifts up a silent voice in psalms and rejoicing. It is now an absolute monarchy with the green olive at its head. The kisses of the gastric juice become hot and sensual and convulsive and ecstatic. “Avaunt, pale, shadowy ghosts of dyspepsia!” says my Stomach. “I know you not. I am of a brilliant, shining world. I dwell in Elysian fields.”Once more I bite the olive. Once more is my tongue electrified. And the third stage in my temporary transformation takes place. I am now a gross but supremely contented sensualist. An exquisite symphony of sensualism and pleasure seems to play somewhere within me. My heart purrs. My brain folds its arms and lounges. Iput my feet up on the seat of another chair. The entire world is now surely one delicious green olive. My mind is capable of conceiving but one idea—that of a green olive. Therefore the green olive is a perfect thing—absolutely a perfect thing.Disgust and disapproval are excited only by imperfections. When a thing is perfect, no matter how hard one may look at it, one can see only itself—itself, and nothing beyond.And so I have made my olive and my art perfect.Well, then, this third bit of olive slides down the willing gullet into my stomach. “And then my heart with pleasure fills.” The play of the gastric secretions is now marvelous. It is the meeting of the waters! It were well, ah, how well, if the hearts of the world could mingle in peace, as the gastric juices mingle at the coming of a green olive into my stomach! “Paradise! Paradise!” says my Stomach.Every drop of blood in my passionate veins is resting. Through my stomach—mystomach, do you hear—my soul seems to feel the infinite. The minutes are flying. Shortly it will be over. But just now I am safe. I am entirely satisfied. I want nothing, nothing.My inner quiet is infinite. I am conscious that it is but momentary, and it matters not. On the contrary, the knowledge of this fact renders the present quiet—the repose, more limitless, more intense.Where now, Devil, is your damnation? If this be damnation, damnation let it be! If this be the human fall, then how good it is to be fallen! At this moment I would fain my fall were like yours, Lucifer, “never to hope again.”And so, bite by bite, the olive enters into my body and soul. Each bite brings with it a recurring wave of sensation and charm.No. We will not dispute with thebrilliant mind that declared life a tragedy to those who feel. We will let that stand. However, there are parts of the tragedy that are not tragic. There are parts that admit of a turning aside.As the years pass, one after another, I shall continue to eat. And as I eat I shall have my quiet, my brief period of aberration.This is the art of Eating.I have acquired it by means of self-examination, analyzing—analyzing—analyzing. Truly my genius is analytical. And it enables me to endure—if also to feel bitterly—the heavy, heavy weight of life.What a worm of misery I should be were it not for these bursts of philosophy, these turnings aside!If it please the Devil, one day I may have Happiness. That will be all-sufficient. I shall then analyze no more. I shall be a different being.But meanwhile I shall eat.When the last of the olive vanishes into the stomach, when it is there reduced to animated chyme, when I play with the olive-seed in my fingers, when I lean back in my chair and straighten out my spinal column,—oh, then do you not envy me, you fine, brave world, who are not a philosopher, who have not discovered the art of the small things, who have not conscious chyme in your stomach, who have not acquired the art of Good Eating!January 29.AS I read over now and then what I have written of my Portrayal I have alternate periods of hope and despair. At times I think I am succeeding admirably—and again, what I have written compared to what I have felt seems vapid and tame. Who has not felt the futility of words when one would express feelings?I take this hope and despair as another mark of genius. Genius, apart from natural sensitiveness, is prone equally to unreasoning joy and to bitterest morbidness.I am more than fond of writing, though I have hours when I can not write any more than I could paint a picture, or play Wagner as it should be played.I think my style of writing has a wonderful intensity in it, and it is admirably suited to the creature it portrays.What sort of Portrayal of myself would I produce if I wrote with the long, elaborate periods of Henry James, or with the pleasant, ladylike phrasing of Howells? It would be rather like a little tin phonograph trolling out flowery poetry at breakneck speed, or like a deep-toned church organ pouring forth “Goo-Goo Eyes” with ponderous feeling.When I read a book I study it carefully to find whether the authorknows things, and whether I could, with the same subject, write a better one myself.The latter question I usually decide in the affirmative.The highest thing one can do in literature is to succeed in saying that thing which one meant to say. There is nothing better than that—to make the world see your thoughts as you see them. Eugene Field and Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Louis Stevenson and Charles Dickens, among others, have succeeded in doing this. They impressthe world with a sense of their courage and realness.There are people who have written books which did not impress the world in this way, but which nevertheless came out of the feeling and fullness of zealous hearts. Always I think of that pathetic, artless little old-fashioned thing, “Jane Eyre,” as a picture shown to a world seeing with distorted vision. Charlotte Bronté meant one thing when she wrote the book, and the world after a time suddenly understood a quite different thing, and heaped praise and applause upon her therefor. When I read the book I was not quite able to see just what the message was that the Bronté intended to send out. But I saw that there was a message—of bravery, perhaps, or of that good which may come out of Nazareth. But the world that praised and applauded and gave her money seems totally to have missed it.It takes centuries of tears and pietyand mourning to move this world a tiny bit.But still it will give you praise and applause and money if you will prostitute your sensibilities and emotions for the gratification of it.I have no message to hide in a book and send out. I am writing a Portrayal.But a Portrayal is also a thing that may be misunderstood.January 30.AN IDLE brain is the Devil’s workshop, they say. It is an absurdly incongruous statement. If the Devil is at work in a brain it certainly is not idle. And when one considers how brilliant a personage the Devil is, and what very fine work he turns out, it becomes an open question whether he would have the slightest use for most of the idle brains that cumber the earth. But, after all, the Devil is so clever that he could produce unexcelled workmanship with even the poorest tools.My brain is one kind of devil’s workshop, and it is as incessantly hard-worked and always-busy a one as you could imagine.It is a devil’s workshop, indeed, only I do the work myself. But there is a mental telegraphy between the Devil and me, which accounts for the fact thatmany of my ideas are so wonderfully groomed and perfumed and colored. I take no credit to myself for this, though, as I say, I do the work myself.I try always to give the Devil his due—and particularly in this Portrayal.There are very few who give the Devil his due in this world of hypocrites.I never think of the Devil as that atrocious creature in red tights, with cloven hoofs and a tail and a two-tined fork. I think of him rather as an extremely fascinating, strong, steel-willed person in conventional clothes—a man with whom to fall completely, madly in love. I rather think, I believe, that he is incarnate at times. Why not?Periodically I fall completely, madly in love with the Devil. He is so fascinating, so strong—so strong, exactly the sort of man whom my wooden heart awaits. I would like to throw myself at his head. I would make him a dear little wife. He would love me—he would love me. I would be in raptures. And I would love him, oh, madly, madly!“What would you have me do, little MacLane?” the Devil would say.“I would have you conquer me, crush me, know me,” I would answer.“What shall I say to you?” the Devil would ask.“Say to me, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you,’ in your strong, steel, fascinating voice. Say it to me often, always—a million times.”“What would you have me do, little MacLane?” he would say again.I would answer: “Hurt me, burn me, consume me with hot love, shake me violently, embrace me hard,hardin your strong, steel arms, kiss me with wonderful burning kisses—press your lips to mine with passion, and your soul and mine would meet then in an anguish of joy for me!”“How shall I treat you, little MacLane?”“Treat me cruelly, brutally.”“How long shall I stay with you?”“Through the life everlasting—it will be as one day; or for one day—it will be as the life everlasting.”“And what kind of children will you bear me, little MacLane?” he would say.“I will bear wonderful, beautiful children—with great pain.”“But you hate pain,” the Devil will say, “and when you are in your pain you will hate me.”“But no,” I will answer, “pain that comes of you whom I love will be ineffable exaltation.”“And how will you treat me, little MacLane?”“I will cast myself at your feet; or I will minister to you with divine tenderness; or I will charm you with fantastic deviltry; when you weep, I will melt into tears; when you rejoice, I will go wild with delight; when you go deaf I will stop my ears; when you go blindI will put out my eyes; when you go lame I will cut off my legs. Oh, I will be divinely dear, unutterably sweet!”