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The STORY of 
 MARY MACLANE 
 
 PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 414594 
 
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 The Story of Mary Mac Lane 
 
 JSutte, /Montana, 
 January 13, 1901. 
 
 IOF womankind and of nineteen 
 years, will now begin to set down 
 as full and frank a Portrayal as I 
 am able of myself, Mary Mac Lane, 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 marvelous capacity for mis- 
 ery and for happiness. 
 
 I am broad-minded. 
 
 I am a genius. 
 
 I am a philosopher of my own good 
 peripatetic school. 
 
2 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 I care neither for right nor for 
 wrong — my conscience is nil. 
 
 My brain is a conglomeration of ag- 
 gressive 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 sugges- 
 tion of a parallel among the several 
 hundred persons that I call acquaint- 
 ances. But in vain. There are people 
 and people of varying depths and intri- 
 cacies 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 — 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 3 
 
 can but either stare also in stupidity, or 
 else, their own narrowness asserting 
 itself, smile their little devilish smile of 
 superiority which they reserve indis- 
 criminately for all foolish young things. 
 The utter idiocy of forty and fifty at 
 times! 
 
 These, to be sure, are extreme in- 
 stances. 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 charac- 
 ter, 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 let- 
 ters between which and mine there are 
 certain fine points of similarity. These 
 are the minds of Lord Byron and of 
 Marie Bashkirtseff. It is the Byron of 
 "Don Juan" in whom I find suggestions 
 
4 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 of myself. In this sublime outpouring 
 there are few to admire the character 
 of Don Juan, 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 
 Bashkirtseff, 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 inten- 
 sity, 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 astonish- 
 ing vanity and conceit. 
 
 But she, forsooth, could paint good 
 pictures, — and I — what can I do? 
 
 She had a beautiful face, and I am a 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 5 
 
 plain-featured, insignificant little ani- 
 mal. 
 
 She was surrounded by admiring, 
 sympathetic friends, and I am alone — 
 alone, though there are people and 
 people. 
 
 She was a genius, and still more am I 
 a genius. 
 
 She suffered with the pain of a 
 woman, young; and 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. A step more 
 and I fall off. 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 Mac Lane, I will 
 write out some of her uninteresting his- 
 tory. 
 
 I was born in 1881 at Winnepeg, in 
 Canada. Whether Winnepeg will yet 
 
6 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 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 Mon- 
 tana. 
 
 Whereat the aforesaid life was con- 
 tinued. 
 
 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 due me — 
 and transmitting to me the Mac Lane 
 blood and character, I can not see that 
 he ever gave me a single thought. 
 
 Certainly he did not love me, for he 
 was quite incapable of loving any one 
 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 Mac Lane 
 of selfish memory, lived or died. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 7 
 
 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 curi- 
 osity, as which I dare say they regard 
 me. 
 
 I am peculiarly of the Mac Lane 
 blood, which is Highland Scotch. My 
 sister and brothers inherit the traits of 
 their mothers family, which is of 
 Scotch Lowland descent. This alone 
 makes no small degree of difference. 
 Apart from this the Mac Lanes — these 
 particular Mac Lanes — are just a little 
 bit different from every family in Can- 
 ada, and from every other that I've 
 known. It contains and has contained 
 fanatics of many minds — religious, so- 
 cial, whatnot, and I am a true Mac 
 Lane. 
 
 There is absolutely no sympathy be- 
 tween my immediate family and me. 
 There can never be. My mother, hav- 
 
8 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 ing been with me during the whole of 
 my nineteen years, has an utterly dis- 
 torted idea of my nature and its de- 
 sires, 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 right- 
 fully mine, in a world where for me 
 such things are pitiably few. 
 
 It will always be so. 
 
 My sister and brothers are not inter- 
 ested 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 Mac Lane. 
 
 And so, as I've said, I carried my un- 
 interesting existence into Montana. 
 The existence became less uninterest- 
 ing, however, as my versatile mind be- 
 gan to develop and grow and know the 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE Q 
 
 glittering things that are. But I real- 
 ized 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: very good Latin; 
 good French and Greek; indifferent 
 geometry and other mathematics; a 
 broad conception of history and liter- 
 ature; 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 
 
IO THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 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 imme- 
 diate vicinity present as ugly an outlook 
 as one could wish to see. It is so ugly 
 indeed that it is near the perfection of 
 ugliness. And anything perfect, or 
 nearly so, is not to be despised. 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 
 desolateness is an inspiration to the 
 long, long thoughts and to the nameless 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE II 
 
 wanting. Every day I walk over the 
 sand and barrenness. 
 
 And so, then, my daily life seems an 
 ordinary life enough, and possibly, to 
 an ordinary person, a comfortable life. 
 
 That's as may be. 
 
 To me it is an empty, damned weari- 
 ness. 
 
 I rise in the morning; eat three 
 meals; and walk; and work a little, 
 read a little, write; see some uninter- 
 esting people; go to bed. 
 
 Next day, I rise in the morning; eat 
 three meals; and walk; and work a 
 little, read a little, write; see some un- 
 interesting 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 un- 
 interesting 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 14. 
 
 1HAVE 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 transla- 
 tion. And therefore I do not conquer; 
 I do not even fight. I manage only to 
 exist. 
 
 Poor little Mary Mac Lane! — what 
 might you not be? What wonderful 
 things might you not do? But held 
 down, half-buried, a seed fallen in bar- 
 ren ground, alone, uncomprehended, 
 obscure — poor little Mary Mac Lane! 
 Weep, world, — why don't you? — for 
 poor little Mary Mac Lane! 
 
 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 
 
 12 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 1 3 
 
 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 ambi- 
 tion and desire, but afraid to be 
 touched, for there is no thick skin be- 
 tween 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 fain 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 give to the world a naked Portrayal 
 of Mary Mac Lane: her wooden heart, 
 her good young woman's - body, her 
 mind, her soul. 
 
 I wish to write, write, write! 
 
 I wish to acquire that beautiful, 
 
14 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 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 un- 
 happiness. 
 
 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 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 1 5 
 
 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 ofttimes there's a 
 treachery in it. 
 
3anuars 15* 
 
 SO THEN, yes. I find myself at this 
 stage of womankind and nineteen 
 years, a genius, a thief, a liar — a 
 general moral vagabond, a fool more or 
 less, and a philosopher of the peripa- 
 tetic school. Also I find that even this 
 combination can not make one happy. 
 It serves, however, to occupy my versa- 
 tile 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 
 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 unhappi- 
 ness, the pageant of my minute analyz- 
 
 16 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 1 7 
 
 ing, the pageant of my peculiar 
 philosophy, the pageant of my dull, 
 dull life, — and the pageant of the Possi- 
 bilities. 
 
 We three go out on the sand and 
 barrenness: 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 sulphur smoke 
 from the smelters. 
 
 So this sand and barrenness forms 
 the setting for the personality of me. 
 
January \6. 
 
 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 and 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 pitiably small narrow 
 stream of water. It is not even a nat- 
 ural stream. I dare say it comes from 
 some mine among the hills. But it is 
 well enough that the stream is not nat- 
 ural — when you consider the sand and 
 barrenness. It is singularly appropri- 
 ate. 
 
 And I am singularly appropriate to 
 all of them. It is good, after all, to be 
 appropriate to something — to be in 
 it 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 1 9 
 
 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 poor unnatural 
 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 un- 
 natural 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 un- 
 
20 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 kempt. 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-havocked waste. 
 They are left here and forgotten. 
 
 The Devil must rejoice in this grave- 
 yard. 
 
 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. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 21 
 
 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 pitiable, I insist, than 
 I and my sand and barrenness — the 
 mother whose life is involved in di- 
 vorces and fights, and the worms eating 
 at the child's body, and the wooden 
 headstone which will presently decay. 
 
22 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 And so the Devil and I rejoice. 
 
 But no matter how ferociously piti- 
 able is the dried-up graveyard, the sand 
 and barrenness and the sluggish little 
 stream have their own persistent indi- 
 vidual 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 feel- 
 ing 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? 
 
3anuars 17, 
 
 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 womankind 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 some- 
 23 
 
24 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 thing at once tender and brilliant be- 
 yond 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 Happi- 
 ness! What would I not give up? 
 
 How we eager fools tread on each 
 others 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 some- 
 thing very much like love. 
 
 None of the other fools desires Hap- 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 25 
 
 piness 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 Honor, 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 honor which must 
 come always 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. 
 
26 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 But with me Virtue and Honor are 
 nothing. 
 
 I long unspeakably for Happiness. 
 
 And so I await the Devil's coming. 
 
January 18. 
 
 AND meanwhile — as I wait — my 
 mind occupies itself with its own 
 good odd philosophy, so that 
 even the Nothingness becomes almost 
 endurable. 
 
 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 
 fiber. 
 
 You may gaze at and admire the pic- 
 ture 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 
 27 
 
28 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 Mac Lane liver, of admirable perfect- 
 ness. 
 
 Other young women and older wo- 
 men 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 recognize the value of 
 their bodies; few have grasped the 
 possibilities, the artistic graceful per- 
 fection, 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 ban- 
 ished 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 tri- 
 umph for me. 
 
 Sometime in the midst of the bright- 
 ness of an October I have walked for 
 miles in the still high air under the blue 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 29 
 
 of the sky. The brightness of the day 
 and the blue of the sky and the incom- 
 parable high air have entered into my 
 veins and flowed with my red blood. 
 They have penetrated into every re- 
 mote nerve-center and into the marrow 
 of my bones. 
 
 At such a time this young body glows 
 with life. 
 
 My red blood flows swiftly and joy- 
 ously — in the midst of the brightness of 
 October. 
 
 My sound, sensitive liver rests gently 
 with its thin yellow bile in sweet con- 
 tent. 
 
 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 
 Schumann, in easy, graceful rhythm 
 with an undertone of power. 
 
 My strong and sensitive nerves are 
 reeking and swimming in sensuality 
 
30 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 like drunken little Bacchantes, gay and 
 garlanded in mad revelling. 
 
 The entire wonderful, graceful mech- 
 anism of my woman's-body has fallen 
 at the time — like the wonderful, grace- 
 ful mechanism of my woman's-mind — 
 under the enchanting spell of a 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 full- 
 ness of nineteen springs. It is unutter- 
 ably 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 sulphur 
 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 com- 
 fort. I am intensely thankful to the 
 Devil for my two good legs and the full 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 3 1 
 
 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, accept, for my two 
 good legs, my sincerest gratitude. I lie 
 on the ground for some minutes and 
 meditate idly. There is a worldful 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. A man would go 
 to sleep, probably, like a dog or a pig. 
 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 
 
32 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 the west. It casts a yellow glamor 
 over the earth, a glamor not of joy, nor 
 of pleasure, nor of happiness — but of 
 peace. 
 
 The young poplar trees smile gently 
 in the deathly still air. The sage brush 
 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 vale of Avoca! 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 wait- 
 ing 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, 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 33 
 
 filled with rain and wind and hail; and 
 yet nearly always at the sun's setting 
 there will be calm — and the red line of 
 sky. 
 
 There is nothing in the world quite 
 like this red sky at sunset. It is Glory, 
 Triumph, Love, Fame! 
 
 Imagine a life bereft of things, and 
 fingers pointed at it, and eyebrows 
 raised; tossed and bandied hither and 
 yon; crushed, beaten, bled, rent asun- 
 der, 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 Bona- 
 parte. 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 
 
34 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 Devil. His hatred was his term of 
 anguish. 
 
 Then the sun threw on the sky for 
 him a red, red line — the red line of 
 Triumph, Glory, Fame! 
 
 And afterward there was the black- 
 ness 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 pos- 
 session," and so the red sky we have 
 with us always. 
 
 Oh, Devil, Fate, World — some one, 
 bring me my red sky! For a little brief 
 time, and I will be satisfied. Bring it 
 to me intensely red, intensely full, in- 
 tensely 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 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 35 
 
 me keep my Happiness for one short 
 hour, and take away all from me for- 
 ever. 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. 
 
3anuars 19. 
 
 1COME from a long line of Scotch 
 and Canadian Mac Lanes. There 
 are a great many Mac Lanes, but 
 there is usually only one real Mac Lane 
 in each generation. There is but one 
 who feels again the passionate spirit of 
 the clans, those barbaric dwellers in the 
 bleak, but well-beloved Highlands of 
 Scotland. 
 
 I am the real Mac Lane of my gener- 
 ation. The real Mac Lane 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 selfish- 
 ness, with a large letter "s." Life may 
 be easy enough for the innumerable 
 Canadian Mac Lanes 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 
 36 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 37 
 
 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 sup- 
 pose — if they should all die to-morrow? 
 If I were not a real Mac Lane perhaps 
 it would have been different, or per- 
 haps I should not have missed these 
 things. 
 
 How much, Devil, have I lost for the 
 privilege of being a real Mac Lane? 
 
 But yes, I have also gained much. 
 
January 20. 
 
 1HAVE 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 some- 
 how 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, ineffably 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 an- 
 other woman? 
 
 My one friend is a woman some 
 twelve or thirteen years older than I. 
 38 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 3g 
 
 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 ex- 
 change for Happiness — or some lesser 
 thing. But I love Fannie Corbin with 
 a peculiar and vivid intensity, and with 
 all the sincerity and passion that is in 
 me. Often I 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 Fannie Corbin, it 
 is then that it comes on me with force 
 that I am not good. 
 
 But I can love her with all the ardor 
 of a young and passionate heart. 
 
40 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 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 "anem- 
 one lady," a name beautifully appro- 
 priate. 
 
 The anemone lady used to teach me 
 literature in the Butte High School. 
 She used to read poetry in the class- 
 room in a clear, sweet voice that made 
 Dne 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! 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 4 1 
 
 My friend does not fully understand 
 me; she thinks much too well of me. 
 She has 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 un- 
 rest 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 
 in some little out-of-the-world place 
 high up on the side of a mountain for 
 the rest of my life — what more would I 
 desire? My friendship would constitute 
 my life. 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 
 the dear blue anemone that grows in 
 the winds and rains of spring. 
 
 But Miss Corbin would doubtless 
 look somewhat askance at the idea of 
 
42 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 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 sacri- 
 fices — doing for her fellow-creatures, 
 giving 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, the anemone lady — and think 
 often about her with passionate love. 
 
January 21. 
 
 HAPPINESS, don't you know, is 
 of three kinds — and all are tran- 
 sitory. 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 
 Maltese cat, dipping 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 feel- 
 ings 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 
 
 43 
 
44 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 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 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 
 played on the violin that stirs you 
 within to exquisite torture. 
 
