Part 1 of The Story of Mary MacLean This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Kristen Hughes. The Story of Mary MacLean By Mary MacLean Part 1 Butte Montana, January 13, 1901 I, of womankind and of nineteen years, will now begin to set down as full and frank portrayal as I am able of myself, Mary MacLean, for whom the world contains not a parallel. I am convinced of this, for I am odd. I am distinctly original innately and in development. I have in me a quite unusual intensity of life. I can feel. I have a marvellous capacity for misery and for happiness. I am broad-minded. I am a genius. I am a philosopher of my own good peripatetic school. I care neither for right nor for wrong. My conscience is nil. My brain is a conglomeration of aggressive versatility. I have reached a truly wonderful state of miserable morbid unhappiness. I know myself, oh, very well. I have attained an egotism that is rare indeed. I have gone into the deep shadows. All this constitutes oddity. I find, therefore, that I am quite, quite odd. I have hunted for even the suggestion of a parallel among the several hundred persons that I call acquaintances. But in vain. There are people in people of varying depths and intricacies of character, but there is none to compare with me. The young ones of my own age, if I chance to give them but a glimpse of the real workings of my mind, can only stare at me in dazed stupidity, uncomprehending, and the old ones of forty and fifty. For forty and fifty are always old to nineteen, can but either stare also in stupidity, or else, their own narrowness asserting itself, smile their devilish smile of superiority, which they reserve indiscriminately for all foolish young things. The utter idiocy of forty and fifty at times. These, to be sure, are extreme instances. There are, among my young acquaintances, some who do not stare in stupidity. And yes, even at forty and fifty, there are some who understand some phases of my complicated character, though none to comprehend it in its entirety. But as I said, even the suggestion of a parallel is not to be found among them. I think at this moment, however, of two minds famous in the world of letters between which and mine there are certain fine points of similarity. These are the minds of Lord Byron and of Marie Bashkirtsev. It is the Byron of Don Jewin in whom I find suggestions of myself. In this sublime outpouring there are few to admire the character of Don Jewin. But all must admire Byron. He is truly admirable. He uncovered and exposed his soul of mingled good and bad, as the terms are, for the world to gaze upon. He knew the human race and he knew himself. As for that strange notable Marie Bashkirtsev, yes, I am rather like her in many points as I've been told. But in most things, I go beyond her. Where she is deep, I am deeper. Where she is wonderful in her intensity, I am still more wonderful in my intensity. Where she had philosophy, I am a philosopher. Where she had astonishing vanity and conceit. I have yet more astonishing vanity and conceit. But she, forsooth, could paint good pictures. And I, what can I do?  She was surrounded by admiring sympathetic friends and I am alone. Alone. Though there are people in people, she was a genius and still more am I a genius. She suffered with the pain of a woman, young. I suffer with the pain of a woman, young and all alone. And so it is. Along some lines I have gotten to the edge of the world.  I do not take the step. I stand on the edge and I suffer. Nothing, oh, nothing on the earth can suffer like a woman, young and all alone. Before proceeding farther with the portraying of Mary MacLean, I will write out some of her uninteresting history. I was born in 1881 at Winnipeg, in Canada. Where the Winnipeg will yet live to be proud of this fact is a matter for some conjecture and anxiety on my part. When I was four years old I was taken with my family to a little town in western Minnesota where I lived a more or less vapid and lonely life until I was ten. We came then to Montana. Where at, the aforesaid life was continued. My father died when I was eight. Apart from feeding and clothing me comfortably and sending me to school which is no more than was do me and transmitting to me the MacLean blood and character, I cannot see that he ever gave me a single thought. Certainly he did not love me for he was quite incapable of loving anyone but himself and since nothing is of any moment in this world without the love of human beings for each other it is a matter of supreme indifference to me whether my father, Jim MacLean, of selfish memory, lived or died. He is nothing to me. There are with me still a mother, a sister and two brothers. They also are nothing to me. They do not understand me any more than if I were some strange live curiosity as which I daresay they regard me. I am peculiarly of the MacLean blood which is Highland Scotch. My sister and brothers inherit the traits of their mother's family which is of Scotch-Lowland descent. This alone makes no small degree of difference. Apart from this the MacLeans, these particular MacLeans are just a little bit different from every family in Canada and from every other that I've known. It contains and has contained fanatics of many minds, religious, social, what not, and I am a true MacLean. There is absolutely no sympathy between my immediate family and me. There never can be. My mother, having been with me during the whole of my nineteen years, has an utterly distorted idea of my nature and its desires, if indeed she has any idea of it. When I think of the exquisite love and sympathy which might be between a mother and daughter, I feel myself defrauded of a beautiful thing rightfully mine in a world where for me such things are pitiably few. It will always be so. My sister and brothers are not interested in me and my analyses and philosophy and my wants. Their own are strictly practical and material. The love and sympathy between human beings is to them, it seems, a thing only for people in books. In short, they are Lowland Scotch and