“Indeed you are rarely sweet,” the Devil will say. And I will be in transports.Oh, Devil, Devil, Devil!Oh, misery,miseryof Nothingness!The days are long—long and very weary as I await the Devil’s coming.January 31.TO-DAY as I walked out I was impressed deeply with the wonderful beautifulness of Nature even in her barrenness. The far-distant mountains had that high, pure, transparent look, and the nearer ones were transformed completely with a wistful, beseeching attitude that reminded me of my life. It was late in the afternoon. As the sun lowered, the pure lavender of the far-away hills was tinted with faint-rose, and the gray of the nearer ones with sun-color. And the sand—my sand and barrenness—almost flushed consciously in its wide, mysterious magnitude. In the sky there was a white cloud. The sky was blue—blue almost as when I was a child. The air was very gentle. The earth seemed softened. There was an indefinite, caressing something over all that went into my soul and stirred it,and hurt it. There was that in the air which is there when something is going to happen. Only nothing ever happens. It is rare, I thought, that my sand and barrenness looks like this. I crouched on the ground, and the wondrous calm and beauty of the natural things awed and moved me with strange, still emotions.I felt, and gazed about me, and felt again. And everything was very still.Presently my eyes filled quietly with tears.I bent my head into the breast of a great gray rock. Oh, my soul, my soul, I said over and over, not with passion. It is so divine—the earth is so beautiful, so untainted—and I, what am I? It was so beautiful that now as I write, and it comes over me again, I can not restrain the tears.Tears are not common.I felt my wooden heart, my soul, quivering and sobbing with their unknown wanting. This is my soul’sawakening. Ah, the pain of my soul’s awakening! Is there nothing,nothingto help this pain? I am so lonely, so lonely—Fannie Corbin, my one friend, my dearly-loved anemone lady, I want you so much—why aren’t you here! I want to feel your hand with mine as I felt it sometimes before you went away. You are the only one among a worldful of people to care a little—and I love you with all the strength and worship I can give to the things that are beautiful and true. You are the only one, the only one—and my soul is full of pain, and I am sitting alone on the ground, and my head lies on a rock’sbreast.—Strange, sweet passions stirred and waked somewhere deep within me as I sat shivering on the ground. And I felt them singing far away, as if their faint voices came out of that limitless deep, deep blue above me; and it was like a choir of spirit-voices, and they sang of love and of light and of deartender dreams, and of my soul’s awakening. Why is this—and what is it that is hurting so? Is it because I am young, or is it because I am alone, or because I am a woman?Oh, it is a hard and bitter thing to be a woman! And why—why? Is woman so foul a creature that she must needs be purged by this infinite pain?The choir of faint, sweet voices comes to me incessantly out of the blue. My wooden heart and my soul are listening to them intently. The voices are trying hard to tell me, to help me, but I can not understand. I know only that it is about pure, exalted things, and about the all-abiding love that is somewhere; and it is about the earth-love, and about Truth,—but I can not understand. And the voices sing of me the child—a song of the unloved, starved little being; and a song of the unloved, half-grown creature; and a song of me, a woman and all alone—awaiting the Devil’s coming.Oh, my soul—my soul!A female snake is born out of its mother’s white egg, and lives awhile in content among weeds and grass, and dies.A female dog lives some years, and has bones thrown at her, and sometimes she receives a kick or a blow, and a dog-house to sleep in, and dies.A female bird has a nest, and worms to eat, and goes south in the winter, and presently she dies.A female toad has a swamp or a garden, some bugs and flies, contentment—and then she dies.And each of these has a male thing with her for a time, and soon there are little snakes or little dogs for her to love as much as it is given her to love—she can do no more.And they are fortunate with their little snakes and little dogs.A female human being is born out of her mother’s fair body, branded with a strange, plague-tainted name, and letgo; and lives awhile, and dies. But before she dies she awakes. There is a pain that goes with it.And the male thing that is with her for a time is unlike a snake or a dog. It is more like a man, and there is another pain for this.And when a little human being comes with a soul of its own there must be another awakening, for she has then reached the best and highest state that any human being can reach, though she is a female human being, and plague-tainted. And here also there is heavy soul-pain.The name—the plague-tainted name branded upon her—means woman.I lifted my head from the breast of the gray rock. The tears had been falling, falling. Tears are so strange! Tears from the dried-up fountain of nineteen years are like drops of water wrung out of stone. Suddenly I got up from the ground and ran quickly over the sand for several minutes. I did notdare look again at the hilltops and the deep blue, nor listen again to the voices.Oh, with it all, I am a coward! I shrink and cringe before the pain of the dazzling lights. Yet I am waiting—longing for the most dazzling light of all: the coming of the Devil.February 1.OH, THE wretched bitter loneliness of me!In all the deep darkness, and the silence, there is never a faint human light, never a voice!How can I bear it—how can I bear it!February 2.I HAVE been looking over the confessions of the Bashkirtseff. They are indeed rather like my Portrayal, but they are not so interesting, nor so intense. I have a stronger individuality than Marie Bashkirtseff, though her mind was probably in a higher state of development than mine, even when she was younger than I.Most of her emotions are vacillating and inconsistent. She worships a God one day and blasphemes him the next. She never loves her God. And why, then, does she have a God? Why does she not abandon him altogether? He seems to be of no use to her—except as a convenient thing on which to fasten the blame for her misfortunes.—And, after all, that is something very useful indeed.—And she loves the people about her one day, and the next day she hates them.But in her great passion—her ambition, Marie Bashkirtseff was beautifully consistent. And what terrific storms of woe and despair must have enveloped her when she knew that within a certain period she would be dead—removed from the world, and her work left undone! The time kept creeping nearer—she must have tasted the bitterness of death indeed. She was sure of success, sure that her high-strained ambition would be gratified to its last vestige—and then, to die! It was certainly hard lines for the little Bashkirtseff.My own despair is of an opposite nature.There is one thing in the world that is more bitter than death—and that is life.Suppose that I learned I was to die on the twenty-seventh of June, 1903, for instance. It would give me a soft warm wave of pleasure, I think. I might be in the depths of woe at thetime; my despair might be the despair of despair; my misery utterly unceasing,—and I could say, Never mind, on the twenty-seventh of June, 1903, all will be over—dull misery, rage, Nothingness, obscurity, the unknown longing, every desire of my soul, all the pain—ended inevitably, completely on the twenty-seventh of June, 1903. I might come upon a new pain, but this, my long old torture, would cease.You may say that I might end my life on that day, that I might do so now. I certainly shall if the pain becomes greater than I can bear—for what else is there to do? But I shall be far from satisfied in doing so. What if I were to end everything now—when perhaps the Devil may be coming to me in two years’ time with Happiness?Upon dying it might be that I should go to some wondrous fair country where there would be trees and running water, and a resting-place. Well—oh, well! But I want the earthly Happiness.I am not high-minded and spiritual. I am earthly, human—sensitive, sensuous, sensual, and, ah, dear, my soul wants its earthly Happiness!I can not bring myself to the point of suicide while there is a possibility of Happiness remaining. But if I knew that irrevocable, inevitable death awaited me on June twenty-seventh, 1903, I should be satisfied. My Happiness might come before that time, or it might not. I should be satisfied. I should know that my life was out of my hands. I should know, above all, that my long, long, old, old pain of loneliness would stop, June twenty-seventh, 1903.I shall die naturally some day—probably after I have grown old and sour. If I have had my Happiness for a year or a day, well and good. I shall be content to grow as old and as sour as the Devil wills. But having had no Happiness—if I find myself growing old andstill no Happiness—oh, then I vow I will not live another hour, even if dying were rushing headlong to damnation!I am, do you see, a philosopher and a coward—with the philosophy of cowardice. I squeeze juice also from this fact sometimes—but the juice is not sweet juice.The Devil—the fascinating man-devil—it may be, is coming, coming, coming.And meanwhile I go on and on, in the midst of sand and barrenness.February 3.THE town of Butte presents a wonderful field to a student of humanity and human nature. There are not a great many people—seventy thousand perhaps—but those seventy thousand are in their way unparalleled. For mixture, for miscellany—variedness, Bohemianism—where is Butte’s rival?The population is not only of all nationalities and stations, but the nationalities and stations mix and mingle promiscuously with each other, and are partly concealed and partly