 It's like the human voice divine sing- 
 ing 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 be- 
 yond words. It is the kind of Happi- 
 ness the Devil will bring to me when 
 he comes, — to me, to me\ Oh, why 
 does he not come now when I am in 
 the midst of my youth! Why is he so 
 long in coming? 
 
 Often you hear a dozen stories of 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 45 
 
 how the Devil was most ready and will- 
 ing to take all from some one and give 
 him his measure of Happiness. And 
 sometimes the person was innately 
 virtuous and so could not take the Hap- 
 piness when it was offered. But Hap- 
 piness 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 Happi- 
 ness — Happiness for me would be'sure 
 to mean something wicked (as if Hap- 
 piness could ever be wicked!); that I 
 ought to think of being good. I ought 
 to think of God. These are persons 
 
46 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 who help to fill the world with foois. 
 At any rate their words are unable to 
 affect me. I can not distinguish be- 
 tween 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 pay- 
 ment in full for every favor. 
 
 But surely he will come one day with 
 Happiness for me. 
 
 Yet, oh, how can 1 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 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 47 
 
 every living thing, the world! — the uni- 
 verse be damned! 
 
 Oh, I am weary, weary! Can't you 
 see that I am weary and pity me in my 
 own damnation? 
 
3anuars 22. 
 
 IT IS night. I might well be in my 
 bed taking a needed rest. But 
 first I shall write. 
 
 To-day 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. I went 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. 
 
 To-day the bitter wind swept over 
 me and around me and into the re- 
 mote corners of my brain and swept 
 away the delusions, and buffeted my 
 philosophy with rough insolence. 
 
 The world is made up mostly of noth- 
 ing. You may be convinced of this 
 when a bitter wind has swept away 
 your delusions. 
 
 4* 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 49 
 
 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 that 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 
 balm-o'-Gilead shines wet and sweet 
 after the rain; why the red never fails 
 
50 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 to come to the breast of the robin, the 
 black to the crow, the gray to the little 
 wren; 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. 
 
 To-day 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 won- 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 5 1 
 
 dering, 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 hawthorn. The mint and 
 white hawthorn 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 
 there will come back to you the fra- 
 grance of a swamp filled with mint and 
 white hawthorn. 
 
 It is meltingly beautiful. 
 
 What does it mean? 
 
 What would it tell? 
 
 Why does the marsh, and the mint 
 and white hawthorn, freeze over in the 
 
52 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 fall? And why do they come again r 
 voluptuous, enticing, 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 pin- 
 nacle of fine, invisible damnation. 
 
 The world is like a little marsh filled 
 with mint and white hawthorn. It is 
 filled with things likewise damnably 
 beautiful. There are the green, green 
 grass-blades and the gray dawns; there 
 are swiftly-flowing rivers and the honk- 
 ing 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. 
 
 The Devil has made all of these 
 things, and also he has made human 
 beings who can feel. 
 
 Who was it that said, long ago, "Life 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 53 
 
 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, since possibly he 
 may bring me Happiness. I cast my- 
 self 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 
 
54 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 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 thee, Devil. 
 
 At least I shall be able to take my 
 Happiness when it comes — even though 
 the piles of nice distinctions between it 
 and me be mountains high. 
 
 But meanwhile, the world, I say, and 
 the people are nothing, nothing, noth- 
 ing. The splendid castles, the strong 
 bridges, that we are building are of 
 small moment. We can only go down 
 the wide roadway wondering and weep- 
 ing, and without where to lay our heads. 
 
January 23* 
 
 1HAVE 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 noth- 
 ing 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. 
 
 55 
 
56 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 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 super- 
 fluous in literary haunts; I may see my- 
 self 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, 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 57 
 
 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 tend- 
 encies; 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 lay- 
 ers 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 un- 
 happy; my life is made up of Nothing- 
 ness; 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 some- 
 
58 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 thing 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 
 porterhouse steak — and some green 
 young onions. 
 
 For which I thank thee, Devil, pro- 
 foundly. 
 
 Who says the Devil is not your 
 friend? Who says the Devil does not 
 believe in the all-merciful Law of Com- 
 pensation? 
 
 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 por- 
 terhouse steak from Omaha, and some 
 fresh green young onions from Cali- 
 fornia. 
 
January 24. 
 
 I AM charmingly original. I am de- 
 lightfully refreshing. I am start- 
 lingly Bohemian. I am quaintly 
 interesting — the while in my sleeve I 
 may be smiling and smiling — and a vil- 
 lain. I can talk to a roomful of dull 
 people and compel their interest, ad- 
 miration, 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, embellish- 
 ing 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 origin- 
 ality, my delightfully refreshing candor, 
 
 59 
 
60 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 is something powerful and striking in 
 its way. 
 
 I do not, however, exert myself often 
 in this way; partly because I can some- 
 times foresee, from the character of the 
 assembled company, that my perform- 
 ance will not have the desired effect — 
 for I am a genius, and genius at close 
 range at times carries itself uncon- 
 sciously to the point where it becomes 
 so interesting that it is atrocious, and 
 can not be carried farther without hav- 
 ing 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 con- 
 versation 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 Mac 
 Lane. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 6 1 
 
 When I give out broad-minded opin- 
 ions about Ninon de l'Enclos, I demon- 
 strate her relative position to Mary 
 Mac Lane! 
 
 When I discourse liberally on the 
 subject of the married relation, I talk of 
 it only as it will affect Mary Mac Lane. 
 
 An interesting creature, Mary Mac 
 Lane. 
 
 As a matter of fact, it is so with every 
 one, only every one is far from realiz- 
 ing 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 environ- 
 ment, 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. 
 
62 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 Charlotte Bronte did this in some 
 degree, and she was a genius; and also 
 Marie Bashkirtseff, and Olive Schreiner, 
 and George Eliot. They are all gen- 
 iuses. 
 
 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 de- 
 velopment 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 the 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 63 
 
 contemptuous, the sublime and the 
 ridiculous, the aggressive and the hum- 
 ble, 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 got- 
 ten 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 of 
 
64 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 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 curi- 
 ously at the portrait 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 25. 
 
 1CAN 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 to 
 65 
 
66 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 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 after- 
 noon, 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 lay- 
 ers and vistas of the native soil. My 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 67 
 
 hair 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 mis- 
 chief. 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 con- 
 trary; I had an extremely bad temper; 
 I was hard-hearted; I was full of in- 
 fantile malice. Truly I was a vicious 
 little beast. 
 
 I was a little piece of untrained Na- 
 ture. 
 
 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. 
 
68 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 Now I feel and I want things and I 
 know it with burning vividness. 
 
 The little vicious Mary Mac Lane 
 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 re- 
 mained 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 
 Mac Lane, 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 de- 
 veloped into a woman, young and alone 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 69 
 
 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 bright- 
 ness or bitterness in the long after- 
 years. 
 
 I have left that time far enough be- 
 hind me. It will never come back. 
 And it had a Nothingness — do you 
 
JO THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 hear, a Nothingness/ 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 cere- 
 mony — 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 miser- 
 able, petty, paltry excuse for living to- 
 gether. 
 
 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 the 
 
 71 
 
72 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 pride of their own purity, when they 
 happen upon some corner where the 
 marriage ceremony is lacking. So vir- 
 tuous 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 hor- 
 ror 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 pre- 
 fer some life that is not virtuous. 
 
 I shall never make use of the mar- 
 riage ceremony. I hereby register a 
 vow, Devil, to that effect. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 73 
 
 When a man and a woman love one 
 another that is enough. That is mar- 
 riage. A religious rite is superfluous. 
 And if the man and woman live to- 
 gether 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 plays 
 
74 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 the virtuous woman. There are too 
 many such in the world now. 
 
 May I never, I say, become that ab- 
 normal, merciless animal, that de- 
 formed monstrosity — a virtuous woman. 
 
 Anything, Devil, but that. 
 
 And so, as I look out over the roofs 
 and chimneys, I have a weary, dis- 
 gusted feeling. 
 
January 27. 
 
 THIS is not a diary. It is a Por- 
 trayal. It is my inner life shown 
 in its nakedness. I am trying 
 my utmost to show everything — to re- 
 veal 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 men- 
 tal 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 help- 
 
 75 
 
76 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 less, crushed, and defeated, before 
 them. It is as if they were written on 
 the walls of my soul-chamber in an un- 
 known language. 
 
 My soul goes blindly seeking, seek- 
 ing, 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 bar- 
 renness 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: pur- 
 sued 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 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 77 
 
 Devil 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 min- 
 gle 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 beings 
 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 
 
78 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 my wooden heart, and my woman's- 
 body, and my mind, and my soul. Sor- 
 row 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 excite- 
 ment; 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 trium- 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE Jg 
 
 phant; it will grovel in the dust of en- 
 tire 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 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 inade- 
 quately. 
 
 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 uncov- 
 ered 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 Eat- 
 ing. 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 exquisite- 
 ness 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, 
 80 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 8t 
 
 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 eat- 
 ing 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 fuU 
 
82 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 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. Gas- 
 tric juices leap out from the walls and 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 83 
 
 swathe it in loving embrace. My 
 stomach is fond of something bitter 
 and salt. It lavishes flattery and en- 
 dearment 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 bit- 
 ter 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 and 
 
84 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 green and deliriously salt. I experi- 
 ence 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 gul- 
 let, and again the festive Stomach lifts 
 up a silent voice in psalms and rejoic- 
 ing. 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 ec- 
 static. "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 trans- 
 formation takes place. I am now a 
 gross but supremely contented sensual- 
 ist. An exquisite symphony of sensual- 
 ism and pleasure seems to play some- 
 where within me. My heart purrs. 
 My brain folds its arms and lounges. I 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 85 
 
 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 — abso- 
 lutely 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 — it- 
 self, and nothing beyond. 
 
 And so I have made my olive and m^ 
 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. 
 
86 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 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 satis- 
 fied. I want nothing, nothing. 
 
 My inner quiet is infinite. I am con- 
 scious that it is but momentary, and it 
 matters not. On the contrary, the 
 knowledge of this fact renders the 
 present quiet — the repose, more limit- 
 less, more intense. 
 
 Where now, Devil, is your damna- 
 tion? 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 sen- 
 sation and charm. 
 
 No. We will not dispute with the 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 87 
 
 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 
 aberration. 
 
 This is the art of Eating. 
 
 I have acquired it by means of self- 
 examination, analyzing — analyzing — 
 analyzing. Truly my genius is analyti- 
 cal. 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 philoso- 
 phy, these turnings aside! 
 
 If it please the Devil, one day I may 
 have Happiness. That will be all-suffi- 
 cient. I shall then analyze no more. I 
 shall be a different being. 
 
 But meanwhile I shall eat. 
 
88 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 When the last of the olive vanishes 
 into the stomach, when it is there re- 
 duced 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 dis- 
 covered 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 an 
 other mark of genius. Genius, apart 
 from natural sensitiveness, is prone 
 equally to unreasoning joy and to bit- 
 terest 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 ad- 
 mirably suited to the creature it por- 
 89 
 
CjO THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 trays. 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 care- 
 fully 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 liter- 
 ature 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 impress 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 91 
 
 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, "J ane Eyre," as a picture shown 
 to a world seeing with distorted vision. 
 Charlotte Bronte 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 
 Bronte intended to send out. But I 
 saw that there was a message — of brav- 
 ery, 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 piety 
 
92 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 and mourning to move this world a 
 tiny bit. 
 
 But still it will give you praise and 
 applause and money if you will prosti- 
 tute 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 Por- 
 trayal. 
 
 But a Portrayal is also a thing that 
 may be misunderstood. 
 
3anuar$ 30* 
 
 AN IDLE brain is the Devil's work- 
 shop, 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 work- 
 shop, 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 that 
 
 93 
 
94 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 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 hypo- 
 crites. 
 
 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 ex- 
 tremely 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 fasci- 
 nating, 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 — 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 95 
 
 he would love me. I would be in rap- 
 tures. And I would love him, oh, 
 madly, madly! 
 
 "What would you have me do, little 
 Mac Lane?" 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, fascinat- 
 ing voice. Say it to me often, always — 
 a million times." 
 
 "What would you have me do, little 
 Mac Lane?" he would say again. 
 
 I would answer: "Hurt me, burn me, 
 consume me with hot love, shake me 
 violently, embrace me hard, hard in 
 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 Mac 
 Lane?" 
 
96 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 "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 Mac Lane?" he would 
 say. 
 
 "I will bear wonderful, beautiful chil- 
 dren — 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 in- 
 effable exaltation." 
 
 "And how will you treat me, little 
 Mac Lane?" 
 
 "I will cast myself at your feet; or I 
 will minister to you with divine tender- 
 ness; 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 
 1 will stop my ears; when you go blind 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE Q7 
 
 I 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 trans- 
 ports. 
 
 Oh, Devil, Devil, Devil! 
 
 Oh, misery, misery of 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 won- 
 derful beautifulness of Nature 
 even in her barrenness. The far-dis- 
 tant mountains had that high, pure, 
 transparent look, and the nearer ones 
 were transformed completely with a 
 wistful, beseeching attitude that re- 
 minded 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, 
 
 98 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE QQ 
 
 and hurt it. There was that in the air 
 which is there when something is going 
 to happen. Only nothing ever hap- 
 pens. It is rare, I thought, that my 
 sand and barrenness looks like this. I 
 crouched on the ground, and the won- 
 drous 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 un- 
 known wanting. This is my soul's 
 
IOO THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 awakening. Ah, the pain of my soul's 
 awakening! Is there nothing, nothing 
 to 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's breast. — 
 
 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 dear 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LAN ? IOI 
 
 tender dreams, and of my soul's awak- 
 ening. 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. 
 
IQ2 THE . STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 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 gar- 
 den, 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 let 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE IO3 
 
 go; 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 an- 
 other 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 not 
 
104 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 dare 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. 
 
jf ebruars *♦ 
 
 OH, THE wretched bitter loneli- 
 ness 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! 
 
 V 
 
 t ■ 
 
 IOS 
 
ffebruars 2. 
 
 1HAVE been looking over the con- 
 fessions of the Bashkirtseff. They 
 are indeed rather like my Por- 
 trayal, but they are not so interesting, 
 nor so intense. I have a stronger indi- 
 viduality 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. 
 
 106 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 107 
 
 But in her great passion — her ambi- 
 tion, Marie Bashkirtseff was beautifully 
 consistent. And what terrific storms of 
 woe and despair must have enveloped 
 her when she knew that within a cer- 
 tain period she would be dead — re- 
 moved from the world, and her work 
 left undone! The time kept creeping 
 nearer — she must have tasted the bit- 
 terness 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 cer- 
 tainly hard lines for the little Bashkirt- 
 seff. 
 