I am a MacLean. And so as I've said, I carried my uninteresting existence into Montana. The existence became less uninteresting, however, as my versatile mind began to develop and grow and know the glittering things that are. But I realized, as the years were passing, that my own life was at best a vapid negative thing. A thousand treasures that I wanted were lacking. I graduated from the high school with these things. A very good Latin, good French and Greek, indifferent geometry and other mathematics, a broad conception of history and literature, peripatetic philosophy that I acquired without any aid from the high school, genius of a kind that has always been with me, an empty heart that has taken on a certain wooden quality, an excellent strong young woman's body, a pitiably starved soul. With this equipment I have gone my way through the last two years, but my life, though unsatisfying and warped, is no longer insipid. It is fraught with a poignant misery, the misery of nothingness. I have no particular thing to occupy me. I write every day. Writing is a necessity, like eating. I do a little housework and on the whole I am rather fond of it, some parts of it. I dislike dusting chairs, but I have no aversion to scrubbing floors. Indeed, I have gained much of my strength and gracefulness of body from scrubbing the kitchen floor to say nothing of some fine points of philosophy. It brings a certain energy to one's body and to one's brain. But mostly I take walks far away in the open country. Butte and its immediate vicinity present as ugly an outlook as one could wish to see.  I have reached some astonishing subtleties of conception as I have walked for miles over the sand and barrenness among the little hills and gulches. Their utter desolate-ness is an inspiration to the long, long thoughts and to the nameless wanting. Every day I walk over the sand and barrenness.  That's as may be. To me it is an empty, damned weariness. I rise in the morning, eat three meals and walk and work a little, read a little, write, see some uninteresting people, go to bed. Again I rise in the morning, eat three meals and walk and work a little, read a little, write, see some uninteresting people, go to bed. Again I rise in the morning, eat three meals and walk and work a little, read a little, write, see some uninteresting people, go to bed. Truly an exalted, soulful life. What it does for me, how it affects me, I am now trying to portray. January 14th. I have in me the germs of intense life. If I could live, and if I could succeed in writing out my living, the world itself would feel the heavy intensity of it. I have the personality, the nature of a Napoleon, albeit a feminine translation. And therefore I do not conquer, I do not even fight. I manage only to exist.  What might you not be? What wonderful things might you not do? But held down, half-buried, a seed fallen in barren ground, alone, uncomprehended, obscure.   Had I been born a man, I would by now have made a deep impression of myself on the world, on some part of it. But I am a woman, and God, or the devil, or fate, or whosoever it was, has flayed me of the thick outer skin, and thrown me out into the midst of life, has left me a lonely, damned thing filled with the red, red blood of ambition and desire, but afraid to be touched. For there is no thick skin between my sensitive flesh and the world's fingers. But I want to be touched. Napoleon was a man, and though sensitive, his flesh was safely covered. But I am a woman, awakening, and upon awakening and looking about me, I would feign turn and go back to sleep. There is a pain that goes with these things when one is a woman, young, and all alone. I am filled with an ambition.  I wish to write, write, write. I wish to acquire that beautiful, benign, gentle, satisfying thing, fame. I want it. Oh, I want it. I wish to leave all my obscurity, my misery, my weary unhappiness behind me forever. I am deadly, deadly tired of my unhappiness. I wish this portrayal to be published and launched into that deep salt sea, the world. There are some there, surely, who will understand it and me. Can I be that thing which I am? Can I be possessed of a peculiar rare genius and yet drag out my life in obscurity in this uncouth, warped Montana town? It must be impossible. If I thought the world contained nothing more than that for me, oh, what should I do? Would I make an end of my dreary little life now? I fear I would. I am a philosopher and a coward, and it were infinitely better to die now in the high-beating pulses of youth than to drag on year after year, year after year and find oneself at last a stagnant old woman, spiritless, hopeless, with a declining body, a declining mind, and nothing to look back upon except the visions of things that might have been and the weariness. I see the picture. I see it plainly. Oh, kind devil, deliver me from it. Surely there must be in a world of manifold beautiful things, something among them for me, and always, while I am still young, there is that dim light the future. But it is indeed a dim, dim light, and off times there's a treachery in it. End of part one. Part two of the Story of Mary MacLean. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Kristen Hughes. The Story of Mary MacLean. Part two. January 15th.  