revealed in the mazes of a veneer that belongs neither to nation nor to station, but to Butte.The nationalities are many, it is true, but Irish and Cornish predominate. My acquaintance extends widely among the inhabitants of Butte. Sometimes when I feel in the mood for it I spendan afternoon in visiting about among divers curious people.At some Fourth of July demonstration, or on a Miners’ Union day, the heterogeneous herd turns out—and I turn out, with the herd and of it, and meditate and look on. There are Irishmen—Kelleys, Caseys, Calahans, staggering under the weight of much whiskey, shouting out their green-isle maxims; there is the festive Cornishman, ogling and leering, greeting his fellow-countrymen with alcoholic heartiness, and gazing after every feminine creature with lustful eyes; there are Irish women swearing genially at each other in shrill pleasantry, and five or six loudly-vociferous children for each; there are round-faced Cornish women likewise, each with her train of children; there are suave, sleek sporting men just out of the bath-tub; insignificant lawyers, dentists, messengerboys; “plungers” without number; greasy Italians from Meaderville;greasier French people from theBoulevardeAddition; ancient miners—each of whom was the first to stake a claim in Butte; starved-looking Chinamen here and there; a contingent of Finns and Swedes and Germans; musty, stuffy old Jew pawn-brokers who have crawled out of their holes for a brief recreation; dirt-encrusted Indians and squaws in dirty, gay blankets, from their flea-haunted camp below the town; “box-rustlers”—who are as common in Butte as bar-maids in Ireland; swell, flashy-looking Africans; respectable women with white aprons tied around their waists and sailor-hats on their heads, who have left the children at home and stepped out to see what was going on; innumerable stray youngsters from the dark haunts of Dublin Gulch; heavy restaurant-keepers with toothpicks in their mouths; a vast army of dry-goods clerks—the “paper-collared” gentry; miners of every description; representatives fromDog Town, Chicken Flats, Busterville, Butchertown, and Seldom Seen—suburbs of Butte; pale, thin individuals who sing and dance in beer-halls; smart society people in high traps and tally-hos; impossible women—so-called (though in Butte no one is more possible), in vast hats and extremely plaid stockings; persons who take things seriously and play the races for a living; “beer-jerkers”; “biscuit-shooters”; soft-voiced Mexicans and Arabians;—the dregs, the élite, the humbly respectable, the off-scouring—all thrown together, and shaken up, and mixed well.One may notice many odd bits of irony as one walks among these. One may notice that the Irishmen are singularly carefree and strong and comfortable—and so jolly! while the Irish women are frumpish and careworn and borne earthward with children. The Cornishman who has consumed the greatest amount of whiskey is the mostagreeable, and less and less inclined to leer and ogle. The Cornish woman whose profanity is the shrillest and most genial and voluble, is she whose life seems the most weighted and downtrodden. The young women whose bodies are encased in the tightest and stiffest corsets are in the most wildly hilarious spirits of all. The filthy little Irish youngsters from Dublin Gulch are much brighter and more clever in every way than the ordinary American children who are less filthy. A delicate aroma of cocktails and whiskey-and-soda hangs over even the four-in-hands and automobiles of the upper crust. Gamblers, newsboys, and Chinamen are the most chivalrously courteous among them. And the modest-looking “plunger” who has drunk the greatest number of high-balls is the most gravely, quietly polite of all. The rolling, rollicking, musical profanity of the “ould sod”—Bantry Bay, Donegal, Tyrone, Tipperary—falls much lesslimpidly from the cigaretted lips of the ten-year-old lad than from those of his mother, who taught it to him. One may notice that the husband and wife who smile the sweetest at each other in the sight of the multitudes are they whose countenances bear various scars and scratches commemorating late evening orgies at home; that the peculiar solid, block-shaped appearance of some of the miners’ wives is due quite as much to the quantity of beer they drink as to their annual maternity; that the one grand ruling passion of some men’s lives is curiosity;—that the entire herd is warped, distorted, barren, having lived its life in smoke-cured Butte.A single street in Butte contains people in nearly every walk of life—living side by side resignedly, if not in peace.In a row of five or six houses there will be living miners and their families, the children of which prevent lifefrom stagnating in the street while their mothers talk to each other—with the inevitable profanity—over the back-fences. On the corner above there will be a mysterious widow with one child, who has suddenly alighted upon the neighborhood, stealthily in the night, and is to be seen at rare intervals emerging from her door—the target for dozens of pairs of eager eyes and half as many eager tongues. And when the mysterious widow, with her one child, disappears some night as suddenly and as stealthily as she appeared, an outburst of highly-colored rumors is tossed with astonishing glibness over the various back-fences—all relating to the mysterious widow’s shady antecedents and past history, to those of her child, and to the cause of her sudden departure,—no two of which rumors agree in any particular. Across on the opposite corner there will be a company of strange people who also descended suddenly, and upon whom theeyes of the entire block are turned with absorbing interest. They consist of half-a-dozen men and women seemingly bound together only by ties of conviviality. The house is kept closely-blinded and quiet all day, only to burst forth in a blaze of revel in the evening, which revel lasts all night. This goes on until some momentous night, at the request of certain proper ones, a police officer glides quietly into the midst of a scene of unusual gaiety—and the festive company melts into oblivion, never to return. They also are then discussed with rapturous relish and in tones properly lowered, over the back-fences. Farther down the street there will live an interesting being of feminine persuasion who has had five divorces and is in course of obtaining another. These divorces, the causes therefor, the justice thereof, and the future prospects of the multi-grass widow, are gone over, in all their bearings, by the indefatigable tongues.Every incident in the history of the street is put through a course of sprouts by these same tireless members. The Jewish family that lives in the poorest house in the neighborhood, and that is said to count its money by the hundred thousands; the aristocratic family with the Irish-point curtains in the windows—that lives on the county; the family whose husband and father gains for it a comfortable livelihood—forging checks; the miner’s family whose wife and mother wastes its substance in diamonds and sealskin coats and other riotous living; the family in extremely straitened circumstances into which new babies arrive in great and distressing numbers; the strange lady with an apoplectic complexion and a wonderfully foul and violent flow of invective—all are discussed over and over and over again. No one is omitted.And so this is Butte, the promiscuous—the Bohemian. And all theseare the Devil’s playthings. They amuse him, doubtless.Butte is a place of sand and barrenness.The souls of these people are dumb.February 4.ALWAYS I wonder, when I die will there be any one to remember me with love?I know I am not lovable.That I want it so much only makes me less lovable, it seems. But—who knows?—it may be there will be some one.My anemone lady does not love me. How can she—since she does not understand me? But she allows me to love her—and that carries me a long way. There are many—oh, a great many—who will not allow you to love them if you would.There is no one to love me now.Always I wonder how it will be after some long years when I find myself about to die.
I HAVE eaten my dinner.
I have had, among other things, fine, rare-broiled porterhouse steak from Omaha, and some fresh, green young onions from California. And just now I am a philosopher, pure and simple—except that there’s nothing very pure about my philosophy, nor yet very simple.
Let the Devil come and go; let the wild waters rush over me; let nations rise and fall; let my favorite theories form themselves in line suddenly and run into the ground; let the little earth be bandied about from one belief to another; but, I say in the midst of my young peripatetic philosophy, I need not be in complete despair—the world still contains things for me, while I have my fine rare porterhouse steak from Omaha—and my fresh green young onions from California.
Fame may pass over my head; money may escape me; my one friend may fail me; every hope may fold its tent and steal away; Happiness may remain a sealed book; every remnant of human ties may vanish; I may find myself an outcast; good things held out to me may suddenly be withdrawn; the stars may go out, one by one; the sun may go dark; yet still I may hold upright my head, if I have but my steak—and my onions.
I may find myself crowded out from many charmed circles; I may find the ethical world too small to contain me; the social world may also exclude me; the professional world may know me not; likewise the worlds of the arts and the sciences; I may find myself superfluous in literary haunts; I may see myself going gladly back to the vile dust from whence I sprung—to live in a green forest like the melancholy Jacques; but fare they well, I will say with what cheerfulness I can summon,while I have my steak—and my onions.