 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 the 
 
108 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 time; my despair might be the despair 
 of despair; my misery utterly unceas- 
 ing, — and I could say, Never mind, on 
 the twenty-seventh of June, 1903, all 
 will be over — dull misery, rage, Noth- 
 ingness, obscurity, the unknown long- 
 ing, 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 be- 
 comes 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 run- 
 ning water, and a resting-place. Well — 
 oh, well! But I want the earthly Hap- 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE IO9 
 
 piness. I am not high-minded and 
 spiritual. I am earthly, human — 
 sensitive, sensuous, sensual, and, ah, 
 dear, my soul wants its earthly Happi- 
 ness! 
 
 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 Happi- 
 ness 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 — prob- 
 ably 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 con- 
 tent to grow as old and as sour as the 
 Devil wills. But having had no Hap- 
 piness — if I find myself growing old and 
 
IIO THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 still 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 cow- 
 ardice. 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. 
 
febtuarp3. Q^OJj 
 
 THE town of Butte presents a won- 
 derful 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 un- 
 paralleled. For mixture, for miscel- 
 lany — variedness, Bohemianism — where 
 is Butte's rival? 
 
 The population is not only of all na- 
 tionalities and stations, but the nation- 
 alities 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 spend 
 in 
 
112 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 an afternoon in visiting about among 
 divers curious people. 
 
 At some Fourth of July demonstra- 
 tion, 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 Cornish- 
 man, ogling and leering, greeting his 
 fellow - countrymen with alcoholic 
 heartiness, and gazing after every femi- 
 nine 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 ; insig- 
 nificant lawyers, dentists, messen- 
 gerboys; "plungers" without number; 
 greasy Italians from Meaderville; 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 113 
 
 greasier French people from the Boule- 
 varde Addition; 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 com- 
 mon in Butte as bar-maids in Ireland; 
 swell, flashy-looking Africans; respect- 
 able 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-keep- 
 ers with toothpicks in their mouths; a 
 vast army of dry-goods clerks — the 
 "paper-collared" gentry; miners of 
 every description; representatives from 
 
114 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 Dog Town, Chicken Flats, Busterville, 
 Butchertown, and Seldom Seen — sub- 
 urbs 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 pos- 
 sible), in vast hats and extremely plaid 
 stockings; persons who take things 
 seriously and play the races for a 
 living; "beer-jerkers" ; "biscuit-shoot- 
 ers"; soft-voiced Mexicans and Ara- 
 bians; — the dregs, the elite, 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 sin- 
 gularly carefree and strong and com- 
 fortable — 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 most 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 115 
 
 agreeable, 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 down- 
 trodden. 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 chil- 
 dren 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 less 
 
Il6 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 limpidly 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 pecu- 
 liar 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, bar- 
 ren, having lived its life in smoke-cured 
 Butte. 
 
 A single street in Butte contains 
 people in nearly every walk of life — liv- 
 ing side by side resignedly, if not in 
 peace. 
 
 In a row of five or six houses there 
 will be living miners and their fam- 
 ilies, the children of which prevent life 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 117 
 
 from 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 sud- 
 denly 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 ante- 
 cedents 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 com- 
 pany of strange people who also de- 
 scended suddenly, and upon whom the 
 
Il8 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 eyes 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 con- 
 viviality. 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 femi- 
 nine 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 bear- 
 ings, by the indefatigable tongues. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE Iig 
 
 Every incident in the history of the 
 street is put through a course of 
 sprouts by these same tireless mem- 
 bers. 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 sub- 
 stance 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 promis- 
 cuous — the Bohemian. And all these 
 
120 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 are tne Devil's playthings. They 
 amuse him, doubtless. 
 
 Butte is a place of sand and barren- 
 ness. 
 
 The ^ouls of these people are dumb. 
 
ff ebruars 4* 
 
 ALWAYS I wonder, when I die 
 will there be any one to remem- 
 ber 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 under- 
 stand 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. 
 
 121 
 
IFebruars 7. 
 
 IN THIS house where I drag out 
 my accursed, devilish, weary exist- 
 ence, upstairs in the bathroom, on 
 the little ledge at the top of the wain- 
 scoting, there are six tooth-brushes: an 
 ordinary white bone-handled one that 
 is my younger brother's; a white 
 twisted-handled one that is my sisters; 
 a flat-handled one that is my older 
 brother's; a celluloid-handled one that 
 is my stepfathers; a silver-handled 
 one that is mine; and another ordinary 
 one that is my mother's. The sight of 
 these tooth-brushes day after day, week 
 after week, and always, is one of the 
 most crushingly maddening circum- 
 stances in my fool's life. 
 
 Every Friday I wash up the bath- 
 room. Usually I like to do this. I like 
 the feeling of the water squeezing 
 through my fingers, and always it 
 leaves my nails beautifully neat. But 
 
 122 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 1 23 
 
 the obviousness of those six tooth- 
 brushes signifying me and the five other 
 members of this family and the aim- 
 less emptiness of my existence here — 
 Friday after Friday — makes my soul 
 weary and my heart sick. 
 
 Never does the pitiable, barren, con- 
 temptible, damnable, narrow Nothing* 
 ness of my life in this house come upon 
 me with so intense a force as when 
 my eyes happen upon those six tooth- 
 brushes. 
 
 Among the horrors of the Inquisi- 
 tion, a minute refinement of cruelty was 
 reached when the victim's head was 
 placed beneath a never-ceasing falling 
 of water, drop by drop. 
 
 A convict sentenced to solitary con- 
 finement, spending his endless days 
 staring at four blank walls, feels that 
 had he committed every known crime 
 he could not possibly deserve his pun- 
 ishment. 
 
 I am not undergoing an Inquisition, 
 nor am I a convict in solitary confine- 
 
124 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 ment. But I live in a house with people 
 who affect me mostly through their 
 tooth-brushes — and those I should like, 
 above all things, to gather up and 
 pitch out of the bathroom window — 
 and oh, damn them, damn them! 
 
 You who read this, can you under- 
 stand the depth of bitterness and hatred 
 that is contained in this for me? Per- 
 haps you can a little if you are a woman 
 and have felt yourself alone. 
 
 When I look at the six tooth-brushes 
 a fierce, lurid storm of rage and passion 
 comes over me. Two heavy leaden 
 hands lay hold of my life and press, 
 press, press. They strike the sick, sick 
 weariness to my inmost soul. 
 
 Oh, to leave this house and these 
 people, and this intense Nothingness — 
 oh, to pass out from them, forever! 
 But where can I go, what can I do? I 
 feel with mad fury that I am helpless. 
 The grasp of the stepfather and the 
 mother is contemptible and absurd — 
 but with the persistence and tenacity of 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 1 25 
 
 narrow minds. It is like the two heavy 
 leaden hands. It is not seen — it is not 
 tangible. It is felt. 
 
 Once I took away my own silver- 
 handled tooth-brush from the bathroom 
 ledge, and kept it in my bedroom for a 
 day or two. I thought to lessen the 
 effect of the six. 
 
 I put it back in the bathroom. 
 
 The absence of one accentuated the 
 significant damnation of the others. 
 There was something more forcibly 
 maddening in the five than in the six 
 tooth-brushes. The damnation was 
 not worse, but it developed my feeling 
 about them more vividly. 
 
 And so I put my tooth-brush back in 
 the bathroom. 
 
 This house is comfortably furnished. 
 My mother spends her life in the 
 adornment of it. The small square 
 rooms are distinctly pretty. 
 
 But when I look at them seeingly I 
 think of the proverb about the dinner 
 of stalled ox. 
 
126 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 Yet there is no hatred here, except 
 mine and my bitterness. I am the only 
 one of them whose bitter spirit cries 
 out against things. 
 
 But there is that which is subtler and 
 strikes deeper. There is the lack of 
 sympathy — the lack of everything that 
 counts: there is the great, deep Noth- 
 ing. 
 
 How much better were there hatred 
 here than Nothing! 
 
 I long hopelessly for will-power, reso- 
 lution to take my life into my own 
 hands, to walk away from this house 
 some day and never return. I have 
 nowhere to go — no money, and I know 
 the world quite too well to put the 
 slightest faith in its voluntary kindness 
 of heart. But how much better and 
 wider, less damned, less maddening, to 
 go out into it and be beaten and 
 cheated and fooled with, than this! — 
 this thing that gathers itself easily into 
 a circle made of six tooth-brushes with 
 a sufficiency of surplus damnation. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 1 27 
 
 I have read about a woman who went 
 down from Jerusalem to Jericho and 
 fell among thieves. Perhaps she had a 
 house at Jerusalem with six tooth- 
 brushes and Nothingness. In that case 
 she might have rushed gladly into the 
 arms of thieves. 
 
 I think of crimes that strike horror 
 and revulsion to my maid-senses. And 
 I think of my Nothingness, and I ask 
 myself were it not better to walk the 
 earth an outcast, a solitary woman, and 
 meet and face even these, than that 
 each and every one of my woman- 
 senses should wear slowly, painfully to 
 shreds, and strain and break — in this 
 unnameable Nothing? 
 
 Oh, the dreariness — the hopelessness 
 of Nothing! 
 
 There are no words to tell it. And 
 things are always hardest to bear when 
 there are no words for them. 
 
 However great one's gift of language 
 may be, there is always something that 
 one can not tell. 
 
128. THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 I am weary of self — always self. But 
 it must be so. 
 
 My life is filled with self. 
 
 If my soul could awaken fully per- 
 haps I might be lifted out of myself — 
 surely I should be. But my soul is not 
 awake. It is awakening, trying to 
 open its eyes; and it is crying out 
 blindly after something, but it can not 
 know. I have a dreadful feeling that it 
 will stay always like this. 
 
 Oh, I feel everything — everything! I 
 feel what might be. And there is 
 Nothing. There are six tooth-brushes. 
 
 Would I stop for a few fine distinc- 
 tions, a theory, a natural law even, to 
 escape from this into Happiness — or 
 into something greatly less? 
 
 Misery — misery! If only I could feel 
 it less! 
 
 Oh, the weariness, the weariness — as 
 I await the Devil's coming. 
 
f ebruars 8. 
 
 OFTEN I walk out to a place on 
 the flat valley below the town, 
 to flirt with Death. There is 
 within me a latent spirit of coquetry, it 
 appears. 
 
 Down on the flat there is a certain 
 deep, dark hole with several feet of 
 water at the bottom. 
 
 This hole completely fascinates me. 
 Sometimes when I start out to walk in 
 a quite different direction, I feel im- 
 pelled almost irresistibly to turn and go 
 down on the flat in the direction of the 
 fascinating, deep black hole. 
 
 And here I flirt with Death. The 
 hole is so narrow — only about four feet 
 across — and so dark, and so deep! I 
 don't know whether it was intended to 
 be a well, or whether it is an abandoned 
 shaft of some miner. At any rate it is 
 isolated and deserted, and it has a rare 
 loving charm for me. 
 
 X2 9 
 
130 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 1 go there sometimes in the early 
 evening, and kneel on the edge of it and 
 lean over the dark pit, with my hand 
 grasping a wooden stake that is driven 
 into the ground near by. And I drop 
 little stones down and hear them splash 
 hollowly, and it sounds a long way off. 
 
 There is something wonderfully 
 soothing, wonderfully comforting to my 
 unrestful, aching wooden heart in the 
 dark mystery of this fascinating hole. 
 Here is the End for me, if I want it — 
 here is the Ceasing, when I want it. 
 And I lean over and smile quietly. 
 
 "No flowers," I say softly to myself, 
 "no weeping idiots, no senseless 
 funeral, no oily undertaker fussing over 
 my woman's-body, no useless Christian 
 prayers. Nothing but this deep dark 
 restful grave." 
 
 No one would ever find it. It is a 
 mile and a half from any house. 
 
 The water — the dark still water 'at 
 the bottom — would gurgle over me and 
 make an end quickly. Or if I feared 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 131 
 
 there was not enough water, I would 
 bring with me a syringe and some mor- 
 phine and inject an immense quantity 
 into one white arm, and kneel over the 
 tender darkness until my youth-weary, 
 waiting-worn senses should be over- 
 come, and my slim, light body should 
 fall. It would splash into the water at 
 the bottom — it would follow the little 
 stones at last. And the black, muddy 
 water would soak in and begin the de- 
 stroying of my body, and murky bub- 
 bles would rise so long as my lungs 
 continued to breathe. Or perhaps my 
 body would fall against the side of the 
 hole, and the head would lie against it 
 out of the water. Or perhaps only the 
 face would be out of the water, turned 
 upward to the light above — or turned 
 half-down, and the hair would be darkly 
 wet and heavy, and the face would be 
 blue-white below it, and the eyes would 
 sink inward. 
 
 "The End, the End!" I say softly and 
 ecstatically. Yet I do not lean farther 
 
132 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 out. My hand does not loosen its 
 tight grasp on the wooden stake. I 
 am only flirting with Death now. 
 
 Death is fascinating — almost like the 
 Devil. Death makes use of all his arts 
 and wiles, powerful and alluring, and 
 flirts with deadly temptation for me. 
 And I make use of my arts and wiles — 
 and tempt him. 
 
 Death would like dearly to have me, 
 and I would like dearly to have him. 
 It is a flirtation that has its source in 
 mutual desire. We do not love each 
 other, Death and I, — we are not 
 friends. But we desire each other 
 sensually, lustfully. 
 
 Sometime I suppose I shall yield to 
 the desire. I merely play at it now — but 
 in an unmistakable manner. Death 
 knows it is only a question of time. 
 
 But first the Devil must come. First 
 the Devil, then Death: a deep dark 
 soothing grave — and the early even- 
 ing, "and a little folding of the hands 
 to sleep." 
 
jTebruarp 12. 
 
 1AM in no small degree, I find, a 
 sham — a player to the gallery. 
 Possibly this may be felt as you 
 read these analyses. 
 
 While all of these emotions are writ- 
 ten in the utmost seriousness and sin- 
 cerity, and are exactly as I feel them, 
 day after day — so far as I have the 
 power to express what I feel — still I aim 
 to convey through them all the idea that 
 I am lacking in the grand element of 
 Truth — that there is in the warp and 
 woof of my life a thread that is false — 
 false. 
 
 I don't know how to say this without 
 the fear of being misunderstood. 
 When I say I am in a way a sham, I 
 have no reference to the truths as I 
 have given them in this Portrayal, but 
 to a very light and subtle thing that 
 runs through them. 
 
 Oh, do not think for an instant that 
 X33 
 
134 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 this analysis of my emotions is not per 
 fectly sincere and real, and that I have 
 not felt all of them more than I can 
 put into words. They are my tears — 
 my life-blood! 
 