Also, I find that even this combination cannot make one happy. It serves, however, to occupy my versatile mind, to keep me wondering what it is a kind devil has in store for me. A philosopher of my own peripatetic school, hour after hour, I walk over the desolate sand and dreariness among the tiny hills and gulches on the outskirts of this mining town. In the morning, in the long afternoon, in the cool of the night, and hour after hour as I walk, through my brain some long, long pageants march. The pageant of my fancies, the pageant of my unparalleled egotism, the pageant of my unhappiness, the pageant of my minute analysing, the pageant of my peculiar philosophy, the pageant of my dull, dull life, and the pageant of the possibilities. We three go out on the sand in dreariness, my wooden heart, my good young woman's body, my soul. We go there and contemplate the long sandy wastes, the red, red line on the sky at the setting of the sun, the cold, gloomy mountains under it, the ground without a weed, without a grass-blade even in their season, for they have years ago been killed off by the sulfur smoke from the smelters. So this sand and barrenness forms the setting for the personality of me. January 16th. I feel about forty years old. Yet I know my feeling is not the feeling of forty years. These are the feelings of miserable, wretched youth. Every day the atmosphere of a house becomes unbearable, so every day I go out to the sand in barrenness. It is not cold, neither is it mild. It is gloomy. I sit for two hours on the ground by the side of a pitiable, small, narrow stream of water. It is not even a natural stream. I daresay it comes from some mine among the hills. But it is well enough that the stream is not natural when you consider the sand and barrenness. It is singularly appropriate, and I am singularly appropriate to all of them. It is good, after all, to be appropriate to something, to be in touch with something, even sand and barrenness. The sand and barrenness is old, oh, very old. You think of this when you look at it. What should I do if the earth were made of wood with a paper sky? I feel about forty years old. And again I say I know my feeling is not the feeling of forty years. These are the feelings of miserable, wretched youth. Still more pitiable than the sand and barrenness and the poorer natural stream is the dry warped cemetery where the dry warped people of Butte bury their dead friends. It is a source of satisfaction to me to walk down to this cemetery and contemplate it and revel in its utter pitiableness. It is more pitiable than I and my sand and barrenness and my poor unnatural stream. I say over and over and take my comfort. Its condition is more forlorn than that of a woman young and alone. It is unkempt. It is choked with dust and stones. The few scattered blades of grass look rather ashamed to be seen growing there. A great many of the headstones are of wood and are in a shameful state of decay. Those that are of stone are still more shameful in their hard brightness. The dry warped friends of the dry warped people of Butte are buried in this dusty, dreary, wind-heavicked waste. They are left here and forgotten. The devil must rejoice in this graveyard and I rejoice with the devil. It is something for me to contemplate that is more pitiable than I and my sand and barrenness and my unnatural stream. I rejoice with the devil. The inhabitants of this cemetery are forgotten. I have watched once the burying of a young child. Every day for a fortnight afterward I came back and I saw the mother of the child there. She came and stood by the small new grave. After a few days more she stopped coming. I knew the woman and went to her house to see her. She was beginning to forget the child. She was beginning to take up again the thread of her life where she had let it go. The thread of her life is involved in the divorces and fights of her neighbors. Out in the warped graveyard her child is forgotten and presently the wooden headstone will begin to decay. But the worms will not forget their part. They have eaten the small body by now and enjoyed it. Always worms enjoy a body to eat. And also the devil rejoiced and I rejoiced with the devil. They are more pityable I insist than I and my sand and barrenness. The mother whose life is involved in divorces and fights and the worms eating at the child's body and the wooden headstone which will presently decay. And so the devil and I rejoice but no matter how ferociously pityable is the dried up graveyard the sand and barrenness and the sluggish little stream have their own persistent individual damnation. The world is at least so constructed that its treasures may be damned each in a different manner and degree. I feel about forty years old and I know my feeling is not the feeling of forty years. They do not feel any of these things at forty. At forty the fire has long since burned out. When I am forty I shall look back to myself and my feelings at nineteen and I shall smile. Or shall I indeed smile? January 17th As I have said, I want fame. I want to write. To write such things as compel the admiring acclamations of the world at large. Such things as are written but once in years. Things subtly but distinctly different from the books written every day. I can do this. Let me but make a beginning. Let me but strike the world in a vulnerable spot and I can take it by storm. Let me but win my spurs and then you will see me of woman kind and young valiantly astride a charger riding down the world with fame following at the charger's heels and the multitudes agape. But oh more than all this I want to be happy. Fame is indeed benign and gentle and satisfying but happiness is something at once tender and brilliant beyond all things. I want fame more than I can tell but more than I want fame I want happiness. I have never been happy in my weary young life. Think, oh think of being happy for a year, for a day. How brilliantly blue the sky would be. How swiftly and joyously would the green rivers run. How madly merrily triumphant the four winds of heaven would sweep round the corners of the fair earth. What would I not give for one day, one hour of that charmed thing happiness? What would I not give up? How we eager fools tread on each other's heels and tear each other's hair and scratch each other's faces in our furious gallop after happiness. For some it is embodied in fame, for some in money, for some in power, for some in virtue, and for me in something very much like love. None of the other fools desires happiness as I desire it. For one single hour of happiness I would give up at once these things, fame and money and power and virtue and honour and righteousness and truth and logic and philosophy and genius. The while I would say what a little, little price to pay for dear happiness. I am ready