Possibly I may grow old and decrepit; my hair may turn gray; my bones may become rheumatic; I may grow weak in the knees; my ankle-joints which have withstood many a peripatetic journey may develop dropsical tendencies; my heart may miss a beat now and then; my lungs may begin to fight shy of wintry blasts; my eyes may fail me; my figure that is now in its slim gracefulness may swathe itself in layers of flesh, or worse, it may wither and decay and stoop at the shoulders; my red blood may flow sluggishly; but if I still have left teeth to eat with, why need I lament while I have my steak—and my onions?
I am obscure; I am morbid; I am unhappy; my life is made up of Nothingness; I want everything and I have nothing; I have been made to feel the “lure of green things growing,” and I have been made to feel also that somethingof them is withheld from me; I have felt the deadly tiredness that is among the birthrights of a human being; but with it all the Devil has given me a philosophy of my own—the Devil has enabled me to count, if need be, the world well lost for a fine rare porterhouse steak—and some green young onions.
For which I thank thee, Devil, profoundly.
Who says the Devil is not your friend? Who says the Devil does not believe in the all-merciful Law of Compensation?
And so it is—do you see?—that all things look different after a satisfying dinner, that the color of the world changes, that life in fact resolves itself into two things: a fine rare-broiled porterhouse steak from Omaha, and some fresh green young onions from California.
I AM charmingly original. I am delightfully refreshing. I am startlingly Bohemian. I am quaintly interesting—the while in my sleeve I may be smiling and smiling—and a villain. I can talk to a roomful of dull people and compel their interest, admiration, and astonishment. I do this sometimes for my own amusement. As I have said, I am a rather plain-featured, insignificant-looking genius, but I have a graceful personality. I have a pretty figure. I am well set up. And when I choose to talk in my charmingly original fashion, embellishing my conversation with many quaint lies, I have a certain very noticeable way with me, an “air.”
It is well, if one has nothing else, to acquire an air. And an air taken in conjunction with my charming originality, my delightfully refreshing candor,is something powerful and striking in its way.
I do not, however, exert myself often in this way; partly because I can sometimes foresee, from the character of the assembled company, that my performance will not have the desired effect—for I am a genius, and genius at close range at times carries itself unconsciously to the point where it becomes so interesting that it is atrocious, and can not be carried farther without having somewhat mildly disastrous results; and then, again, the facial antics of some ten or a dozen persons possessed more or less of the qualities of the genus fool—even they become tiresome after a while.
Always I talk about myself on an occasion of this kind. Indeed, my conversation is on all occasions devoted directly or indirectly to myself.
When I talk on the subject of ethics, I talk of it as it is related to Mary MacLane.
When I give out broad-minded opinions aboutNinon de l’Enclos, I demonstrate her relative position to Mary MacLane!
When I discourse liberally on the subject of the married relation, I talk of it only as it will affect Mary MacLane.
An interesting creature, Mary MacLane.
As a matter of fact, it is so with every one, only every one is far from realizing and acknowledging it. And I have not lacked listeners, though these people do not appreciate me. They do not realize that I am a genius.
I am of womankind and of nineteen years. I am able to stand off and gaze critically and dispassionately at myself and my relation to my environment, to the world, to everything the world contains. I am able to judge whether I am good and whether I am bad. I am able, indeed, to tell what I am and where I stand. I can see far, far inward. I am a genius.
Charlotte Bronté did this in some degree, and she was a genius; and also Marie Bashkirtseff, and Olive Schreiner, and George Eliot. They are all geniuses.
And so, then, I am a genius—a genius in my own right.
I am fundamentally, organically egotistic. My vanity and self-conceit have attained truly remarkable development as I’ve walked and walked in the loneliness of the sand and barrenness. Not the least remarkable part of it is that I know my egotism and vanity thoroughly—thoroughly, and plume myself thereon.
These are the ear-marks of a genius—and of a fool. There is a finely-drawn line between a genius and a fool. Often this line is overstepped and your fool becomes a genius, or your genius becomes a fool.
It is but a tiny step.
There’s but a tiny step between the great and the little, the tender and thecontemptuous, the sublime and the ridiculous, the aggressive and the humble, the paradise and the perdition.
And so is it between the genius and the fool.
I am a genius.
I am not prepared to say how many times I may overstep the finely-drawn line, or how many times I have already overstepped it. ’Tis a matter of small moment.
I have entered into certain things marvelously deep. I know things, I know that I know them, and I know that I know that I know them, which is a fine psychological point.
It is magnificent of me to have gotten so far, at the age of nineteen, with no training other than that of the sand and barrenness. Magnificent—do you hear?
Very often I take this fact in my hand and squeeze it hard like an orange, to get the sweet, sweet juice from it. I squeeze a great deal ofjuice from it every day, and every day the juice is renewed, like the vitals of Prometheus. And so I squeeze and squeeze, and drink the juice, and try to be satisfied.
Yes, you may gaze long and curiously at theportraitin the front of this book. It is of one who is a genius of egotism and analysis, a genius who is awaiting the Devil’s coming,—a genius, with a wondrous liver within.
I shall tell you more about this liver, I think, before I have done.
I CAN remember a time long, oh, very long ago. That is the time when I was a child. It is ten or a dozen years ago.
Or is it a thousand years ago?
It is when you have but just parted from your friend that he seems farthest from you. When I have lived several more years the time when I was a child will not seem so far behind me.
Just now it is frightfully far away. It is so far away that I can see it plainly outlined on the horizon.
It is there always for me to look at. And when I look I can feel the tears deep within me—a salt ocean of tears that roll and surge and swell bitterly in a dull, mad anguish, and never come to the surface.
I do not know which is the more weirdly and damnably pathetic: I when I was a child, or I when I am grown toa woman, young and all alone. I weigh the question coldly and logically, but my logic trembles with rage and grief and unhappiness.
When I was a child I lived in Canada and in Minnesota. I was a little wild savage. In Minnesota there were swamps where I used to wet my feet in the spring, and there were fields of tall grass where I would lie flat on my stomach in company with lizards and little garter snakes. And there were poplar leaves that turned their pale green backs upward on a hot afternoon, and soon there would be terrific thunder and lightning and rain. And there were robins that sang at dawn. These things stay with one always. And there were children with whom I used to play and fight.
I was tanned and sunburned, and I had an unkempt appearance. My face was very dirty. The original pattern of my frock was invariably lost in layers and vistas of the native soil. Myhair was braided or else it flew about, a tangled maze, according as I could be caught by some one and rubbed and straightened before I ran away for the day. My hands were little and strong and brown, and wrought much mischief. I came and went at my own pleasure. I ate what I pleased; I went to bed all in my own good time; I tramped wherever my stubborn little feet chose. I was impudent; I was contrary; I had an extremely bad temper; I was hard-hearted; I was full of infantile malice. Truly I was a vicious little beast.
I was a little piece of untrained Nature.
And I am unable to judge which is the more savagely forlorn: the starved-hearted child, or the woman, young and all alone.
The little wild stubborn child felt things and wanted things. She did not know that she felt things and wanted things.
Now I feel and I want things and I know it with burning vividness.
The little vicious Mary MacLane suffered, but she did not know that she suffered. Yet that did not make the suffering less.
And she reached out with a little sunburned hand to touch and take something.
But the sunburned little hand remained empty. There was nothing for it. No one had anything to put into it.
The little wild creature wanted to be loved; she wanted something to put in her hungry little heart.
But no one had anything to put into a hungry little heart.
No one said “dear.”
The little vicious child was the only MacLane, and she felt somewhat alone. But there, after all, were the lizards and the little garter snakes.
The wretched, hardened little piece of untrained Nature has grown and developed into a woman, young and alone.For the child there was a Nothingness, and for the woman there is a great Nothingness.
Perhaps the Devil will bring me something in my lonely womanhood to put in my wooden heart.
But the time when I was a child will never come again. It is gone—gone. I may live through some long, long years, but nothing like it will ever come. For there is nothing like it.
It is a life by itself. It has naught to do with philosophy, or with genius, or with heights and depths, or with the red sunset sky, or with the Devil.
These come later.
The time of the child is a thing apart. It is the Planting and Seed-time. It is the Beginning of things. It decides whether there shall be brightness or bitterness in the long after-years.
I have left that time far enough behind me. It will never come back. And it had a Nothingness—do youhear, aNothingness! Oh, the pity of it! the pity of it!