 But in my life, in my personality, 
 there is an essence of falseness and in- 
 sincerity. A thin, fine vapor of fraud 
 hangs always over me and dampens 
 and injures some things in me that I 
 value. 
 
 I have not succeeded thoroughly in 
 analyzing this — it is so thin, so elusive, 
 so faint — and yet not little. It is a nat- 
 ural thing enough viewed in the light 
 of my other traits. 
 
 I have lived my nineteen years buried 
 in an environment at utter variance 
 with my natural instincts, where my 
 inner life is never touched, and my 
 sympathies very rarely, if ever, ap- 
 pealed to. I never disclose my real de- 
 sires or the texture of my soul. Never, 
 that is to say, to any one except my one 
 friend, the anemone lady. — And so 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 1 35 
 
 every day of my life I am playing a 
 part; I am keeping an immense bundle 
 of things hidden under my cloak. 
 When one has played a part — a false 
 part — all one's life, for I was a sly, art- 
 ful little liar even in the days of five 
 and six; then one is marked. One may 
 never rid oneself of the mantle of false- 
 ness, charlatanry — particularly if one is 
 innately a liar. 
 
 A year ago when the friendship of 
 my anemone lady was given me, and 
 she would sometimes hear sympathet- 
 ically some long-silent bit of pain, I felt 
 a snapping of tense-drawn cords, a 
 breaking away of flood-gates — and a 
 strange, new pain. I felt as if I must 
 clasp her gentle hand tightly and give 
 way to the pent-up, surging tears of 
 eighteen years. I had wanted this ten- 
 der thing more than anything else all 
 my life, and it was given me suddenly. 
 
 I felt a convulsion and a melting, 
 within. 
 
 But I could not tell my one friend ex- 
 
136 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 actly what I felt. There was no doubt 
 in my own mind as to my own perfect 
 sincerity of feeling, but there was with 
 it and around it this vapor of fraud, a 
 spirit of falseness that rose and con- 
 fronted me and said, "hypocrite," "fool." 
 
 It may be that the spirit of falseness 
 is itself a false thing — yet true or false, 
 it is with me always. I have tried, in 
 writing out my emotions, to convey an 
 idea of this sham element while still 
 telling everything faithfully true. 
 Sometimes I think I have succeeded, 
 and at other times I seem to have sig- 
 nally failed. This element of falseness 
 is absolutely the very thinnest, the very 
 finest, the rarest of all the things in my 
 many-sided character. 
 
 It is not the most unimportant. 
 
 I have seen visions of myself walking 
 in various pathways. I have seen my- 
 self trying one pathway and another. 
 And always it is the same: I see before 
 me in the path, darkening the way and 
 filling me with dread and discourage- 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 1 37 
 
 ment, a great black shadow — the 
 shadow of my own element of false- 
 ness. 
 
 I can not rid myself of Jt. 
 
 I am an innate liar. 
 
 This is a hard thing to write about. 
 Of all things it is the most liable to be 
 misunderstood. You will probably 
 misunderstand it, for I have not suc- 
 ceeded in giving the right idea of it. I 
 aimed at it and missed it. It eluded 
 me completely. 
 
 You must take the idea as I have just 
 now presented it for what it may be 
 worth. This is as near as I can come 
 to it. But it is something infinitely 
 finer and rarer. 
 
 It is a difficult task to show to others 
 a thing which, though I feel and recog- 
 nize it thoroughly, I have not yet ana- 
 lyzed for myself. 
 
 But this is a complete Portrayal of 
 me — as I await the Devil's coming — and 
 I must tell everything — everything. 
 
jfebruars 13. 
 
 SO THEN, yes. As I have said, I 
 find that I am quite, quite odd. 
 My various acquaintances say 
 that I am funny. They say, "Oh, it's 
 that May Mac Lane, Dolly's younger 
 sister. She's funny." But I call it odd- 
 ity. I bear the hall-mark of oddity. 
 
 There was a time, a year or two since, 
 when I was an exceedingly sensitive 
 little fool — sensitive in that it used to 
 strike very deep when my young ac- 
 quaintances would call me funny and 
 find in me a vent for their distinctly un- 
 friendly ridicule. My years in the high 
 school were not years of joy. Two 
 years ago I had not yet risen above 
 these things. I was a sensitive little 
 fool. 
 
 But that sensitiveness, I rejoice to 
 say, has gone from me. The opinion 
 of these young people, or of these old 
 138 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 1 39 
 
 people, is now a thing that is quite un- 
 able to affect me. 
 
 The more I see of conventionality, it 
 seems, the more I am odd. 
 
 Though I am young and feminine — 
 very feminine — yet I am not that quaint 
 conceit, a girl: the sort of person that 
 Laura E. Richards writes about, and 
 Nora Perry, and Louisa M. Alcott, — 
 girls with bright eyes, and with charm- 
 ing faces (they always have charming 
 faces), standing with reluctant feet 
 where the brook and river meet, — and 
 all that sort of thing. 
 
 I missed all that. 
 
 I have read some girl-books, a few 
 years ago — "Hildegarde Grahame," 
 and "What Katy Did," and all— but I 
 read them from afar. I looked at 
 those creatures from behind a high 
 board fence. I felt as if I had more 
 tastes in common with the Jews wan- 
 dering through the wilderness, or with 
 a band of fighting Amazons. I am not 
 a girl. I am a woman, of a kind. I be- 
 
140 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 gan to be a woman at twelve, or more 
 properly, a genius. 
 
 And then, usually, if one is not a girl 
 one is a heroine — of the kind you read 
 about. But I am not a heroine, either. 
 A heroine is beautiful — eyes like the 
 sea shoot opaque glances from under 
 drooping lids — walks with undulating 
 movements, her bright smile haunts 
 one still, falls methodically in love with 
 a man — always with a man, eats things 
 (they are always called "viands") with a 
 delicate appetite, and on special occa- 
 sions her voice is full of tears. I do 
 none of these things. I am not beauti- 
 ful. I do not walk with undulating 
 movements — indeed, I have never seen 
 any one walk so, except, perhaps, a 
 cow that has been overfed. My bright 
 smile haunts no one. I shoot no 
 opaque glances from my eyes, which 
 are not like the sea by any means. I 
 have never eaten any viands, and my 
 appetite for what I do eat is most 
 excellent. And my voice has never 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 141 
 
 yet, to my knowledge, been full of 
 tears. 
 
 No, I am not a heroine. 
 
 There never seem to be any plain 
 heroines, except Jane Eyre, and she 
 was very unsatisfactory. She should 
 have entered into marriage with her 
 beloved Rochester in the first place. I 
 should have, let there be a dozen mad 
 wives upstairs. But I suppose the 
 author thought she must give her 
 heroine some desirable thing — high 
 moral principles, since she was not 
 beautiful. Some people say that 
 beauty is a curse. It may be true, but 
 I'm sure I should not have at all 
 minded being cursed a little. And I 
 know several persons who might well 
 say the same. But, anyway, I wish 
 some one would write a book about a 
 plain, bad heroine so that I might feel 
 in real sympathy with her. 
 
 So far from being a girl or a heroine, 
 I am a thief — as I have before suggested. 
 
 I mind me of how, not long since, I 
 
142 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 stole three dollars. A woman whom I 
 know rather well, and lives near, called 
 me into her house as I was passing and 
 asked me to do an errand for her. She 
 was having an ornate gown made, and 
 she needed some more applique with 
 which to festoon it. The applique cost 
 nine dollars a yard. My trusting 
 neighbor gave me a bit of the braid for 
 a sample and two twenty-dollar bills. 
 I was to get four yards. I did so, and 
 came back and gave her the braid and 
 a single dollar. The other three dol- 
 lars I kept myself. I wanted three dol- 
 lars very much, to put with a few that I 
 already had in my purse. My trusting 
 neighbor is of the kind that throws 
 money about carelessly. I knew she 
 would not pay any attention to a little 
 detail like that, — she was deeply inter- 
 ested in her new frock; or perhaps she 
 would think I had got thirty-nine dol- 
 lars' worth of applique. At any rate, 
 she did not need the money, and I 
 wanted three dollars, and so I stole it. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 1 43 
 
 I am a thief. 
 
 It has been suggested to me that I 
 am a kleptomaniac. But I am sure my 
 mind is perfectly sane. I have no 
 such excuse. I am a plain, downright 
 thief. 
 
 This is only one of my many pecula- 
 tions. I steal money, or anything that 
 I want, whenever I can, nearly always. 
 It amuses me — and one must be 
 amused. 
 
 I have only two stipulations: that the 
 person to whom it belongs does not 
 need it pressingly, and that there is not 
 the smallest chance of being found out. 
 (And of course I could not think of 
 stealing from my one friend.) 
 
 It would be extremely inconvenient 
 to be known as a thief, merely. 
 
 When the world knows you are a 
 thief it blinds itself completely to your 
 other attributes. It calls you a thief, 
 and there's an end. I am a genius as 
 well as a thief — but the world would 
 quite overlook that fact. "A thief's a 
 
144 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 thief," says the world. That is very 
 true. But the mere fact of being a 
 thief should not exclude the considera- 
 tion of one's other traits. When the 
 world knows you are a Methodist min- 
 ister, for instance, it will admit that you 
 may also be a violinist, or a chemist, or 
 a poet, and will credit you therefor. 
 And so if it condemns you for being a 
 thief, it should at the same time admire 
 you for being a genius. If it does not 
 admire you for being a genius, then it 
 has no right to condemn you for being 
 a thief. 
 
 — And why the world should condemn 
 any one for being a thief — when there 
 is not within its confines any one who 
 is not a thief in some way — is a bit of 
 irony upon which I have wasted much 
 futile logic. — 
 
 I am not trying to justify myself for 
 stealing. I do not consider it a thing 
 that needs to be justified, any more than 
 walking or eating or going to bed. 
 But, as I say, if the world knew that I 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 1 45 
 
 am a thief without being first made 
 aware with emphasis that I am some 
 other things also, then the world would 
 be a shade cooler for me than it 
 already is — which would be very cool 
 indeed. 
 
 And so in writing my Portrayal I 
 have dwelt upon other things at some 
 length before touching on my thieving 
 propensities. 
 
 None of my acquaintances would sus- 
 pect that I am a thief. I look so re- 
 spectable, so refined, so "nice," so 
 inoffensive, so sweet, even! 
 
 But, for that matter, I am a great 
 many things that I do not appear to 
 be. 
 
 The woman from whom I stole the 
 three dollars, if she reads this, will rec- 
 ognize it. This will be inconvenient. I 
 fervently hope she may not read it. It 
 is true she is not of the kind that 
 reads. 
 
 But, after all, it's of no consequence. 
 This Portrayal is Mary Mac Lane: her 
 
146 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 wooden heart, her young woman's- 
 body, her mind, her soul. 
 
 The world may run and read. 
 
 I will tell you what I did with the 
 three dollars. In Dublin Gulch, which 
 is a rough quarter of Butte inhabited 
 by poor Irish people, there lives an 
 old world - soured, wrinkled - faced 
 woman. She lives alone in a small, 
 untidy house. She swears frightfully 
 like a parrot, and her reputation is 
 bad — so bad, indeed, that even the old 
 woman's compatriots in Dublin Gulch 
 do not visit her lest they damage their 
 own. It is true that the profane old 
 woman's morals are not good — have 
 never been good — judged by the world's 
 standards. She bears various marks of 
 cold, rough handling on her mind and 
 body. Her life has all but run its 
 course. She is worn out. 
 
 Once in a while I go to visit this old 
 woman — my reputation must be sadly 
 damaged by now. 
 
 I sit with her for an hour or two and 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 1 47 
 
 listen to her. She is extremely glad 
 to have me there. Except me she has 
 no one to talk to but the milkman, the 
 groceryman, and the butcher. So 
 always she is glad to see me. There is 
 a certain bond of sympathy between her 
 and me. We are fond of each other. 
 When she sees me picking my way 
 towards her house, her hard, sour face 
 softens wonderfully and a light of dis- 
 tinct friendliness comes into her green 
 eyes. 
 
 Don't you know, there are few people 
 enough in the world whose hard, sour 
 faces will soften at sight of you and a 
 distinctly friendly light come into their 
 green eyes. For myself, I find such 
 people few indeed. 
 
 So the profane old woman and I are 
 fond of each other. No question of 
 morals, or of immorals, comes between 
 us. We are equals. 
 
 I talk to her a little — but mostly she 
 talks. She tells me of the time when 
 she lived in County Galway, when she 
 
I48 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 was young — and of her several hus- 
 bands, and of some who were not hus- 
 bands, and of her children scattered 
 over the earth. And she shows me old 
 tin-types of these people. She has told 
 me the varied tale of her life a great 
 many times. I like to hear her tell it. 
 It is like nothing else I have heard. 
 The story in its unblushing simplicity, 
 the sour-faced old woman sitting tell- 
 ing it, and the tin-types, — contain a 
 thing that is absurdly, grotesquely, 
 tearlessly sad. 
 
 Once when I went to her house I 
 brought with me six immense, heavy, 
 fragrant chrysanthemums. 
 
 They had been bought with the three 
 dollars I had stolen. 
 
 It pleased me to buy them for the 
 profane old woman. They pleased her 
 also — not because she cares much for 
 flowers, but because I brought them to 
 her. I knew they would please her, 
 but that was not the reason I gave her 
 them- 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE I4Q 
 
 I did it purely and simply to please 
 myself. 
 
 I knew the profane old woman would 
 not be at all concerned as to whether 
 they had been bought with stolen 
 money or not, and my only regret was 
 that I had not had an opportunity to 
 steal a larger sum so that I might have 
 bought more chrysanthemums without 
 inconveniencing my purse. 
 
 But as it was they filled her dirty 
 little dwelling with perfume and 
 color. 
 
 Long ago, when I was six, I was a 
 thief — only I was not then, as now, a 
 graceful, light-fingered thief — I had not 
 the philosophy of stealing. 
 
 When I would steal a copper cent 
 out of my mother's pocketbook I would 
 feel a dreadful, suffocating sinking in 
 my bad heart, and for days and nights 
 afterwards — long after I had eaten the 
 chocolate mouse — the copper cent 
 would haunt me and haunt me, and oh, 
 how I wished it back in that pocketbook 
 
15O THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 with the clasp shut tight and the bureau 
 drawer locked! 
 
 And so, is it not finer to be nineteen 
 and a thief, with the philosophy of 
 stealing — than to be six and haunted 
 day and night by a copper cent? 
 
 For now always my only regret is, 
 when I have stolen five dollars, that I 
 did not steal ten while I was about it. 
 
 It is a long time ago since I was six. 
 
ffebruars 17. 
 
 TO-DAY I walked over the hill 
 where the sun vanishes down in 
 the afternoon. 
 