and waiting to give all that I have to the devil in exchange for happiness. I have been tortured so long with the dull, dull misery of nothingness all my nineteen years. I want to be happy. Oh, I want to be happy. The devil has not yet come, but I know that he usually comes and I wait him eagerly. I am fortunate that I am not one of those who are burdened with an innate sense of virtue and honour, and must always come before happiness. They are but few who find their happiness in their virtue. The rest of them must be content to see it walk away. But with me, virtue and honour are nothing. I long unspeakably for happiness, and so I await the devil's coming, January 18th. And meanwhile, as I wait, my mind occupies itself with its own good, odd philosophy so that even the nothingness becomes almost indurable. The devil has given me some good things, for I find that the devil owns and rules the earth, and all that therein is. He has given me, among other things, my admirable young woman's body, which I enjoy thoroughly and of which I am passionately fond. A spasm of pleasure seizes me when I think in some acute moment of the buoyant health and vitality of this fine young body that is feminine in every fibre. You may gaze at and admire the picture in the front of this book. It is the picture of a genius, a genius with a good strong young woman's body, and inside the pictured body is a liver, a Maclean liver of admirable perfectness. Other young women and older women and men of all ages have good bodies also, I doubt not, though the masculine body is merely flesh it seems, flesh and bones and nothing else. But few recognise the value of their bodies, few have grasped the possibilities, the artistic graceful perfection, the poetry of human flesh in its health, few have even sense enough indeed to keep their flesh in health or to know what health is until they have ruined some vital organ and so banished it forever. I have not ruined any of my vital organs and I appreciate what health is. I have grasped the art, the poetry of my fine feminine body. This, at the age of nineteen, is a triumph for me. Sometime in the midst of the brightness of an October I have walked for miles in the still high air under the blue of the sky. The brightness of the day and the blue of the sky and the incomparable high air have entered into my veins and flowed with my red blood. They have penetrated into every remote nerve centre and into the marrow of my bones. At such a time this young body glows with life. My red blood flows swiftly and joyously in the midst of the brightness of October. My sound, sensitive liver rests gently within its yellow bile in sweet content. My calm, beautiful stomach silently sings as I walk a song of peace. My lungs, saturated with mountain ozone and the perfume of the pines expand in continuous ecstasy. My heart beats like the music of shoo-men in easy, graceful rhythm with an undertone of power.  The entire wonderful, graceful mechanism of my woman's body has fallen at the time, like the wonderful, graceful mechanism of my woman's mind, under the enchanting spell of day in October. It is good, I think to myself. Oh, it is good to be alive. It is wondrously good to be a woman young in the fullness of nineteen springs. It is unutterably lovely to be a healthy young animal living on this charmed earth. After I have walked for several hours, I reach a region where the sulfur smoke has not penetrated and I sit on the ground with drawn-up knees and rest as the shadows lengthen. The shadows lengthen early in October. Presently I lie flat on my back and stretch my lithe slimness to its utmost, like a mountain lioness taking her comfort. I am intensely thankful to the devil for my two good legs and the full use of them under a short skirt, when as now they carry me out beyond the pale of civilization, away from tiresome dull people. There is nothing in the world that can become so maddeningly wearisome as people, people, people. And so, devil, except for my two good legs my sincerest gratitude. I lie on the ground for some minutes and meditate idly. There is a world full of easy, indolent, beautiful sensuality in the figure of a young woman lying on the ground under a warm setting sun. A man may lie on the ground, but that is as far as it goes.  He would even snore, perhaps, under the setting sun. But then a man has not a good young feminine body to feel with, to receive into itself the spirit of a warm sun at its setting, on a day in October. And so let us forgive him for sleeping and for snoring. When I rise again to a sitting posture all the brightness has focused itself to the west. It casts a yellow glamour over the earth a glamour not of joy nor of pleasure nor of happiness but of peace. The young poplatories smile gently in the deathly still air. The sagebrush and the tall grass take on a radiant quietness. The high hills of Montana, near and distant, appear tender and benign. All is peace. Peace. I think of that beautiful old song. Sweet veil of a voca, how calm could I rest in thy bosom of shade. But I am too young yet to think of peace. It is not peace that I want. Peace is for forty and fifty. I am waiting for my experience. I am awaiting the coming of the devil. And now, just before twilight, after the sun has vanished over the edge, is the red, red line on the sky. There will be days wild and stormy, filled with rain and wind and hail. And yet, nearly always at the sun's setting, there will be calm in the red line of sky. There is nothing in the world quite like the red sky at sunset. It is glory, triumph, love, fame. Imagine a life bereft of things, and fingers pointed at it, eyebrows raised, tossed and bandied hither and yawn, crushed, beaten, bled, rentous under, outraged, convulsed with pain. And then, into this life, while still young, the red, red line of sky. Why did I cry out against fate, says the line? Why did I rebel against my term of anguish? I now rather rejoice at it. Now, in my happiness, I remember it only with deep pleasure. Think of that wonderful, admirable, matchless man of steel, Napoleon Bonaparte. He threw himself heavily on the world, and the world has never since been the same. He hated himself and the world and God and fate, and the devil. His hatred was his term of anguish. Then the sun threw on the sky a red, red line, the red line of triumph, glory, fame, and afterward there was the blackness of night, the blackness that is not tender, not gentle. But black as our night may be, nothing can take from us the memory of the red, red sky. Memory is possession, and so is the red sky we have with us always.  