Do you know why it is that I look back to the horizon at the figure of an unkempt, rough child, and why I feel a surging torrent of tears and anguish and despair?
I feel more than that indeed, but I have no words to tell it.
I shall have to miss forever some beautiful, wonderful things because of that wretched, lonely childhood.
There will always be a lacking, a wanting—some dead branches that never grew leaves.
It is not deaths and murders and plots and wars that make life tragedy.
It is Nothing that makes life tragedy.
It is day after day, and year after year, and Nothing.
It is a sunburned little hand reached out and Nothing put into it.
I SIT at my window and look out upon the housetops and chimneys of Butte. As I look I have a weary, disgusted feeling.
People are abominable creatures.
Under each of the roofs live a man and woman joined together by that very slender thread, the marriage ceremony—and their children, the result of the marriage ceremony.
How many of them love each other? Not two in a hundred, I warrant. The marriage ceremony is their one miserable, petty, paltry excuse for living together.
This marriage rite, it appears, is often used as a cloak to cover a world of rather shameful things.
How virtuous these people are, to be sure, under their different roof-trees. So virtuous are they indeed that they are able to draw themselves up in thepride of their own purity, when they happen upon some corner where the marriage ceremony is lacking. So virtuous are they that the men can afford to find amusement and diversion in the woes of the corner that is without the marriage rite; and the women may draw away their skirts in shocked horror and wonder that such things can be, in view of their own spotless virtue.
And so they live on under the roofs, and they eat and work and sleep and die; and the children grow up and seek other roofs, and call upon the marriage ceremony even as their parents before them—and then they likewise eat and work and sleep and die; and so on world without end.
This also is life—the life of the good, virtuous Christians.
I think, therefore, that I should prefer some life that is not virtuous.
I shall never make use of the marriage ceremony. I hereby register a vow, Devil, to that effect.
When a man and a woman love one another that is enough. That is marriage. A religious rite is superfluous. And if the man and woman live together without the love, no ceremony in the world can make it marriage. The woman who does this need not feel the tiniest bit better than her lowest sister in the streets. Is she not indeed a step lower since she pretends to be what she is not—plays the virtuous woman? While the other unfortunate pretends nothing. She wears her name on her sleeve.
If I were obliged to be one of these I would rather be she who wears her name on her sleeve. I certainly would. The lesser of two evils, always.
I can think of nothing in the world like the utter littleness, the paltriness, the contemptibleness, the degradation, of the woman who is tied down under a roof with a man who is really nothing to her; who wears the man’s name, who bears the man’s children—who playsthe virtuous woman. There are too many such in the world now.
May I never, I say, become that abnormal, merciless animal, that deformed monstrosity—a virtuous woman.
Anything, Devil, but that.
And so, as I look out over the roofs and chimneys, I have a weary, disgusted feeling.
THIS is not a diary. It is a Portrayal. It is my inner life shown in its nakedness. I am trying my utmost to show everything—to reveal every petty vanity and weakness, every phase of feeling, every desire. It is a remarkably hard thing to do, I find, to probe my soul to its depths, to expose its shades and half-lights.
Not that I am troubled with modesty or shame. Why should one be ashamed of anything?
But there are elements in one’s mental equipment so vague, so opaque, so undefined—how is one to grasp them? I have analyzed and analyzed, and I have gotten down to some extremely fine points—yet still there are things upon my own horizon that go beyond me.
There are feelings that rise and rush over me overwhelmingly. I am helpless,crushed, and defeated, before them. It is as if they were written on the walls of my soul-chamber in an unknown language.
My soul goes blindly seeking, seeking, asking. Nothing answers. I cry out after some unknown Thing with all the strength of my being; every nerve and fiber in my young woman’s-body and my young woman’s-soul reaches and strains in anguished unrest. At times as I hurry over my sand and barrenness all my life’s manifold passions culminate in utter rage and woe. Waves of intense, hopeless longing rush over me and envelop me round and round. My heart, my soul, my mind go wandering—wandering; ploughing their way through darkness with never a ray of light; groping with helpless hands; asking, longing, wanting things: pursued by a Demon of Unrest.
I shall go mad—I shall go mad, I say over and over to myself.
But no. No one goes mad. TheDevil does not propose to release any one from a so beautifully-wrought, artistic damnation. He looks to it that one’s senses are kept fully intact, and he fastens to them with steel chains the Demon of Unrest.
It hurts—oh, it tortures me in the days and days! But when the Devil brings me my Happiness I will forgive him all this.
When my Happiness is given me, the Unrest will still be with me, I doubt not, but the Happiness will change the tenor of it, will make it an instrument of joy, will clasp hands with it and mingle itself with it,—the while I, with my wooden heart, my woman’s-body, my mind, my soul, shall be in transports. I shall be filled with pleasure so deep and pain so intense that my being’s minutest nerve will reel and stagger in intoxication, will go drunk with the fullness of Life.
When my Happiness is given me I shall live centuries in the hours. And we shall all grow old rapidly,—I andmy wooden heart, and my woman’s-body, and my mind, and my soul. Sorrow may age one in some degree. But Happiness—the real Happiness—rolls countless years off from one’s finger-tips in a single moment, and each year leaves its impress.
It is true that life is a tragedy to those who feel. When my Happiness is given me life will be an ineffable, a nameless thing.
It will seethe and roar; it will plunge and whirl; it will leap and shriek in convulsion; it will guiver in delicate fantasy; it will writhe and twist; it will glitter and flash and shine; it will sing gently; it will shout in exquisite excitement; it will vibrate to the roots like a great oak in a storm; it will dance; it will glide; it will gallop; it will rush; it will swell and surge; it will fly; it will soar high—high; it will go down into depths unexplored; it will rage and rave; it will yell in utter joy; it will melt; it will blaze; it will ride triumphant;it will grovel in the dust of entire pleasure; it will sound out like a terrific blare of trumpets; it will chime faintly, faintly like the remote tinkling notes of a harp; it will sob and grieve and weep; it will revel and carouse; it will shrink; it will go in pride; it will lie prone like the dead; it will floatbuoyantlyon air; it will moan, shiver, burst—oh, it will reek with Love and Light!
The words of the English language are futile. There are no words in it, or in any other, to express an idea of that thing which would be my life in its Happiness.
The words I have written describe it, it is true,—but confusedly and inadequately.
But words are for everyday use.
When it comes my turn to meet face to face the unspeakable vision of the Happy Life I shall be rendered dumb.
But the rains of my feeling will come in torrents!
I AM an artist of the most artistic, the highest type. I have uncovered for myself the art that lies in obscure shadows. I have discovered the art of the day of small things.
And that surely is art with a capital “A.”
I have acquired the art of Good Eating. Usually it is in the gray and elderly forties and fifties that people cultivate this art—if they ever do; it is indeed a rare art.
But I know it in all its rare exquisiteness at the young slim age of nineteen—which is one more mark of my genius, do you see?
The art of Good Eating has two essential points: one must eat only when one is hungry, and one must take small bites.
There are persons who eat for the sake of eating. They are gourmands,and partake of the natures of the pig and the buzzard. There are persons who take bites that are not small. These also are gourmands and partake of the natures of the pig and the buzzard. There are persons who can enjoy nothing in the way of eating except a luxurious, well-appointed meal. These, it is safe to say, have not acquired the art of anything.
But I—I have acquired the art of eating an olive.
Now listen, and I will tell you the art of eating an olive:
I take the olive in my fingers, and I contemplate its green oval richness. It makes me think at once of the land where the green citron grows—where the cypress and myrtle are emblems; of the land of the Sun where human beings are delightfully, enchantingly wicked,—where the men are eager and passionate, and the women gracefully developed in mind and in body—and their two breasts show round and fulland delicately veined beneath thin drapery.
The mere sight of the olive conjures up this charming picture in my mind.
I set my teeth and my tongue upon the olive, and bite it. It is bitter, salt, delicious. The saliva rushes to meet it, and my tongue is a happy tongue. As the morsel of olive rests in my mouth and is crunched and squeezed lusciously among my teeth, a quick, temporary change takes place in my character. I think of some adorable lines of the Persian poet: “Give thyself up to Joy, for thy Grief will be infinite. The stars shall again meet together at the same point in the firmament, but of thy body shall bricks be made for a palace wall.”