 I followed the sun so far as I could, 
 but two even very good legs can do no 
 more than carry one into the midst of 
 the sunshine — and then one may stand 
 and take leave, lovingly, of it. 
 
 I stood in the valley below the hill 
 and looked away at the gold-yellow 
 mountains that rise into the cloudy 
 blue, and at the long gray stretches of 
 rolling sand. It all reminded me of the 
 Devil and the Happiness he will bring 
 me. 
 
 Some day the Devil will come to me 
 and say: "Come with me." 
 
 And I will answer: "Yes." 
 
 And he will take me away with " him 
 to a place where it is wet and green — 
 where the yellow, yellow sunshine falls 
 151 
 
152 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 on heaven - kissing hills, and misty, 
 cloudy masses float over the valleys. 
 
 And for days I shall be happy — 
 happy — happy! 
 
 For days! The Devil and I will love 
 each other intensely, perfectly — for 
 days! He will be incarnate, but he 
 will not be a man. He will be the man- 
 devil, and his soul will take mine to 
 itself and they will be one — for days. 
 
 Imagine me raised out of my misery 
 and obscurity, dullness and Nothing- 
 ness, into the full, brilliant life of the 
 Devil — for days! 
 
 The love of the man-devil will enter 
 into my barren, barren life and melt all 
 the cold, hard things, and water the 
 barrenness, and a million little green 
 growing plants will start out of it; and 
 a clear, sparkling spring will flow over 
 it — through the dreary, sandy stretches 
 of my bitterness, among the false stony 
 roadways of my pain and hatred. And 
 a great rushing, flashing cataract of 
 melting love will flow over my weari- 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 1 53 
 
 ness and unrest and wash it away for- 
 ever. My soul will be fully awakened 
 and there will be a million little sweet 
 new souls in the green growing things. 
 And they will fill my life with every- 
 thing that is beautiful — tenderness, and 
 divineness, and compassion, and exalta- 
 tion, and uplifting grace, and light, and 
 rest, and gentleness, and triumph, and 
 truth, and peace. My life will be borne 
 far out of self, and self will sink quietly 
 out of sight — and I shall see it farther 
 and farther away, until it disappears. 
 
 "It is the last — the last — of that Mary 
 Mac Lane," I will say, and I will feel a 
 long, sighing, quivering farewell. 
 
 A thousand years of misery — and 
 now a million years of Happiness. 
 
 When the sun is setting in the] valley 
 and the crests of those heaven-kissing 
 hills are painted violet and purple, and 
 the valley itself is reeking and swim- 
 ming in yellow-gold light, the man- 
 devil — whom I love more than all — and 
 I will go out into it. 
 
154 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 We will be saturated in the yellow light 
 of the sun and the gold light of Love. 
 
 The man-devil will say to me: "Look, 
 you little creature, at this beautiful 
 picture of Joy and Happiness. It is 
 the picture of your life as it will be 
 while I am with you — and I am with 
 you for days/' 
 
 Ah, yes, I will take a last, long fare- 
 well of this Mary Mac Lane. Not one 
 faint shadow of her weary wretched 
 Nothingness will remain. 
 
 There will be instead a brilliant, 
 buoyant, joyous creature — transformed, 
 adorned, garlanded by the love of the 
 Devil. 
 
 My mind will be a treasure-house of 
 art, swept and garnished and strong 
 and at its best. 
 
 My barren, hungry heart will come at 
 last to its own. The red flames of the 
 man-devil's love will burn out forever its 
 pitiable, distorted, wooden quality, and 
 he will take it and cherish it — and give 
 me his. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 1 55 
 
 My young woman's-body likewise will 
 be metamorphosed, and I shall feel it 
 developing and filled with myriads of 
 little contentments and pleasures. 
 Always my young woman's-body is a 
 great and important part of me, and 
 when I am married to the Devil its 
 finely-organized nerve-power and intri- 
 cate sensibility will be culminated to 
 marvelous completeness. My soul — 
 upon my soul will descend consciously 
 the light that never was on land or sea. 
 
 This will be for days — for days. 
 
 No matter what came before, I will 
 say; no matter what comes afterward. 
 Just now it is the man-devil, my best- 
 beloved, and I, living in the yellow light. 
 
 Think of living with the Devil in a 
 bare little house, in the midst of green 
 wetness and sweetness and yellow 
 light — for days! 
 
 In the gray dawn it will be ineffably 
 sweet and beautiful, with shining leaves 
 and the gray, unfathomable air, and the 
 wet grass, and all. 
 
I56 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 "Be happy now, my weary little wife,'* 
 the Devil will say. 
 
 And the long, long yellow-gold day 
 will be filled with the music of Real 
 Life. 
 
 My grandest possibility will be real- 
 ized. The world contains a great many 
 things — and this is my grandest pos- 
 sibility realized! 
 
 I will weep rapturous tears. 
 
 When I think of all this and write it 
 there is in me a feeling that is more 
 than pain. 
 
 Perhaps the very sweetest, the ten- 
 derest, the most pitiful and benign 
 human voice in the world could sing 
 these things and this feeling set to their 
 own wondrous music, — and it would 
 echo far — far, — and you would under- 
 stand. 
 
ffebruars 2<X 
 
 AT TIMES when I walk among the 
 natural things — the barren, nat- 
 ural things — I know that I believe 
 in Something. Why can I not call it 
 God and pray to it? 
 
 There is Something — I do not know 
 it intellectually, but I feel it — I feel it — 
 with my soul. It does not seem to 
 reach down to me. It does not pity 
 me. It does not look at me tenderly 
 in my unhappiness. 
 
 My soul feels only that it is there. 
 
 No. It is not all-loving, all-gracious, 
 all-pitying. It hurts me — it hurts me 
 always as I walk over the sand. But 
 even while it hurts me it seems to 
 promise — ah, those beautiful things 
 that it promises me! 
 
 And then the hurting is anguish — for 
 I know that the promises will never be 
 fulfilled. 
 
 There is within me a thing that is 
 157 
 
158 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 aching, aching, aching always as the 
 days pass. 
 
 It is not my pain of wanting, nor my 
 pain of unrest, nor my pain of bitter- 
 ness, nor of hatred. I know those in 
 all their own anguish. 
 
 This aching is another pain. It is a 
 pain that I do not know — that I feel 
 ignorantly but sharply, and, oh, it is 
 torture, torture! 
 
 My soul is worn and weary with 
 pain. There is no compassion — no 
 mercy upon me. There is no one to 
 help me bear it. It is just I alone out 
 on the sand and barrenness. It is cruel 
 anguish to be always alone — and so 
 long — oh, so long! 
 
 Nineteen years are as ages to you 
 when you are nineteen. 
 
 When you are nineteen there is no 
 experience to tell you that all things 
 have an end. 
 
 This aching pain has no end. 
 
 I feel no tears now, but I feel heavy 
 sobs that shake my life to its center. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 1 59 
 
 My soul is wandering in a wilderness. 
 
 There is a great light sometimes that 
 draws my soul toward it. When my 
 soul turns toward it, it shines out bril- 
 liant and dazzling and awful — and the 
 worn, sensitive thing shrinks away, and 
 shivers, and is faint. 
 
 Shall my soul have to know this 
 Light, inevitably? Must it, some day, 
 plunge into this? 
 
 Oh, it may be — it may be. But I 
 know that I shall die with the pain. 
 
 There are times when the great 
 Light is dim and beautiful as the 
 starlight — the utter agony of it — the 
 cruel, ineffable loveliness! 
 
 Do you understand this ? I am 
 telling you my young, passionate life- 
 agony? Do you listen to it indiffer- 
 ently? Has it no meaning for any one? 
 For me it means everything. For me 
 it makes life old, long, weariness. 
 
 It may be that you know. And per- 
 haps you would even weep a little with 
 me if you had time. 
 
l6o THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 It is as if this Light were the light of 
 the Christian religion — and the Chris- 
 tian religion is full of hatred. It says, 
 "Come unto me, you that are heavy 
 laden, and I will give you rest." But 
 when you would go, when you reach 
 up with your weary hands, it sends you 
 a too-brilliant Light — it makes you 
 fair, wondrous promises — it puts you 
 off. You beseech it in your suffering — 
 
 "While the waters near me roll, 
 While the tempest still is high — " 
 
 but it does not listen — it does not care. 
 Worship me, worship me, it says, but 
 after that let me alone. There is a 
 bookful of promises. Take it and 
 thank me and worship me. 
 
 It does not care. 
 
 If I obey it, it looks on indifferently. 
 If I disobey it, it looks on indifferently. 
 If I am in woe, it looks on indifferently. 
 If I am in a brief joy, it looks on in- 
 differently. 
 
 I am left all alone — all alone. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE l6l 
 
 The Light is shown me and I reach 
 after it, but it is placed high out of my 
 reach. 
 
 I see the promises in the Light. 
 Oh, why — why does it promise these 
 things! Is not the burden of life 
 already greater than I can bear? And 
 there is the story of the Christ. It is 
 beautiful. It is damningly beautiful. 
 It draws the tears of pain and soft 
 anguish from me at the sense of beauty. 
 And when every nerve in me is melted 
 and overflowing, then suddenly I am 
 conscious that it is a lie — a lie. 
 
 Everywhere I turn there is Nothing — 
 Nothing. 
 
 My soul wails out its grief in loneli- 
 ness. 
 
 My soul wanders hither and thither 
 in the dark wilderness and asks, asks 
 always in blind, dull agony, How long? 
 — how long? 
 
February 22 
 IFE is a pitiful thing. 
 
 16a 
 
f cbruarp 23. 
 
 I STAND in the midst of my sand 
 and barrenness and gaze hard at 
 everything that is within my range 
 of vision — and ruin my eyes trying to 
 seeiintothe darkness beyond. 
 
 And nearly always I feel a vague 
 contempt for you, fine, brave world — 
 for you and all the things that I see 
 from my barrenness. But I promise 
 you, if some one comes from among 
 you over the sunset hill one day with 
 love for me, I will fall at your feet. 
 
 I am a selfish, conceited, impudent 
 little animal, it is true, but, after all, I 
 am only one grand conglomeration of 
 Wanting — and when some one comes 
 over the barren hill to satisfy the want- 
 ing, I will be humble, humble in my 
 triumph. 
 
 It is a difficult thing — a most difficult 
 
 thing — to live on as one year follows 
 
 another, from childhood slowly to 
 163 
 
1 64 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 womanhood, without one single sharer 
 of your life — to be alone, always alone, 
 when your one friend is gone. Oh, 
 yes, it is hard! Particularly when one 
 is not high-minded and spiritual, when 
 one's near longing is not a God and a 
 religion, when one wants above all 
 things the love of a human being — 
 when one is a woman, young and all 
 alone. Doubtless you know this. 
 After all, fine brave world, there are 
 some things that you know very well. 
 Whether or not you care is a quite 
 different matter. 
 
 You have the power to take this 
 wooden heart in a tight, suffocating 
 grasp. You have the power to do this 
 with pain for me, and you have the 
 power to do it with ravishing gentle- 
 ness. But whether or not you will is 
 another matter. 
 
 You may think evil of me before you 
 have finished reading this. You will be 
 very right to think so — according to 
 your standards. But sometimes you see 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 1 65 
 
 evil where there is no evil, and think 
 evil when the only evil is in your own 
 brains. 
 
 My life is a dry and barren life. 
 You can change it. 
 "Oh, the little more, and how much it is! 
 And the little less, and what worlds away." 
 
 Yes, you can change it. Stranger 
 things have happened. Again, whether 
 you will — that is a quite different thing. 
 
 No doubt you are the people and wis- 
 dom will die with you. I do not ques- 
 tion that. I will admit and believe 
 anything you may assert about your- 
 selves. I do not want your wisdom, 
 your judgment. I want some one to 
 come up over the barren sunset hill. 
 My thoughts are the thoughts of youth, 
 which are said to be long, long thoughts. 
 
 Your life is multi-colored and filled 
 with people. My life is of the gray of 
 sand and barrenness, and consists of 
 Mary Mac Lane, the longing for Happi- 
 ness, and the memory of the anemone 
 lady. 
 
1 66 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 This Portrayal is my deepest sin- 
 cerity, my tears, my drops of red blood. 
 Some of it is wrung from me — wrung 
 by my ambition to tell everything. It is 
 not altogether good that I should give 
 you all this, since I do not give it for 
 love of you. I am giving it in exchange 
 for a few gayly-colored things. I want 
 you to know all these passions and 
 emotions. I give them with the utmost 
 freedom. I shall be furious indeed if 
 you do not take them. At the same 
 time, the fact that I am exchanging my 
 tears and my drops of red blood for 
 your gayly-colored trifles is not a thing 
 that thrills me with delight. 
 
 But it's of little moment. When the 
 Devil comes over the hill with Happi- 
 ness I will rush at him frantically head- 
 long — and nothing else will matter. 
 
jfebruars 25* 
 
 MARY MAC LANE — what are 
 you, you forlorn, desolate little 
 creature? Why are you not of 
 and in the galloping herd? Why is it 
 that you stand out separate against the 
 background of a gloomy sky? Why can 
 you not enter into the lives and sym- 
 pathies of other young creatures? 
 There have been times when you 
 strained every despairing nerve to do 
 so — before you realized that these 
 things were not for you, that the only 
 sympathy for you was that of Mary 
 Mac Lane, and the only things for you 
 were those you could take yourself — 
 not which were given you. And your 
 things are few, few, you starved, lean 
 little mud-cat — you worn, youth-weary, 
 obscure little genius! 
 
 Oh, it is a wearisome waiting — for 
 the Devil. 
 
 167 
 
Jfebruar$ 28. 
 
 TO-DAY when I walked over my 
 sand and barrenness I felt Infi- 
 nite Grief. 
 
 Everything is beyond me. 
 
 Nothing is mine. 
 
 My single friendship shines brightly 
 before me, and is fascinating — and 
 always just out of my reach. 
 
 I want the love and sympathy of 
 human beings, and I repel human 
 beings. 
 
 Yes, I repel human beings. 
 
 There is something about me that 
 faintly and finely and unmistakably 
 repels. 
 
 When my Happiness comes, shall I 
 be able to have it? Shall I ever have 
 anything? 
 
 This repellent power is not an out- 
 ward quality. It is something that 
 comes from deeply, deeply within. It 
 is something that was there in the Be- 
 
 X68 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 1 69 
 
 ginning. It is a thing from the Orig- 
 inal. 
 
 There is no ridding myself of it. 
 There is no ridding myself of it. There 
 is no ridding myself of it. 
 
 Oh, I am damned — damned! 
 
 There is not one soul in the world to 
 feel for me and with me — not one out 
 of all the millions. No one can under- 
 stand — no one. 
 