For a little brief time, and I will be satisfied. Bring it to me intensely red, intensely full, intensely alive. Short as you will, but red, red, red. I am weary, weary, and oh, I want my red sky. Short as it might be, its memory, its fragrance would stay with me always, always. Bring me, devil, my red line of sky for one hour, and take all, all, everything I possess. Let me keep my happiness for one short hour, and take away all from me forever. I will be satisfied when night has come and everything is gone. Oh, I await you, devil, in a wild frenzy of impatience, and as I hurry back through the cool darkness of October, I feel this frenzy in every fiber of my fervid woman's body. End of Part Two. Part Three of the Story of Mary MacLean. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Kristen Hughes. The Story of Mary MacLean by Mary MacLean. Part Three. January 19th. I come from a long line of Scotch and Canadian MacLeans. There are great many MacLeans, but there is usually only one real MacLean in each generation. There is but one who feels again the passionate spirit of the clans, those barbaric dwellers in the bleak but well-loved Highlands of Scotland. I am the real MacLean of my generation. The real MacLean in these later centuries is always a woman. The men of the family never amount to anything worth naming. If one accepts the acme, the zenith of pure selfishness with a large letter S, life may be easy enough for the innumerable Canadian MacLeans who are not real, but it is certain to be more or less a hill of difficulty for the one who is. She finds herself somewhat alone. I have brothers and a sister and a mother in the same house with me, and I find myself somewhat alone. Between them and me there is no tenderness, no sympathy, no binding ties. Would it affect me in the least, do you suppose, if they should all die tomorrow? If I were not a real MacLean, perhaps it would have been different. Or perhaps I should not have missed these things. How much devil have I lost the privilege of being a real MacLean? But yes, I have also gained much. January 20th I have said that I am alone. I am not quite quite alone. I have one friend of that friendship that is real and is inlaid with the beautiful thing truth. And because it has the beautiful thing truth in it, this my one friendship is somehow above and beyond me. There is something in it that I reach after in vain, for I have not that divinely beautiful thing truth. Have I not said that I am a thief and a liar? But in this friendship, nevertheless, there is a rare, ineffable sweet something that is mine. It is the one tender thing in this dull dreariness that wraps me round. Are there many things in this cool-hearted world so utterly exquisite as the pure love of one woman for another woman? My one friend is a woman some twelve or thirteen years older than I. She is as different from me as is day from night. She believes in God, that God that is shown in the Bible of the Christians, and she carries with her an atmosphere of gentleness and truth. The while I am ready and waiting to dedicate my life to the devil in exchange for happiness or some lesser thing. But I love Fanny Corbin with a peculiar and vivid intensity, and with all the sincerity and passion that is in me. I often think of her as I walk over the sand in my nothingness all day long. The friendship of her and me is a fair, dear benediction upon me. But there is something in it, deep within it, that eludes me. In moments when I realize this, when I strain and reach vainly at a thing beyond me, when indeed I see in my mind a vision of the personality of Fanny Corbin, it is then that it comes on me with force that I am not good. But I can love her with all the order of a young and passionate heart. Yes, I can do that. For a year I have loved my one friend. During the eighteen years of my life before she came into it, I loved no one, for there was no one. It is an extremely hard thing to go through eighteen years with no one to love, and no one to love you, the first eighteen years. But now, I have my one friend to love and to worship. I have named my friend the Anemone Lady, a name beautifully appropriate. Anemone Lady used to teach me literature in Butte High School. She used to read poetry in the classroom in a clear, sweet voice that made one wish one might sit there forever and listen to it. But now I have left the High School, and the dear Anemone Lady has gone from Butte. Before she went, she told me she would be my friend. Think of it, to live and have a friend. My friend does not fully understand me. She thinks much too well of me. She is not a correct idea of my soul's depths and shallows. But if she did know them, she would still be my friend. She knows the heavy weight of my unrest and unhappiness. She is tenderly sympathetic. She is the one in all the world who is dear to me. Often I think if only I could have my Anemone Lady and go and live with her out of the world place high up on the side of a mountain for the rest of my life, what more would I desire?  