“Oh, dear, sweet, bitter olive!” I say to myself.
The bit of olive slips down my red gullet, and so into my stomach. There it meets with a joyous welcome. Gastric juices leap out from the walls andswathe it in loving embrace. My stomach is fond of something bitter and salt. It lavishes flattery and endearment galore upon the olive. It laughs in silent delight. It feels that the day it has long waited for has come. The philosophy of my stomach is wholly epicurean. Let it receive but a tiny bit of olive and it will reck not of the morrow, nor of the past. It lives, voluptuously, in the present. It is content. It is in paradise.
I bite the olive again. Again the bitter salt crisp ravishes my tongue. “If this be vanity,—vanity let it be.” The golden moments flit by and I heed them not. For am I not comfortably seated and eating an olive? Go hang yourself, you who have never been comfortably seated and eating an olive! My character evolves farther in its change. I am now bent on reckless sensuality, let happen what will. The fair earth seems to resolve itself into a thing oval and crisp and good andgreen and deliciously salt. I experience a feeling of fervent gladness that I am a female thing living, and that I have a tongue and some teeth, and salivary glands.
Also this bit slips down my red gullet, and again the festive Stomach lifts up a silent voice in psalms and rejoicing. It is now an absolute monarchy with the green olive at its head. The kisses of the gastric juice become hot and sensual and convulsive and ecstatic. “Avaunt, pale, shadowy ghosts of dyspepsia!” says my Stomach. “I know you not. I am of a brilliant, shining world. I dwell in Elysian fields.”
Once more I bite the olive. Once more is my tongue electrified. And the third stage in my temporary transformation takes place. I am now a gross but supremely contented sensualist. An exquisite symphony of sensualism and pleasure seems to play somewhere within me. My heart purrs. My brain folds its arms and lounges. Iput my feet up on the seat of another chair. The entire world is now surely one delicious green olive. My mind is capable of conceiving but one idea—that of a green olive. Therefore the green olive is a perfect thing—absolutely a perfect thing.
Disgust and disapproval are excited only by imperfections. When a thing is perfect, no matter how hard one may look at it, one can see only itself—itself, and nothing beyond.
And so I have made my olive and my art perfect.
Well, then, this third bit of olive slides down the willing gullet into my stomach. “And then my heart with pleasure fills.” The play of the gastric secretions is now marvelous. It is the meeting of the waters! It were well, ah, how well, if the hearts of the world could mingle in peace, as the gastric juices mingle at the coming of a green olive into my stomach! “Paradise! Paradise!” says my Stomach.
Every drop of blood in my passionate veins is resting. Through my stomach—mystomach, do you hear—my soul seems to feel the infinite. The minutes are flying. Shortly it will be over. But just now I am safe. I am entirely satisfied. I want nothing, nothing.
My inner quiet is infinite. I am conscious that it is but momentary, and it matters not. On the contrary, the knowledge of this fact renders the present quiet—the repose, more limitless, more intense.
Where now, Devil, is your damnation? If this be damnation, damnation let it be! If this be the human fall, then how good it is to be fallen! At this moment I would fain my fall were like yours, Lucifer, “never to hope again.”
And so, bite by bite, the olive enters into my body and soul. Each bite brings with it a recurring wave of sensation and charm.
No. We will not dispute with thebrilliant mind that declared life a tragedy to those who feel. We will let that stand. However, there are parts of the tragedy that are not tragic. There are parts that admit of a turning aside.
As the years pass, one after another, I shall continue to eat. And as I eat I shall have my quiet, my brief period of aberration.
This is the art of Eating.
I have acquired it by means of self-examination, analyzing—analyzing—analyzing. Truly my genius is analytical. And it enables me to endure—if also to feel bitterly—the heavy, heavy weight of life.
What a worm of misery I should be were it not for these bursts of philosophy, these turnings aside!
If it please the Devil, one day I may have Happiness. That will be all-sufficient. I shall then analyze no more. I shall be a different being.
But meanwhile I shall eat.
When the last of the olive vanishes into the stomach, when it is there reduced to animated chyme, when I play with the olive-seed in my fingers, when I lean back in my chair and straighten out my spinal column,—oh, then do you not envy me, you fine, brave world, who are not a philosopher, who have not discovered the art of the small things, who have not conscious chyme in your stomach, who have not acquired the art of Good Eating!
AS I read over now and then what I have written of my Portrayal I have alternate periods of hope and despair. At times I think I am succeeding admirably—and again, what I have written compared to what I have felt seems vapid and tame. Who has not felt the futility of words when one would express feelings?
I take this hope and despair as another mark of genius. Genius, apart from natural sensitiveness, is prone equally to unreasoning joy and to bitterest morbidness.
I am more than fond of writing, though I have hours when I can not write any more than I could paint a picture, or play Wagner as it should be played.
I think my style of writing has a wonderful intensity in it, and it is admirably suited to the creature it portrays.What sort of Portrayal of myself would I produce if I wrote with the long, elaborate periods of Henry James, or with the pleasant, ladylike phrasing of Howells? It would be rather like a little tin phonograph trolling out flowery poetry at breakneck speed, or like a deep-toned church organ pouring forth “Goo-Goo Eyes” with ponderous feeling.
When I read a book I study it carefully to find whether the authorknows things, and whether I could, with the same subject, write a better one myself.
The latter question I usually decide in the affirmative.
The highest thing one can do in literature is to succeed in saying that thing which one meant to say. There is nothing better than that—to make the world see your thoughts as you see them. Eugene Field and Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Louis Stevenson and Charles Dickens, among others, have succeeded in doing this. They impressthe world with a sense of their courage and realness.
There are people who have written books which did not impress the world in this way, but which nevertheless came out of the feeling and fullness of zealous hearts. Always I think of that pathetic, artless little old-fashioned thing, “Jane Eyre,” as a picture shown to a world seeing with distorted vision. Charlotte Bronté meant one thing when she wrote the book, and the world after a time suddenly understood a quite different thing, and heaped praise and applause upon her therefor. When I read the book I was not quite able to see just what the message was that the Bronté intended to send out. But I saw that there was a message—of bravery, perhaps, or of that good which may come out of Nazareth. But the world that praised and applauded and gave her money seems totally to have missed it.
It takes centuries of tears and pietyand mourning to move this world a tiny bit.
But still it will give you praise and applause and money if you will prostitute your sensibilities and emotions for the gratification of it.
I have no message to hide in a book and send out. I am writing a Portrayal.
But a Portrayal is also a thing that may be misunderstood.
AN IDLE brain is the Devil’s workshop, they say. It is an absurdly incongruous statement. If the Devil is at work in a brain it certainly is not idle. And when one considers how brilliant a personage the Devil is, and what very fine work he turns out, it becomes an open question whether he would have the slightest use for most of the idle brains that cumber the earth. But, after all, the Devil is so clever that he could produce unexcelled workmanship with even the poorest tools.
My brain is one kind of devil’s workshop, and it is as incessantly hard-worked and always-busy a one as you could imagine.
It is a devil’s workshop, indeed, only I do the work myself. But there is a mental telegraphy between the Devil and me, which accounts for the fact thatmany of my ideas are so wonderfully groomed and perfumed and colored. I take no credit to myself for this, though, as I say, I do the work myself.
I try always to give the Devil his due—and particularly in this Portrayal.
There are very few who give the Devil his due in this world of hypocrites.
I never think of the Devil as that atrocious creature in red tights, with cloven hoofs and a tail and a two-tined fork. I think of him rather as an extremely fascinating, strong, steel-willed person in conventional clothes—a man with whom to fall completely, madly in love. I rather think, I believe, that he is incarnate at times. Why not?
Periodically I fall completely, madly in love with the Devil. He is so fascinating, so strong—so strong, exactly the sort of man whom my wooden heart awaits. I would like to throw myself at his head. I would make him a dear little wife. He would love me—he would love me. I would be in raptures. And I would love him, oh, madly, madly!
“What would you have me do, little MacLane?” the Devil would say.
“I would have you conquer me, crush me, know me,” I would answer.
“What shall I say to you?” the Devil would ask.