 You are saying to yourself that I 
 imagine this. 
 
 What right have you to say so? You 
 don't know anything about me. I know 
 all about me. I have studied all the 
 elements and phases in my life for 
 years and years. I do not imagine 
 anything. I am even fool enough to 
 shut my eyes to some things until, 
 inevitably, I know I must meet them. 
 I am racked with the passions of youth, 
 and I am young in years. Beyond that 
 I am mature — old. I am not a child in 
 anything but my passions and my 
 years. I feel and recognize everything 
 
lyo THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 thoroughly. I have not to imagine 
 anything. My inner life is before my 
 eyes. 
 
 There is something about me that no 
 one can understand. Can there ever 
 be any one to understand? Shall I not 
 always walk my barren road alone? 
 
 This follows me incessantly. It is 
 burning like a smouldering fire every 
 hour of my life. 
 
 Oh, deep black Despair! 
 
 How I suffer, how I suffer — just in 
 being alive. 
 
 I feel Infinite Grief. 
 
 Oh, Infinite Grief 
 
/Barcb 2. 
 
 OFTEN in the early morning I 
 leave my bed and get me 
 dressed and go out into the 
 Gray Dawn. There is something 
 about the Gray Dawn that makes me 
 wish the world would stop, that the sun 
 would never more come up over the 
 edge, that my life would go on and on 
 and rest in the Gray Dawn. 
 
 In the Gray Dawn every hard thing 
 is hidden by a gray mantle of charity, 
 and only the light, vague, caressing 
 fancies are left. 
 
 Sometimes I think I am a strange, 
 strange creature — something not of 
 earth, nor yet of heaven, nor of hell. 
 I think at times I am a little thing 
 fallen on the earth by mistake: a thing 
 thrown among foreign, unfitting ele- 
 ments, where there is nothing in touch 
 with it, where life is a continual strug- 
 gle, where every little door is closed — 
 171 
 
172 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 every Why unanswered, and itself 
 knows not where to lay its head. I feel 
 a deadly certainty in some moments 
 that the wild world contains not one 
 moment of rest for me, that there will 
 never be any rest, that my woman's- 
 soul will go on asking long, long cen- 
 turies after my woman's-body is laid in 
 its grave. 
 
 I felt this in the Gray Dawn this 
 morning, but the gray charitable man- 
 tle softened it. Always I feel most 
 acutely in the Gray Dawn, but always 
 there is the thing to soften it. 
 
 The gray atmosphere was charged. 
 There was a tense electrical thrill in 
 the cold, soft air. My nerves were 
 keenly alive. But the gray curtain was 
 mercifully there. I did not feel too much. 
 
 How I wished the yellow, beautiful 
 sun would never more come up over 
 the edge to show me my nearer anguish! 
 
 "Stay with me, stay with me, soft 
 Gray Dawn," implored every one of 
 my tiny lives. "Let me forget. Let 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 1 73 
 
 the vanity, the pain, the longing sink 
 deep and vanish — all of it, all of it! 
 And let me rest in the midst of the 
 Gray Dawn. 
 
 I heard music — the silent music of 
 myriad voices that you hear when all is 
 still. One of them came and whispered 
 to me softly: "Don't suffer any more 
 just now, little Mary Mac Lane. You 
 suffer enough in the brightness of the 
 sun and the blackness of the night. 
 This is the Gray Dawn. Take a little 
 rest." 
 
 "Yes," I said, "I will take a little rest." 
 
 And then a wild, swelling chorus of 
 voices whispered in the stillness: "Rest, 
 rest, rest, little Mary Mac Lane. Suffer 
 in the brightness, suffer in the black- 
 ness — your soul, your wooden heart, 
 your woman's-body. But now a little 
 rest — a little rest." 
 
 "A little rest," I said again. 
 
 And straightway I began resting lest 
 the sun should come too quickly over 
 the edge. 
 
174 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 When I have heard in summer the 
 wind in a forest of pines, blowing a 
 wondrous symphony of purity and 
 truth, my varied nature felt itself 
 abashed and there was a sinking in my 
 wooden heart. The beauty of it rav- 
 ished my senses, but it savored crush- 
 ingly of the virtue that is far above and 
 beyond me, and I felt a certain sore, 
 despairing grief. 
 
 But the Gray Dawn is in perfect sym- 
 pathy. It is quite as beautiful as the 
 wind in the pines, and its truth and 
 purity are extremely gentle, and partly 
 hidden under the gray curtain. 
 
 Almost I can be a different Mary 
 Mac Lane out in the Gray Dawn. Let 
 me forget all the mingled agonies of 
 my life. Let me walk in the midst of 
 this soft grayness and drink of the 
 waters of Lethe. 
 
 The Gray Dawn is not Paradise; it is 
 not a Happy Valley; it is not a Garden 
 of Eden; it is not a Vale of Cashmere. 
 It is the Gray Dawn — soft, charitable, 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 1 75 
 
 tender. "The brilliant celestial yellow 
 will come soon/' it says; k 'you will 
 suffer then to your greatest extent. 
 But now I am here — and so, rest." 
 
 And so in the Gray Dawn I was for- 
 getting for a brief period. I was sub- 
 merged for a little in Lethe, river of 
 oblivion. If I had seen some one com- 
 ing over the near horizon with Happi- 
 ness I should have protested: Wait, 
 wait until the Gray Dawn has passed. 
 
 The deep, deep blue of the summer 
 sky stirs me to a half-painful joy. The 
 cool green of a swiftly-flowing river fills 
 my heart with unquiet longings. The 
 red, red of the sunset sky convulses my 
 entire being with passion. But the dear 
 Gray Dawn brings me Rest. 
 
 Oh, the Gray Dawn is sweet — sweet! 
 
 Could I not die for very love of it! 
 
 The Gray Dawn can do no wrong. 
 If those myriad voices suddenly had 
 begun to sing a voluptuous evil song of 
 the so great evil that I could not under- 
 stand, but that I could feel instantly, 
 
176 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 still the Gray Dawn would have been 
 fine and sweet and beautiful. 
 
 Always I admire Mary Mac Lane 
 greatly — though sometimes in my ad- 
 miration I feel a complete contempt for 
 her. But in the Gray Dawn I love Mary 
 Mac Lane tenderly and passionately. 
 
 I seem to take on a strange, calm in- 
 difference to everything in the world 
 but just Mary Mac Lane and the Gray 
 Dawn. We two are identified with 
 each other and joined together in 
 shadowy vagueness from the rest of the 
 world. 
 
 As I walked over my sand and bar- 
 renness in the Gray Dawn a poem ran 
 continuously through my mind. It ex- 
 pressed to me in my gray condition an 
 ideal life and death and ending. Every 
 desire of my life melted away in the 
 Gray Dawn except one good wish that 
 my own life and death might be short 
 and obscure and complete like them. 
 The poem was this beautiful one of 
 Charles Kingsley's: 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 1 77 
 
 " l Oh, Mary, go and call the cattle home, 
 And call the cattle home, 
 And call the cattle home, 
 Across the sands of Dee!' 
 The western wind was wild and dank with 
 foam, 
 And all alone went she. 
 
 "The creeping tide came up along the sand, 
 And o'er and o'er the sand, 
 And round and round the sand, 
 As far as eye could see; 
 The blinding mist came up and hid the 
 land — 
 And never home came she. 
 
 "Oh, is it weed, or fish, or floating hair? — 
 A tress of golden hair, 
 Of drowned maiden's hair, 
 Above the nets at sea. 
 Was never salmon yet that shone so fair 
 Among the stakes on Dee. 
 
 "They rowed her in across the rolling foam, 
 The cruel, crawling foam, 
 The cruel, hungry foam, 
 To her grave beside the sea; 
 But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle 
 home 
 Across the sands of Dee." 
 
178 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 This is a poem perfect. And in the 
 Gray Dawn it expresses to me a most 
 desirable thing — a short, eventless life, 
 a sudden ceasing, and a forgotten voice 
 sometimes calling. This Mary, in the 
 Gray Dawn, would wish nothing else. 
 If the waters rolled over me now — over 
 my short, eventless life — there would 
 be the sudden ceasing, — and the anem- 
 one lady would hear my voice some- 
 times, and remember me — the anemone 
 lady and one or two others. And after 
 a short time even my pathetic, passion- 
 ate voice would sound faint and be for- 
 gotten, and my world of sand and 
 barrenness would know me and my 
 weary little life-tragedy no more. 
 
 And well for me, I say, — in the Gray 
 Dawn. 
 
 It is different — oh, very different — 
 when the yellow bursts through the 
 gray. And the yellow is with me all 
 day long, and at sunset — the red, red 
 line! 
 
 Yet — oh, sweet Gray Dawn! 
 
flDarcb 5. 
 
 SOMETIMES I am seized with 
 nearer, vivider sensations of love 
 for my one friend, the anemone 
 lady. 
 
 She is so dear — so beautiful! 
 
 My love for her is a peculiar thing. 
 It is not the ordinary woman-love. It 
 is something that burns with a vivid 
 fire of its own. The anemone lady is 
 enshrined in a temple on the inside of 
 my heart that shall always only be hers. 
 
 She is my first love — my only dear 
 one. 
 
 The thought of her fills me with a 
 multitude of feelings, passionate yet 
 wonderfully tender, — with delight, with 
 rare, undefined emotions, with a sug- 
 gestion of tears. 
 
 Oh, dearest anemone lady, shall I 
 
 ever be able to forget your beautiful 
 
 face! There may be some long, 
 
 crowded years before me; it may be 
 179 
 
l8o THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 there will be people and people enter- 
 ing and departing — but, oh, no — no, I 
 shall never forget! There will be in 
 my life always — always the faint sweet 
 perfume of the blue anemone: the 
 memory of my one friend. 
 
 Before she went away, to see her, to 
 be near her, was an event in my life — a 
 coloring of the dullness. Always when 
 I used to look at her there would rush 
 a train of things over my mind, a 
 vaguely glittering pageant that came 
 only with her, and that held an always- 
 vivid interest for me. 
 
 There were manifold and varied 
 treasures in this train. There were 
 skies of spangled sapphire, and there 
 were lilies, and violets wet with dew. 
 There was the music of violins, and 
 wonderful weeds from the deep sea, and 
 songs of troubadours, and gleaming 
 white statues. There were ancient 
 forests of oak and clematis vines; there 
 were lemon-trees, and fretted palaces, 
 and moss-covered old castles with 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE l8l 
 
 moats and draw-bridges and tiny mul- 
 lioned windows with diamond panes. 
 There was a cold, glittering cataract of 
 white foam, and a little green boat far 
 off down the river, drifting along under 
 drooping willows. There was a tree of 
 golden apples, and a banquet in a beau- 
 tiful house with the melting music of 
 lutes and harps, and mulled orange-wine 
 in tall, thin glasses. There was a field 
 of long, fine grass, soft as bat's-wool, 
 and there were birds of brilliant plum- 
 age — scarlet and indigo with gold- 
 tipped wings. 
 
 All these and a thousand fancies 
 alike vaguely glittering would rush 
 over me when I was with the anemone 
 lady. Always my brain was in a gentle 
 delirium. My nerves were unquiet. 
 
 It was because I love her. 
 
 Oh, there is not — there can never 
 be — another anemone lady! 
 
 My life is a desert — a desert, but the 
 thin, clinging perfume of the blue anem- 
 one reaches to its utter confines. And 
 
1 82 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 nothing in the desert is the same be- 
 cause of that perfume. Years will 
 not fade the blue of the anemone, nor 
 a thousand bitter winds blow away the 
 rare fragrance. 
 
 I feel in the anemone lady a strange 
 attraction of sex. There is in me a 
 masculine element that, when I am 
 thinking of her, arises and overshadows 
 all the others. 
 
 "Why am I not a man," I say to the 
 sand and barrenness with a certain 
 strained, tense passion, "that I might 
 give this wonderful, dear, delicious 
 woman an absolutely perfect love!" 
 
 And this is my predominating feeling 
 for her. 
 
 So, then, it is not the woman-love, 
 but the man-love, set in the mysterious 
 sensibilities of my woman-nature. It 
 brings me pain and pleasure mingled 
 in that odd, odd fashion. 
 
 Do you think a man is the only crea- 
 ture with whom one may fall in love? 
 
 Often I see coming across the desert 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 1 83 
 
 a long line of light. My soul turns 
 toward it and shrinks away from it as 
 it does from all the lights. Some day, 
 perhaps, all the lights will roll into one 
 terrible white effervescence and rush 
 over my soul and kill it. But this light 
 does not bring so much of pain, for it is 
 soft and silvery, and always with it is the 
 Soul of Anemone. 
 
flDarcb 8. 
 
 THERE are several things in the 
 world for which I, of womankind 
 and nineteen years, have con- 
 ceived a forcible repugnance — or rather, 
 the feeling was born in me; I did not 
 have to conceive it. 
 
 Often my mind chants a fervent 
 litany of its own that runs somewhat 
 like this: 
 
 From women and men who dispense 
 odors of musk; from little boys with 
 long curls; from the kind of people who 
 call a woman's figure her "shape": 
 Kind Devil, deliver me. 
 
 From all sweet girls; from "gentle- 
 men"; from feminine men: Kind Devil, 
 deliver me. 
 
 From black under-clothing — and any 
 
 color but white; from hips that wobble 
 
 as one walks; from persons with fishy 
 184 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 1 85 
 
 eyes; from the books of Archibald C. 
 Gunter and Albert Ross: Kind Devil, 
 deliver me. 
 
 From the soft persistent, maddening 
 glances of water-cart drivers: Kind 
 Devil, deliver me. 
 
 From lisle-thread stockings; from 
 round, tight garters; from brilliant 
 brass belts: Kind Devil, deliver me. 
 
 From insipid sweet wine; from men 
 who wear moustaches; from the sort of 
 people that call legs "limbs"; from 
 bedraggled white petticoats: Kind 
 Devil, deliver me. 
 
 From unripe bananas; from bathless 
 people; from a waist-line that slopes 
 up in the front: Kind Devil, deliver 
 me. 
 
 From an ordinary man; from a bad 
 stomach, bad eyes, and bad feet: Kind 
 Devil, deliver me. 
 
 From red note-paper; from a rhine- 
 stone-studded comb in my hair; from 
 weddings: Kind Devil, deliver me. 
 
 From cod-fish balls; from fried egg 
 
1 86 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 plant, fried beef-steak, fried pork- 
 chops, and fried French toast: Kind 
 Devil, deliver me. 
 
 From wax flowers off a wedding- 
 cake, under glass; from thin-soled 
 shoes; from tape-worms; from photo- 
 graphs perched up all over my house: 
 Kind Devil, deliver me. 
 