The unrest, the dreariness, the nothingness of my existence now is so dull and gray by contrast that there would be happiness for me in that life. Happiness softly radiant, if quiet, redolent of the fresh, thin fragrance of dear blue anemone that grows in the winds and rains of spring. But Miss Corbin would doubtless look somewhat a scant at the idea of spending the rest of her life with me on a mountain. She is very fond of me. But her feeling for me is not like mine for her, which indeed is natural. And her life is made up mostly of sacrifices, doing for her fellow-creatures, doing of herself. She never would leave this. And so then, the mountainside and the solitude and the friend with me are like every good thing, but a vision. Thy friend is always thy friend not to have nor to hold nor to love nor to rejoice in but to remember. And so do I remember my one friend, one about her with passionate love. January 21st Happiness, don't you know, is of three kinds and all are transitory. It never stays, but it comes and goes. There is that happiness that comes from newly washed feet, for instance, and a pair of clean stockings on them, particularly after one has been upon a tramp into the country. Always I have identified this kind of happiness with a cat dripping a hungry, stealthy, sensual tongue into a bowl of fresh, thick cream. There is that still happiness that has come to me at rare times when I have been with my one friend, and which does very well for people whose feelings are moderate. They need wish for nothing beyond it. They could not appreciate anything deeper. And there is that kind of happiness which is of the red sunset sky. There is something terrible in the thought of this indescribable mad happiness. What a thing it is for a human being to be happy with the red, red happiness of the sunset sky. It's like a terrific storm in summer, with a rain and wind beating quiet water into wild waves, bending great trees to the ground, convulsing the green earth with delicious pain. It's like something of Schubert's violin that stirs you within to exquisite torture. It's like the human voice, divine, singing a scotch ballad in a manner to drag your soul from your body. But there are no words to tell it. It is something infinitely above and beyond words. It is the kind of happiness the devil will bring to me when he comes. To me. To me. Oh, why does he not come now in the midst of my youth? Why is he so long in coming? Often you hear a dozen stories of how the devil was most ready and willing to take all from someone and give him his measure of happiness. And sometimes the person was innately virtuous and so could not take the happiness when it was offered. But happiness is its own justification and it should be eagerly grasped when it comes. A world filled with fools will never learn this. And so here I stand in the midst of nothingness waiting and longing for the devil and he doesn't come. I feel a choking, strangling, frenzied feeling of waiting. Oh, why doesn't my happiness come? I have waited so long. So long. There are persons who say to me that I ought not to think of the devil, that I ought not to think of happiness. Happiness, for me, would be sure to mean something wicked. As if happiness could ever be wicked. That I ought to think of being good. I ought to think of God. These are persons who help to fill the world with fools. At any rate their words are unable to affect me. I cannot distinguish between right and wrong in this scheme of things. It is one of the lines of reasoning in which I have gotten to the edge, the end. I have gotten to the point to which all logic finally leads. I can only say what is wrong, what is right, what is good, what is evil. The words are merely words with word meanings. Truth is love and love is the only truth and love is the one thing out of all that is real. The devil is really the only one to whom we may turn and he exacts payment in full for every favour. But surely he will come one day with happiness for me. Yet, oh, how can I wait? To be a woman young and all alone is hard, hard. Is to want things is to carry a heavy, heavy weight. Oh, damn, damn, damn. Damn every living thing, the world, the universe, be damned. Oh, I am weary, weary. Can't you see that I am weary and pity me in my own damnation? January 22nd. It is night. I might well be in my bed taking a needed rest, but first I shall write. Today I walked far away over the sand in the teeth of a bitter wind. The wind was determined that I should turn and come back and equally I was determined I would go on. There is a certain kind of wind in the autumn to walk in the midst of which causes one's spirits to rise ecstatically. To walk in the midst of a bitter wind in January may have almost any effect. Today the bitter winds swept over me and round me and into the remote corners of my brain and swept away the delusions and buffeted my philosophy with rough insolence. The worlds made up mostly of nothing. You may be convinced of this when a bitter wind has swept away your delusions. What is the wind? Nothing. What is the sky? Nothing. What do we know? Nothing. What is fame? Nothing. What is my heart? Nothing. What is my soul? Nothing. What are we? We are nothing. We think we progress wonderfully in the arts and sciences as one century follows another. What does it amount to? It does not teach us the all-why. It does not let us cease to wonder what it is we are doing, where it is that we are going. It does not teach us why the green comes again to the old, old hills in the spring, why the benign Balmughiliad shines wet and sweet after the rain, why the red never fails to come to the breast of the robin, the black to the crow, the gray to the little ren, why the sand and barrenness lies stretched out around us, why the clouds float high above us, why the moon stands in the sky night after night, why the mountains and valleys live on as the years pass. The arts and sciences go on and on, still we wonder. We have not yet ceased to weep, and we suffer still in 1902, even as they suffered in 1802 and in 802. Today we eat our good dinners with forks. A thousand years ago they had no forks. Yet, though we have forks, we are not happy. We scream and kick and struggle and weep just as they did a thousand years ago when they had no forks. We are no wiser than when Omar fell asleep. And in the midst of our great wondering we wonder why some of us are given faith to trust without question, while the rest of us are left to eat out our life's vitals with asking. I