“Say to me, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you,’ in your strong, steel, fascinating voice. Say it to me often, always—a million times.”
“What would you have me do, little MacLane?” he would say again.
I would answer: “Hurt me, burn me, consume me with hot love, shake me violently, embrace me hard,hardin your strong, steel arms, kiss me with wonderful burning kisses—press your lips to mine with passion, and your soul and mine would meet then in an anguish of joy for me!”
“How shall I treat you, little MacLane?”
“Treat me cruelly, brutally.”
“How long shall I stay with you?”
“Through the life everlasting—it will be as one day; or for one day—it will be as the life everlasting.”
“And what kind of children will you bear me, little MacLane?” he would say.
“I will bear wonderful, beautiful children—with great pain.”
“But you hate pain,” the Devil will say, “and when you are in your pain you will hate me.”
“But no,” I will answer, “pain that comes of you whom I love will be ineffable exaltation.”
“And how will you treat me, little MacLane?”
“I will cast myself at your feet; or I will minister to you with divine tenderness; or I will charm you with fantastic deviltry; when you weep, I will melt into tears; when you rejoice, I will go wild with delight; when you go deaf I will stop my ears; when you go blindI will put out my eyes; when you go lame I will cut off my legs. Oh, I will be divinely dear, unutterably sweet!”
“Indeed you are rarely sweet,” the Devil will say. And I will be in transports.
Oh, Devil, Devil, Devil!
Oh, misery,miseryof Nothingness!
The days are long—long and very weary as I await the Devil’s coming.
TO-DAY as I walked out I was impressed deeply with the wonderful beautifulness of Nature even in her barrenness. The far-distant mountains had that high, pure, transparent look, and the nearer ones were transformed completely with a wistful, beseeching attitude that reminded me of my life. It was late in the afternoon. As the sun lowered, the pure lavender of the far-away hills was tinted with faint-rose, and the gray of the nearer ones with sun-color. And the sand—my sand and barrenness—almost flushed consciously in its wide, mysterious magnitude. In the sky there was a white cloud. The sky was blue—blue almost as when I was a child. The air was very gentle. The earth seemed softened. There was an indefinite, caressing something over all that went into my soul and stirred it,and hurt it. There was that in the air which is there when something is going to happen. Only nothing ever happens. It is rare, I thought, that my sand and barrenness looks like this. I crouched on the ground, and the wondrous calm and beauty of the natural things awed and moved me with strange, still emotions.
I felt, and gazed about me, and felt again. And everything was very still.
Presently my eyes filled quietly with tears.
I bent my head into the breast of a great gray rock. Oh, my soul, my soul, I said over and over, not with passion. It is so divine—the earth is so beautiful, so untainted—and I, what am I? It was so beautiful that now as I write, and it comes over me again, I can not restrain the tears.
Tears are not common.
I felt my wooden heart, my soul, quivering and sobbing with their unknown wanting. This is my soul’sawakening. Ah, the pain of my soul’s awakening! Is there nothing,nothingto help this pain? I am so lonely, so lonely—Fannie Corbin, my one friend, my dearly-loved anemone lady, I want you so much—why aren’t you here! I want to feel your hand with mine as I felt it sometimes before you went away. You are the only one among a worldful of people to care a little—and I love you with all the strength and worship I can give to the things that are beautiful and true. You are the only one, the only one—and my soul is full of pain, and I am sitting alone on the ground, and my head lies on a rock’sbreast.—
Strange, sweet passions stirred and waked somewhere deep within me as I sat shivering on the ground. And I felt them singing far away, as if their faint voices came out of that limitless deep, deep blue above me; and it was like a choir of spirit-voices, and they sang of love and of light and of deartender dreams, and of my soul’s awakening. Why is this—and what is it that is hurting so? Is it because I am young, or is it because I am alone, or because I am a woman?
Oh, it is a hard and bitter thing to be a woman! And why—why? Is woman so foul a creature that she must needs be purged by this infinite pain?
The choir of faint, sweet voices comes to me incessantly out of the blue. My wooden heart and my soul are listening to them intently. The voices are trying hard to tell me, to help me, but I can not understand. I know only that it is about pure, exalted things, and about the all-abiding love that is somewhere; and it is about the earth-love, and about Truth,—but I can not understand. And the voices sing of me the child—a song of the unloved, starved little being; and a song of the unloved, half-grown creature; and a song of me, a woman and all alone—awaiting the Devil’s coming.
Oh, my soul—my soul!
A female snake is born out of its mother’s white egg, and lives awhile in content among weeds and grass, and dies.
A female dog lives some years, and has bones thrown at her, and sometimes she receives a kick or a blow, and a dog-house to sleep in, and dies.
A female bird has a nest, and worms to eat, and goes south in the winter, and presently she dies.
A female toad has a swamp or a garden, some bugs and flies, contentment—and then she dies.
And each of these has a male thing with her for a time, and soon there are little snakes or little dogs for her to love as much as it is given her to love—she can do no more.
And they are fortunate with their little snakes and little dogs.
A female human being is born out of her mother’s fair body, branded with a strange, plague-tainted name, and letgo; and lives awhile, and dies. But before she dies she awakes. There is a pain that goes with it.
And the male thing that is with her for a time is unlike a snake or a dog. It is more like a man, and there is another pain for this.
And when a little human being comes with a soul of its own there must be another awakening, for she has then reached the best and highest state that any human being can reach, though she is a female human being, and plague-tainted. And here also there is heavy soul-pain.
The name—the plague-tainted name branded upon her—means woman.
I lifted my head from the breast of the gray rock. The tears had been falling, falling. Tears are so strange! Tears from the dried-up fountain of nineteen years are like drops of water wrung out of stone. Suddenly I got up from the ground and ran quickly over the sand for several minutes. I did notdare look again at the hilltops and the deep blue, nor listen again to the voices.
Oh, with it all, I am a coward! I shrink and cringe before the pain of the dazzling lights. Yet I am waiting—longing for the most dazzling light of all: the coming of the Devil.
OH, THE wretched bitter loneliness of me!
In all the deep darkness, and the silence, there is never a faint human light, never a voice!
How can I bear it—how can I bear it!
I HAVE been looking over the confessions of the Bashkirtseff. They are indeed rather like my Portrayal, but they are not so interesting, nor so intense. I have a stronger individuality than Marie Bashkirtseff, though her mind was probably in a higher state of development than mine, even when she was younger than I.
Most of her emotions are vacillating and inconsistent. She worships a God one day and blasphemes him the next. She never loves her God. And why, then, does she have a God? Why does she not abandon him altogether? He seems to be of no use to her—except as a convenient thing on which to fasten the blame for her misfortunes.—And, after all, that is something very useful indeed.—And she loves the people about her one day, and the next day she hates them.
But in her great passion—her ambition, Marie Bashkirtseff was beautifully consistent. And what terrific storms of woe and despair must have enveloped her when she knew that within a certain period she would be dead—removed from the world, and her work left undone! The time kept creeping nearer—she must have tasted the bitterness of death indeed. She was sure of success, sure that her high-strained ambition would be gratified to its last vestige—and then, to die! It was certainly hard lines for the little Bashkirtseff.
My own despair is of an opposite nature.
There is one thing in the world that is more bitter than death—and that is life.
Suppose that I learned I was to die on the twenty-seventh of June, 1903, for instance. It would give me a soft warm wave of pleasure, I think. I might be in the depths of woe at thetime; my despair might be the despair of despair; my misery utterly unceasing,—and I could say, Never mind, on the twenty-seventh of June, 1903, all will be over—dull misery, rage, Nothingness, obscurity, the unknown longing, every desire of my soul, all the pain—ended inevitably, completely on the twenty-seventh of June, 1903. I might come upon a new pain, but this, my long old torture, would cease.
You may say that I might end my life on that day, that I might do so now. I certainly shall if the pain becomes greater than I can bear—for what else is there to do? But I shall be far from satisfied in doing so. What if I were to end everything now—when perhaps the Devil may be coming to me in two years’ time with Happiness?
Upon dying it might be that I should go to some wondrous fair country where there would be trees and running water, and a resting-place. Well—oh, well! But I want the earthly Happiness.I am not high-minded and spiritual. I am earthly, human—sensitive, sensuous, sensual, and, ah, dear, my soul wants its earthly Happiness!