 From soft old bachelors and soft old 
 widowers; from any masculine thing 
 that wears a pale blue necktie; from 
 agonizing elocutionists who recite 
 "Curfew Shall Not Ring To-Night," 
 and "The Lips That Touch Liquor 
 Shall Never Touch Mine"; from a 
 Salvation Army singing hymns in 
 slang: Kind Devil, deliver me. 
 
 From people who persist in calling 
 my good body "mere vile clay"; from 
 idiots who appear to know all about me 
 and enjoin me not to bathe my eyes in 
 hot water since it hurts their own; from 
 fools who tell me what I "want" to do: 
 Kind Devil, deliver me. 
 
 From a nice young man; from tin 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 1 87 
 
 spoons; from popular songs: Kind 
 Devil, deliver me. 
 
 From pleasant old ladies who tell a 
 great many uninteresting, obvious lies; 
 from men with watch-chains draped 
 across their middles; from some paint- 
 ings of the old masters which I am un- 
 able to appreciate; from side-saddles: 
 Kind Devil, deliver me. 
 
 From the kind of man who sings, 
 "Oh, Promise Me!" — who sings at it; 
 from constipated dressmakers; from 
 people who don't wash their hair often 
 enough: Kind Devil, deliver me. 
 
 From a servant girl with false teeth; 
 from persons who make a regular prac- 
 tice of rubbing oily mixtures into their 
 faces; from a bed that sinks in the mid- 
 dle: Kind Devil, deliver me. 
 
 And so on and on and on. And in 
 each petition I am deeply sincere. 
 But, kind Devil, only bring me Happi- 
 ness and I will more than willingly be 
 annoyed by all these things. Happi- 
 ness for two days, kind Devil, and 
 
1 88 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 then, if you will, languishing widowers, 
 lisle-thread stockings — anything, for 
 the rest of my life. 
 
 And hurry, kind Devil, pray — for I 
 am weary. 
 
/iDarcb 9. 
 
 IT IS astonishing to me how very 
 many contemptible, petty vanities 
 are lodged in the crevices of my 
 genius. My genius itself is one grand 
 good vanity — but it is not contemptible. 
 And even those little vanities — though 
 they are contemptible, I do not hold 
 them in contempt by any means. I 
 smile involuntarily at their absurdness 
 sometimes, but I know well that they 
 have their function. 
 
 They are peculiarly of my mind, my 
 humanness, and they are useful therein. 
 When this mind stretches out its hand 
 for things and finds only wilderness and 
 Nothingness all about it, and draws the 
 hand back empty, then it can only turn 
 back — like my soul — to itself. And it 
 finds these innumerable little vanities to 
 quiet it and help it. My soul has no 
 vanity, and it has nothing, nothing to 
 
 quiet it. My soul is wearing itself out, 
 
 189 
 
I90 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANg 
 
 eating itself away. These vanities are 
 a miserable substitute for the rose-col- 
 ored treasures that it sees a great way 
 off and even imagines in its folly that 
 it may have, if it continues to reach 
 after them. Yet the vanities are some- 
 thing. They prevent my erratic, 
 analytical mind from finding a great 
 Nothing when it turns back upon itself. 
 
 If I were not so unceasingly en- 
 grossed with my sense of misery and 
 loneliness my mind would produce 
 beautiful, wonderful logic. I am a 
 genius — a genius — a genius. Even 
 after all this you may not realize that 
 I am a genius. It is a hard thing to 
 show. But, for myself, I feel it. It is 
 enough for me that I feel it. 
 
 I am not a genius because I am for- 
 eign to everything in the world, nor 
 because I am intense, nor because I 
 suffer. One may be all of these and 
 yet not have this marvelous perceptive 
 sense. My genius is because of noth- 
 ing. It was born in me as germs of evil 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE I9I 
 
 were born in me. And mine is a 
 genius that has been given to no one 
 else. The genius itself enables me to 
 be thoroughly convinced of this. 
 
 It is hopeless, never-ending loneli- 
 ness! 
 
 My ancestors in their Highlands — 
 some of them — were endowed with 
 second sight. My genius is not in the 
 least like second sight. That savors of 
 the supernatural, the mysterious. My 
 genius is a sound, sure, earthly sense, 
 with no suggestion of mystery or oc- 
 cultism. It is an inner sense that en- 
 ables me to feel and know things that I 
 could not possibly put into thought, 
 much less into words. It makes me 
 know and analyze with deadly minute- 
 ness every keen, tiny damnation in my 
 terrible lonely life. It is a mirror that 
 shows me myself and something in my- 
 self in a merciless brilliant light, and the 
 sight at once sickens and maddens me 
 and fills me with an unnamed woe. It 
 is something unspeakably dreadful. 
 
192 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 The sight for the time deadens all 
 thought in my mind. It freezes my 
 reason and intellect. Logic can not 
 come to my aid. I can only feel and 
 know the thing and it analyzes itself 
 before my eyes. 
 
 I am alone with this — alone, alone, 
 alone! There is no pitiful hand ex- 
 tended from the heights — there is no 
 human being — ah, there is Nothing. 
 
 How can I bear it! Oh, I ask you — 
 how can I bear it! 
 
flDarcb 10* 
 
 MY GENIUS is an element by it- 
 self, and it is not a thing that I 
 can tell in so many words. But 
 it makes itself felt in every point of my 
 life. This book would be a very differ- 
 ent thing if I were not a genius — 
 though I am not a literary genius. 
 Often people who come in contact with 
 me and hear me utter a few com- 
 monplace remarks feel at once that I 
 am extraordinary. 
 
 I am extraordinary. 
 
 I have tried longingly, passionately, 
 to think that even this sand and bar- 
 renness is mine. But I can not. I 
 know beyond the shadow of a doubt 
 that it, like all good things, is beyond 
 me. It has something that I also have. 
 In that is our bond of sympathy. 
 
 But the sand and barrenness itself is 
 not mine. 
 
 Always I think there is but one pic- 
 
 193 
 
194 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 ture in the world more perfect in its art 
 than the picture of me in my sand 
 and barrenness. It is the picture of 
 the Christ crucified with two thieves. 
 Nothing could be more divinely appro- 
 priate. The art in it is ravishingly perfect. 
 It is one of the few perfect pictures set 
 before the world^for all time. As I see 
 it before my mind I can think only of its 
 utter perfectness. I can summon no 
 feeling of grief at the deed. The deed 
 and the art are perfect. Its perfectness 
 ravishes my senses. 
 
 And within me I feel that the picture 
 of me in my sand and barrenness — 
 knowing that even the sand and bar- 
 renness is not mine — is only second to 
 it. 
 
ADarcb 11* 
 
 SOMETIMES when I go out on 
 the barrenness my mind wanders 
 afar. 
 
 To-day it went to Greece. 
 
 Oh, it was very beautiful in Greece! 
 
 There was a wide, long sky that was 
 vividly, wonderfully blue. And there 
 was a limitless sea that was gray and 
 green. And 5 went far to the south. 
 The sky and the sea spread out into 
 the vast world — two beautiful elements, 
 and they fell in love with each other. 
 And the farther away they were the 
 nearer they moved together until at 
 last they met and clasped each other 
 in the far distance. There were tall, 
 dark-green trees of kinds that are seen 
 only in Greece. They murmured and 
 whispered in the stillness. The wind 
 came off from the sea and went over 
 them and around them. They quivered 
 and trembled in shy, ecstatic joy — for 
 195 
 
I96 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 the wind was their best-beloved. There 
 were banks of moss of a deep emerald 
 color, and golden flowers that drooped 
 their heavy sensual heads over to the 
 damp black earth. And they also 
 loved each other, and were with each 
 other, and were glad. Clouds hung 
 low over the sea and were dark-gray 
 and heavy with rain. But the sun 
 shone from behind them at intervals 
 with beams of bronze - and - copper. 
 Three white rocks rose up out of the 
 sea, and the bronze-and-copper beams 
 fell upon them, and straightway they 
 were of gold. 
 
 Oh, how beautiful were those three 
 gold rocks that came up out of the sea! 
 
 Aphrodite once came up out of this 
 same sea. She came gleaming, with 
 golden hair and beautiful eyes. Her 
 skin glowed with tints of carmine and 
 wild rose. Her white feet touched the 
 smooth, yellow sand on the shore. The 
 white feet of Aphrodite on the yellow 
 sand made a picture of marvelous 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 1 97 
 
 beauty. She was flushed in the joy of 
 new life. 
 
 But the bronze-and-copper sunshine 
 on the three white rocks was more 
 beautiful than Aphrodite. 
 
 I stood on the shore and looked at 
 the rocks. My heart contracted with 
 the pain that beautiful things bring. 
 
 The bronze-and-copper in the wide 
 gray and green sea! 
 
 "This is the gateway of Heaven," I 
 said to myself. " Behind those three 
 gold rocks there is music and the high 
 notes of happy voices." My soul grew 
 faint. "And there is no sand and bar- 
 renness there, and no Nothingness, and 
 no bitterness, and no hot, blinding 
 tears. And there are no little heart- 
 weary children, and no lonely young 
 women — oh, there is no loneliness at 
 all!" My soul grew more and more 
 faint with thinking of it. "And there 
 is no heart there but that is pure and 
 joyous and in Peace — in long, still, 
 eternal Peace. And every life comes 
 
I98 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 there to its own; and every earth-cry is 
 answered, and every earth - pain is 
 ended; and the dark spirit of Sorrow 
 that hangs always over the earth is 
 gone — gone, — beyond the gateway of 
 Heaven. And more than all, Love is 
 there and walks among the dwellers. 
 Love is a shining figure with radiant 
 hands, and it touches them all with its 
 hands so that never-dying love enters 
 into their hearts. And the love of each 
 for another is like the love of each for 
 self. And here at last is Truth. There 
 is searching and searching over the 
 earth after Truth — and who has found 
 it? But here is it beyond the gateway 
 of Heaven. Those who enter in know 
 that it is Truth at last." 
 
 And so Peace and Love and Truth 
 are there behind the three gold rocks. 
 
 And then my soul could no longer 
 endure the thought of it. 
 
 Suddenly the sun passed behind a 
 heavy, dark -gray cloud, and the bronze- 
 and-copper faded from the three rocks 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 1 99 
 
 and left them white — very white in the 
 wide water. 
 
 The yellow flowers laid their heads 
 drowsily down on the emerald moss. 
 The wind from off the sea played very 
 gently among the motionless branches 
 of the tall trees. The blue, blue sky 
 and the wide, gray-green sea clasped 
 each other more closely and mingled 
 with each other and became one vague, 
 shadowy element — and from it all I 
 brought my eyes back thousands of 
 leagues to my sand and barrenness. 
 
 The sand and barrenness is itself an 
 element, and I have known it a long, 
 long time. 
 
fl&arcb 12. 
 
 EVERYTHING is so dreary— so 
 dreary. 
 
 I feel as if I would like to die 
 to-day. I should not be the tiniest bit 
 less unhappy afterward — but this life is 
 unutterably weary. I am not strong. 
 I can not bear things. I do not want to 
 bear things. I do not long for strength. 
 I want to be happy. 
 
 When I was very little, it was cold 
 and dreary also, but I was certain it 
 would be different when I should grow 
 and be ten years old. It must be very 
 nice to be ten, I thought, — and one 
 would not be nearly so lonesome. But 
 when the years passed and I was ten it 
 was just exactly as lonesome. And 
 when I was ten everything was very 
 hard to understand. 
 
 But it will surely be different when I 
 am seventeen, I said. I will know so 
 much when I am seventeen. But when 
 200 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 201 
 
 I was seventeen it was even more 
 lonely, and everything was still harder 
 to understand. 
 
 And again I said — faintly — everything 
 will become clearer in a few years 
 more, and I will wonder to think how 
 stupid I have always been. But now 
 the few years more have gone and here 
 I am in loneliness that is more hope- 
 less and harder to bear than when I 
 was very little. Still, I wonder indeed 
 to think how stupid I have been — and 
 now I am not so stupid. I do not tell 
 myself that it will be different when I 
 am five-and-twenty. 
 
 For I know that it will not be different. 
 
 I know that it will be the same dreari- 
 ness, the same Nothingness, the same 
 loneliness. 
 
 It is very, very lonely. 
 
 It is hope deferred and maketh the 
 heart sick. 
 
 It is more than I can bear. 
 
 Why — why was I ever born! 
 
 I can not live, and I can not die — for 
 
202 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 what is there after I am dead? I can 
 see myself wandering in dark and 
 lonely places. 
 
 Yet I feel as if I would like to die to- 
 day. 
 
fl&arcb 13. 
 
 IF IT were pain alone that one must 
 bear, one could bear it. One could 
 lose one's sense of everything but 
 pain. 
 
 But it is pain with other things. It is 
 the sense of pain with the sense of 
 beauty and the sense of the anemone. 
 And there is that mysterious pain. 
 
 Who knows the name of that myste- 
 rious pain? 
 
 It is these mingled senses that tor- 
 ture me. 
 
 •03 
 
fl&arcb t4, 
 
 I HAVE been placed in this world 
 with eyes to see and ears to hear, 
 and I ask for Life. Is it to be won- 
 dered at? Is it so strange? Should I 
 be content merely to see and to hear? 
 There are other things for other 
 people. Is it atrocious that I should 
 ask for some other things also? 
 Is thy servant a dog? 
 
 204 
 
flDarcb 15* 
 
 IN THESE days of approaching 
 emotional Nature even the sand 
 and barrenness begins to stir and 
 rub its eyes. 
 
 My sand and barrenness is clothed in 
 the awful majesty of countless ages. 
 It stands always through the never- 
 ending march of the living and the 
 dead. It may have been green once — 
 green and fertile, and birds and snakes 
 and everything that loves green grow- 
 ing things may have lived in it. It may 
 have sometime been rolling prairie. It 
 may have been submerged in floods. It 
 changed and changed in the centuries. 
 Now it is sand and barrenness, and 
 there are no birds and no snakes; only 
 me. But whatever change came to it, 
 whatever its transfiguration, the spirit 
 of it never moved. Flood, or fertility, 
 
 or rolling prairie, or barrenness — it is 
 205 
 
206 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 only itself. It has a great self, a won- 
 derful self. 
 
 I shall never forget you, my sand and 
 barrenness. 
 
 Some day, shall my thirsty life be 
 watered, my starved heart fed, my ask- 
 ing voice answered, my tired soul taken 
 into the warmth of another with the 
 intoxicating sweetness of love? 
 
 It may be. 
 
 But I shall remember the sand and 
 barrenness that is with me in my Noth- 
 ingness. The sand and barrenness and 
 the memory of the anemone lady are 
 all that are in any degree mine. 
 