have walked once in summer by the side of a little marsh filled with mint and white hawthorne. The mint and white hawthorne have with them a vivid, rare, delicious perfume. It makes you want to grovel on the ground. It makes you think you might crawl in the dust all your days and well for you. The perfume lingers with you afterward when years have passed. You may scream and kick and struggle and weep right lustily every day of your life. But in your moments of calmness sometimes they will come back to you the fragrance of a swamp filled with mint and white hawthorne. It is meltingly beautiful. What does it mean? What would it tell? Why does the marsh and the mint and white hawthorne freeze over in the fall? And why do they come again, voluptuous and ticing in the damp spring days and rack the souls of wretches who look and wonder? You are superb, devil. You have done a magnificent piece of work. I kneel at your feet and worship you. You have wrought a perfection, a pinnacle of fine invisible damnation.  It is filled with things likewise damnably beautiful. There are the green, green grass blades and the grey dawns. There are swiftly flowing rivers and the honking of wild geese flying low. There are human voices and human eyes. There are stories of women and men who have learned to give up and to wait. There is poetry, there is charity, there is truth. There are all of these things and also he has made human beings who can feel. Who was it that said long ago? Life is always a tragedy to those who feel. In truth the devil has constructed a place of infinite torture, the fair green earth, the world. But he has made that other infinite thing happiness. I forgive him for making me wonder how possibly he may bring me happiness. I cast myself at his feet, I adore him. The first third of our lives is spent in the expectation of happiness. Then it comes perhaps and stays ten years or a month or three days and the rest of our lives is spent in peace and rest with the memory of the happiness. Happiness though it is infinite is a transient emotion. It is too brilliant, too magnificent, too overwhelming to be a lasting thing and it is merely an emotion. But ah, such an emotion! Through it the devil rules his domains. What would one not do to have it? I can think of no so-called vile deed that I would scruple about if I could be happy. Everything is justified if it gives me happiness. The devil has done me some great favors. He has made me without a conscience and without virtue. For which I thank the devil at least I shall be able to take my happiness when it comes, even though the pile of nice distinctions between it and me be mountains high. But meanwhile the world I say and the people are nothing, nothing, nothing. The splendid castles, the strong bridges that we are building are of small moment. We can only go down the wide roadway wandering and weeping and without where to lay our heads. January 23rd 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 parapetetic 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 are 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 fairly 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 swath 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 something of 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 porter-house steak and some green young onions for which I thank the devil profoundly. Who says the devil is not your friend? Who says the devil does not believe in the all-merciful law of compensation? Who 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 porter-house steak from Omaha and some fresh green young onions from California. End of Part 3 Part 4 of the Story of Mary McClain This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Reading by Kristin Hughes The Story of Mary McClain by Mary McClain Part 4 January 24th 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 I am 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 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 cannot 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 genius 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 Maclean. When I give out broad-minded opinions about the land along Klaus I demonstrate her relative position to Mary Maclean. When I discourse liberally on the subject of the married relation I talk of it only as it will affect Mary Maclean. An interesting creature, Mary Maclean. As a matter of fact it is so with everyone only everyone is far from realizing and acknowledging it and I have not lacked listeners though these people do not recognize me. They do not realize that I am a genius. I am of woman kind 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 Bronte did this in some degree and she was a genius and also Marie Bashkertsev and Olive Shreiner and George Elliott. 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 contain truly remarkable development as I have 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.    It is but a tiny step.  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. It is 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 19 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 of juice 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 the portraits in 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 25th. I can remember a time, 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's 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 weird and damnably pathetic. I, when I was a child, or I when I am grown to a 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 it 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. My hair was braided, or else it flew about a tangled maze according as I could be caught by someone 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.    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 McLean suffered, but she did not know that she suffered. Yet that did not make the suffering less. And she reached out with a little burned hand to touch and take something. But the sun-burned 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 McLean. 