I can not bring myself to the point of suicide while there is a possibility of Happiness remaining. But if I knew that irrevocable, inevitable death awaited me on June twenty-seventh, 1903, I should be satisfied. My Happiness might come before that time, or it might not. I should be satisfied. I should know that my life was out of my hands. I should know, above all, that my long, long, old, old pain of loneliness would stop, June twenty-seventh, 1903.
I shall die naturally some day—probably after I have grown old and sour. If I have had my Happiness for a year or a day, well and good. I shall be content to grow as old and as sour as the Devil wills. But having had no Happiness—if I find myself growing old andstill no Happiness—oh, then I vow I will not live another hour, even if dying were rushing headlong to damnation!
I am, do you see, a philosopher and a coward—with the philosophy of cowardice. I squeeze juice also from this fact sometimes—but the juice is not sweet juice.
The Devil—the fascinating man-devil—it may be, is coming, coming, coming.
And meanwhile I go on and on, in the midst of sand and barrenness.
THE town of Butte presents a wonderful field to a student of humanity and human nature. There are not a great many people—seventy thousand perhaps—but those seventy thousand are in their way unparalleled. For mixture, for miscellany—variedness, Bohemianism—where is Butte’s rival?
The population is not only of all nationalities and stations, but the nationalities and stations mix and mingle promiscuously with each other, and are partly concealed and partly revealed in the mazes of a veneer that belongs neither to nation nor to station, but to Butte.
The nationalities are many, it is true, but Irish and Cornish predominate. My acquaintance extends widely among the inhabitants of Butte. Sometimes when I feel in the mood for it I spendan afternoon in visiting about among divers curious people.
At some Fourth of July demonstration, or on a Miners’ Union day, the heterogeneous herd turns out—and I turn out, with the herd and of it, and meditate and look on. There are Irishmen—Kelleys, Caseys, Calahans, staggering under the weight of much whiskey, shouting out their green-isle maxims; there is the festive Cornishman, ogling and leering, greeting his fellow-countrymen with alcoholic heartiness, and gazing after every feminine creature with lustful eyes; there are Irish women swearing genially at each other in shrill pleasantry, and five or six loudly-vociferous children for each; there are round-faced Cornish women likewise, each with her train of children; there are suave, sleek sporting men just out of the bath-tub; insignificant lawyers, dentists, messengerboys; “plungers” without number; greasy Italians from Meaderville;greasier French people from theBoulevardeAddition; ancient miners—each of whom was the first to stake a claim in Butte; starved-looking Chinamen here and there; a contingent of Finns and Swedes and Germans; musty, stuffy old Jew pawn-brokers who have crawled out of their holes for a brief recreation; dirt-encrusted Indians and squaws in dirty, gay blankets, from their flea-haunted camp below the town; “box-rustlers”—who are as common in Butte as bar-maids in Ireland; swell, flashy-looking Africans; respectable women with white aprons tied around their waists and sailor-hats on their heads, who have left the children at home and stepped out to see what was going on; innumerable stray youngsters from the dark haunts of Dublin Gulch; heavy restaurant-keepers with toothpicks in their mouths; a vast army of dry-goods clerks—the “paper-collared” gentry; miners of every description; representatives fromDog Town, Chicken Flats, Busterville, Butchertown, and Seldom Seen—suburbs of Butte; pale, thin individuals who sing and dance in beer-halls; smart society people in high traps and tally-hos; impossible women—so-called (though in Butte no one is more possible), in vast hats and extremely plaid stockings; persons who take things seriously and play the races for a living; “beer-jerkers”; “biscuit-shooters”; soft-voiced Mexicans and Arabians;—the dregs, the élite, the humbly respectable, the off-scouring—all thrown together, and shaken up, and mixed well.
One may notice many odd bits of irony as one walks among these. One may notice that the Irishmen are singularly carefree and strong and comfortable—and so jolly! while the Irish women are frumpish and careworn and borne earthward with children. The Cornishman who has consumed the greatest amount of whiskey is the mostagreeable, and less and less inclined to leer and ogle. The Cornish woman whose profanity is the shrillest and most genial and voluble, is she whose life seems the most weighted and downtrodden. The young women whose bodies are encased in the tightest and stiffest corsets are in the most wildly hilarious spirits of all. The filthy little Irish youngsters from Dublin Gulch are much brighter and more clever in every way than the ordinary American children who are less filthy. A delicate aroma of cocktails and whiskey-and-soda hangs over even the four-in-hands and automobiles of the upper crust. Gamblers, newsboys, and Chinamen are the most chivalrously courteous among them. And the modest-looking “plunger” who has drunk the greatest number of high-balls is the most gravely, quietly polite of all. The rolling, rollicking, musical profanity of the “ould sod”—Bantry Bay, Donegal, Tyrone, Tipperary—falls much lesslimpidly from the cigaretted lips of the ten-year-old lad than from those of his mother, who taught it to him. One may notice that the husband and wife who smile the sweetest at each other in the sight of the multitudes are they whose countenances bear various scars and scratches commemorating late evening orgies at home; that the peculiar solid, block-shaped appearance of some of the miners’ wives is due quite as much to the quantity of beer they drink as to their annual maternity; that the one grand ruling passion of some men’s lives is curiosity;—that the entire herd is warped, distorted, barren, having lived its life in smoke-cured Butte.
A single street in Butte contains people in nearly every walk of life—living side by side resignedly, if not in peace.
In a row of five or six houses there will be living miners and their families, the children of which prevent lifefrom stagnating in the street while their mothers talk to each other—with the inevitable profanity—over the back-fences. On the corner above there will be a mysterious widow with one child, who has suddenly alighted upon the neighborhood, stealthily in the night, and is to be seen at rare intervals emerging from her door—the target for dozens of pairs of eager eyes and half as many eager tongues. And when the mysterious widow, with her one child, disappears some night as suddenly and as stealthily as she appeared, an outburst of highly-colored rumors is tossed with astonishing glibness over the various back-fences—all relating to the mysterious widow’s shady antecedents and past history, to those of her child, and to the cause of her sudden departure,—no two of which rumors agree in any particular. Across on the opposite corner there will be a company of strange people who also descended suddenly, and upon whom theeyes of the entire block are turned with absorbing interest. They consist of half-a-dozen men and women seemingly bound together only by ties of conviviality. The house is kept closely-blinded and quiet all day, only to burst forth in a blaze of revel in the evening, which revel lasts all night. This goes on until some momentous night, at the request of certain proper ones, a police officer glides quietly into the midst of a scene of unusual gaiety—and the festive company melts into oblivion, never to return. They also are then discussed with rapturous relish and in tones properly lowered, over the back-fences. Farther down the street there will live an interesting being of feminine persuasion who has had five divorces and is in course of obtaining another. These divorces, the causes therefor, the justice thereof, and the future prospects of the multi-grass widow, are gone over, in all their bearings, by the indefatigable tongues.Every incident in the history of the street is put through a course of sprouts by these same tireless members. The Jewish family that lives in the poorest house in the neighborhood, and that is said to count its money by the hundred thousands; the aristocratic family with the Irish-point curtains in the windows—that lives on the county; the family whose husband and father gains for it a comfortable livelihood—forging checks; the miner’s family whose wife and mother wastes its substance in diamonds and sealskin coats and other riotous living; the family in extremely straitened circumstances into which new babies arrive in great and distressing numbers; the strange lady with an apoplectic complexion and a wonderfully foul and violent flow of invective—all are discussed over and over and over again. No one is omitted.
And so this is Butte, the promiscuous—the Bohemian. And all theseare the Devil’s playthings. They amuse him, doubtless.
Butte is a place of sand and barrenness.
The souls of these people are dumb.
ALWAYS I wonder, when I die will there be any one to remember me with love?
I know I am not lovable.
That I want it so much only makes me less lovable, it seems. But—who knows?—it may be there will be some one.
My anemone lady does not love me. How can she—since she does not understand me? But she allows me to love her—and that carries me a long way. There are many—oh, a great many—who will not allow you to love them if you would.
There is no one to love me now.
Always I wonder how it will be after some long years when I find myself about to die.