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 not 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 you hear a nothingness? Oh, 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.  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 26th. I sit at my window and look out upon the house tops 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 a 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 roofed trees. So virtuous are they indeed that they are able to draw themselves up in the pride 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 in the pose 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.  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. Marriage is rite as 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.   I certainly would. The lesser of two evils always. I can think of nothing in the worlds like the utter littleness the paltryness, the contemptableness 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 plays the 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 27th 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 there are elements to 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 and 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 plowing 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 the devil does not propose to release anyone 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 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 and my 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 fingertips 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 see the roar it will plunge and whirl it will leap and shriek in convulsion it will quiver 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 go 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 Blair 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 in crowds it will shrink it will go in pride it will lie prone like the dead it will float buoyantly on 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 End of Part 4 Part 5 of the Story of Mary MacLean This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Reading by Kristen Hughes The Story of Mary MacLean by Mary MacLean Part 5 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 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 in olive now listen and I will tell you the art of eating in 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 and chantingly 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 full and 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 of the walls and swath it in loving embrace my stomach is fond of something bitter and salt it lavishes flattery and endearment galore upon the olive it laughs and silent delight it feels that the day it is long waited for has come the philosophy of my stomach my stomach is wholly epicurean let it receive but a tiny bit of olive and it will wreck 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 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 and green cautiously 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 and 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 a vaunt 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 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 I put 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 marvellous 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 green olive into my stomach paradise paradise says my stomach every drop of blood in my passionate veins is resting through my stomach my stomach 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 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 feign my fall will 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 a brilliant 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 evaporation 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 I have acquired it 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 chime when I play with the olive seed in my fingers 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 chime in your stomach who have not acquired the art of good eating January 29th as I read over now and then what I have written of my portrayal 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 cannot 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 author knows 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 Allen Poe and Robert Louis Stevenson and Charles Dickens, among others have succeeded in doing this they impressed the 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 Bronte meant one thing in the book and the world after a time suddenly understood a quite different thing and heaped praise and applause upon her therefore when I read the book I was not quite able to see just what the message was that the Bronte 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 to have missed it it takes centuries of tears and piety and 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 30th 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 busier 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 that many 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 hooves 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 McLean the devil would say I would have you conquer me crush me know me I would answer and 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 McLean he would say I would answer hurt me burn me consume me with hot love shake me violently embrace me hard hard in your strong 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 McLean 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 McLean 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 know I will answer pain that comes of you whom I love will be ineffable exaltation and how will you treat me little McLean I will cast myself at your feet or I will minister to you with divine tenderness or I will charm you with fantastic devil-tree 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 blind I will put out my eyes 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 misery of nothingness the days are long long and very weary as I await the devil's coming end of part five