 And so then I shall remember it. 
 
 As I stand among the barren gulches 
 in these days and look away at the 
 slow-awakening hills of Montana, I hear 
 the high, swelling, half-tired, half-hope- 
 ful song of the world. As I listen I 
 know that there are things, other than 
 the Virtue and the Truth and the 
 Love, that are not for me. There is 
 beyond me, like these, the unbreaking, 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 2G7 
 
 undying bond of human fellowship — a 
 thing that is earth-old. 
 
 It is beyond me, and it is nothing to 
 me. 
 
 In my intensest desires — in my widest 
 longings — I never go beyond self. The 
 ego is the all. 
 
 Limitless legions of women and men 
 in weariness and in joy are one. They 
 are killing each other and torturing 
 each other, and going down in sorrow 
 to the dust. But they are one. Their 
 right hands are joined in unseen sym- 
 pathy and kinship. 
 
 But my two hands are apart, and 
 clasped together in an agony of loneli- 
 ness. 
 
 I have read of women who have been 
 strongly, grandly brave. Sometimes I 
 have dreamed that I might be brave. 
 The possibilities of this life are magnifi- 
 cent. 
 
 To be saturated with this agony, I 
 say at times, and to bear with it all; 
 not to sink beneath it, but to vanquish 
 
2C8 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 it, and to make it the grace and comeli- 
 ness of my entire life from the Begin- 
 ning to the End! 
 
 Perhaps a woman — a real woman — 
 could do this. 
 
 But I? — No. I am not real — I do not 
 seem real to myself. In such things as 
 these my life is a blank. 
 
 There was Charlotte Corday — a 
 heroine whom I admire above all the 
 heroines. And more than she was a 
 heroine she was a woman. And she 
 had her agony. It was for love of her 
 fair country. 
 
 To suffer and do and die for love of 
 something! It is glorious! What must 
 be the exalted ecstasy of Charlotte 
 Corday's soul now! 
 
 And I — with all my manifold pas- 
 sions — I am a coward. 
 
 I have had moments when, vaguely 
 and from far off, it seemed as if there 
 might be bravery and exaltation for 
 me, — when I could rise far over myself. 
 I have felt unspeakable possibilities. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 209 
 
 While they lasted — what wonderful 
 emotion was it that I felt? 
 
 But they are not real. 
 
 They fade away — they fade away. 
 
 And again come the varied phe- 
 nomena of my life to bewilder and ter- 
 rify me. 
 
 Confusion! Chaos! Damnation! 
 They are not moments of exaltation 
 now. Poor little Mary Mac Lane! 
 
 "If to do were as easy as to know 
 what were good to do, chapels had been 
 churches, and poor men's cottages 
 princes' palaces." 
 
 I do not know what to do. 
 
 I do not know what were good to do. 
 
 I would do nothing if I knew. 
 
 I might add to my litany this: Most 
 kind Devil, deliver me — from myself. 
 
fl&arcb 16. 
 
 TO-DAY I walked over the sand, 
 and it was almost beautiful. 
 The sun was sinking and the sky 
 was filled with roses and gold. 
 
 Then came my soul and confronted 
 me. My soul is wondrous fair. It is 
 like a young woman. The beauty of it 
 is too great for human eyes to look 
 upon. It is too great for mine. Yet I 
 look. 
 
 My soul said to me: "I am sick." 
 I answered: "And I am sick." 
 "We may be well," said my soul. 
 "Why are we not well?" 
 
 "How may we be well?" I asked. 
 "We may throw away all our vanity 
 and false pride," said my soul. "We 
 way take on a new life. We may learn 
 to wait and to possess ourselves in 
 patience. We may labor and over- 
 
 come." 
 
 "We can do none of these things," I 
 
 2IO 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 211 
 
 cried. "Have I not tried all of them 
 some time in my short life? And have 
 I not waited and wanted until you have 
 become faint with pain? Have I not 
 looked and longed? Dear soul, why 
 do you not resign yourself? Why can 
 you not stay quiet and trouble yourself 
 and me no more? Why are you always 
 straining and reaching? There isn't 
 anything for you. You are wearing 
 yourself out." 
 
 My soul made answer: "I may strain 
 and reach until only one worn nerve of 
 me is left. And that one nerve may 
 be scourged with whips and burned with 
 fire. But I will keep one atom of faith. 
 I may go bad, but I will keep one atom 
 of faith in Love and in the Truth that is 
 Love. You are a genius, but I am no 
 genius. The years — a million of years — 
 may do their utmost to destroy the 
 single nerve. They may lash and beat 
 it. I will keep my one atom of faith. 
 
 "You are not wise," I said. "You 
 have been wandering and longing for a 
 
212 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 time that seems a thousand years — 
 through my cold, dark childhood to my 
 cold, dark womanhood. Is that not 
 enough to quiet you? Is that not 
 enough to teach you the lesson of 
 Nothing? You are not a genius, but 
 you are not a fool." 
 
 "I will keep my one atom of faith/' 
 said my soul. 
 
 "But lie and sleep now/' I said. 
 "Don't reach after that Light any more. 
 Let us both sleep a few years." 
 
 "No," said my soul. 
 
 "Oh, my soul," I wailed, "look away 
 at that glowing copper horizon — and 
 beyond it. Let us go there now and 
 take an infinite rest. Now! We can 
 bear this no longer." 
 
 "No," said my soul; "we will stay 
 here and bear more. There would be 
 no rest yet beyond the copper horizon. 
 And there is no need of going any- 
 where. I have my one atom of faith." 
 
 I gazed at my soul as it stood plainly 
 before me, weak and worn and faint, in 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 213 
 
 the fading light. It had one atom of 
 faith, it said, and tried to hold its head 
 high and to look strong and trium- 
 phant. Oh, the irony — the pathos of it! 
 My soul, with its one pitiful atom of 
 faith, looked only what it was — a weep- 
 ing, hunted thing. 
 
flDarcb 17. 
 
 IN SOME rare between-whiles it is 
 as if nothing mattered. My heart 
 aches, I say; my soul wanders; this 
 person or that person was repelled to- 
 day; but nothing matters. 
 
 A great inner languor comes like a 
 giant and lays hold of me. I lie fallow 
 beneath it. 
 
 Some one forgot me in the giving of 
 things. But it does not matter. I feel 
 nothing. 
 
 Persons say to me, don't analyze any 
 more and you will not be unhappy. 
 
 When Something throws heavy clubs 
 at you and you are hit by them, don't 
 be hurt. When Something stronger 
 than you holds your hands in the fire, 
 don't let it burn you. When Some- 
 thing pushes you into a river of ice, 
 don't be cold. When something draws 
 a cutting lash across your naked shoul- 
 214 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 215 
 
 ders, don't let it concern you — don't be 
 conscious that it is there. 
 
 This is great wisdom and fine, clear 
 logic. 
 
 It is a pity that no one has ever yet 
 been able to live by it. 
 
 But after all it's no matter. Nothing 
 is any one's affair. It is all of no con- 
 sequence. 
 
 And have I not had all my anguish 
 for nothing? I am a fool — a fool. 
 
 A handful of rich black mud in a 
 pig's yard — does it wonder why it is 
 there? Does it torture itself about the 
 other mud around it, and about the 
 earth and water of which it is made, 
 and about the pig? Only fool's mud 
 would do so. And*so, then, I am fool's 
 mud. 
 
 Nothing counts. Nothing can pos- 
 sibly count. 
 
 Regret, passion, cowardice, hope, 
 bravery, unrest, pain, the love-sense, the 
 soul-sense, the beauty-sense — all for 
 nothing! What can a handful of rich 
 
2l6 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 black mud in a pig's yard have to do 
 with these? I am a handful of rich 
 black mud — a fool-woman, fool's mud. 
 
 All on earth that I need to do is to lie 
 still in the hot sun and feel the pig roll- 
 ing and floundering and slushing about. 
 It were folly to waste my mud nerves in 
 wondering. Be quiet, fool-woman, let 
 things be. Your soul is a fool's-mud 
 soul and is governed by the pig; your 
 heart is a fool's-mud heart, and wants 
 nothing beyond the pig; your life is a 
 fool's-mud life, and is the pig's life. 
 
 Something within me shrieks now, 
 but I do not know what it is — nor why 
 it shrieks. 
 
 It groans and moans. 
 
 There is no satisfaction in being a 
 fool — no satisfaction at all. 
 
fl&arcb 18, 
 
 BUT yes. It all matters, whether or 
 no. Nature is one long battle, 
 and the never-ending perishing cf 
 the weak. I must grind and grind 
 away. I have no choice. And I must 
 know that I grind. 
 
 Fool, genius, young lonely woman — I 
 must go round and round in the life 
 within, for how many years the Devil 
 knows. After that my soul must go 
 round and round, for how many cen- 
 turies the Devil knows. 
 
 What a master-mind is that of the 
 Devil! The world is a wondrous 
 scheme. For me it is a scheme that is 
 black with woe. But there may be in 
 the world some one who finds it beauti- 
 ful Real Life. 
 
 I wonder as I write this Portrayal if 
 there will be one person'to read it and 
 see a thing that is mingled with every 
 217 
 
2l8 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 word. It is something that you must 
 feel, that must fascinate you, the like 
 of which you have never before met 
 with. 
 
 It is the unparalleled individuality of 
 me. 
 
 I wish I might write it in so many 
 words of English. But that is not pos- 
 sible. If I have put it in every word 
 and if you feel it and are fascinated, 
 then I have done very 'well. 
 
 I am marvelously clever if I have 
 done so. 
 
 I know that I am marvelously clever. 
 But I have need of all my peculiar 
 genius to show you my individuality — 
 my aloneness. 
 
 I am alone out on my sand and bar- 
 renness. I should be alone if my sand 
 and barrenness were crowded with a 
 thousand people each filled with melt- 
 ing sympathy for me — though it would 
 be unspeakably sweet. 
 
 People say of me, "She's peculiar." 
 They do not understand me. If they 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 2ig 
 
 did they would say so oftener and with 
 emphasis. 
 
 And so I try to put my individuality 
 in the quality of my diction, in my 
 method of handling words. 
 
 My conversation plainly shows this 
 individuality — more than shows it, 
 indeed. My conversation hurls it vio- 
 lently at people's heads. My conversa- 
 tion — when I choose — makes people 
 turn around in their chairs and stare 
 and give me all of their attention. 
 They admire me, though their admira- 
 tion is mixed decidedly with other feel- 
 ings. 
 
 I like to be admired. 
 
 It soothes my vanity. 
 
 When you read this Portrayal you 
 will admire me. You will surely have 
 to admire me. 
 
 And so this is life, and everything 
 matters. 
 
 But just now I will stop writing and 
 go downstairs to my dinner. There is 
 a porterhouse steak, broiled rare, and 
 
220 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 some green young onions. Oh, they 
 are good! And when one is to have a 
 porterhouse steak for one's dinner — 
 and some green young onions, one 
 doesn't give a tupenny dam whether 
 anything else matters or not. 
 
fl&arcb 19. 
 
 ON A day when the sky is like lead 
 and a dull, tempestuous wilder- 
 ness of gray clouds adds a dreari- 
 ness to the sand, there is added to the 
 loneliness of my life a deep bitterness 
 of gall and wormwood. 
 
 Out of my bitterness it is easy for bad 
 to come. 
 
 Surely Badness is a deep black pool 
 wherein one may drown dullness and 
 Nothingness. 
 
 I do not know Badness well. It is 
 something material that seems a great 
 way off now, but that might creep 
 nearer and nearer as I became less and 
 less young. 
 
 But now when the day is of the 
 leaden dullness I look at Badness and 
 long for it. I am young and all alone ; 
 and everything that is good is beyond 
 my reach. But all that is bad — surely 
 that is within the reach of every one. 
 
 221 
 
222 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 I wish for a long pageant of bad 
 things to come and whirl and rage 
 through this strange leaden life of mine 
 and break the spell. 
 
 Why should it not be Badness instead 
 of Death? Death, it seems, will bring 
 me but a change of agony. Badness 
 would perhaps so crowd my life with 
 its vivid phenomena that they would 
 act as a neurotic to the racked nerves 
 of my Nothingness. It would be an 
 outlet — and possibly I could forget 
 some things. 
 
 I think just now of a woman who 
 lived long ago and in whom the world 
 at large seems not to have found any- 
 thing admirable. I mean Messalina 
 Valeria, the wife of the stupid emperor 
 Claudius. I have conceived a pro- 
 found admiration for this historic wan- 
 ton. She may not indeed have had 
 anything to forget; she may not have 
 suffered. But she had the strength of 
 will to take what she wanted, to do as 
 she liked, to live as she chose to live. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 223 
 
 It is admirable and beautiful beyond 
 expression to sacrifice and give up and 
 wait for love of that good that gives in 
 itself a just reward. And only next to 
 this is the throwing to the winds of all 
 restraint when the good holds itself 
 aloof and gives nothing. We are weak, 
 contemptible fools who do not grasp 
 the resources within our reach when 
 there is no just reward for our re- 
 straint. Why do we not take what we 
 want of the various temptations? It is 
 not that we are virtuous. It is that we 
 are cowards. 
 
 And is it worth while to remain true 
 to an ideal that offers only the vaguest 
 hopes of realization? It is not philos- 
 ophy. When one has made up one's 
 mind that one wants a dish of hot 
 stewed mushrooms, and set one's heart 
 on it, should one scorn a handful of raw 
 evaporated apples, if one were starving, 
 for the sake of the phantom dish of hot 
 stewed mushrooms? Should one say, 
 Let me starve, but I will never descend 
 
224 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 to evaporated apples; I will have noth- 
 ing but a dish of hot stewed mushrooms? 
 If one is sure one will have the stewed 
 mushrooms finally, before one dies of 
 starvation, then very well. One should 
 wait for them and take nothing else. 
 
 But it is not in my good peripatetic 
 philosophy to pass by the Badness that 
 the gods provide for the sake of a far- 
 away, always-unrealized ideal, however 
 brilliant, however beautiful, however 
 golden. 
 
 When the lead is in the sky and in 
 my life, a vision of Badness looms up 
 on the horizon and looks at me and 
 beckons with a fascinating finger. 
 Then I say to myself, What is the use 
 of this unsullied, struggling soul; this 
 unbesmirched, empty heart; this treas- 
 ureless, innocent mind; this insipid 
 maid's-body? There are no good things 
 for them. But here, to be sure, are 
 fascinating, glittering bad things — the 
 goods that the gods provide, the com- 
 pensation of the Devil. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 225 
 
 Comes Death, some day, I said — but 
 to die, in the sight of glittering bad 
 things — and I only nineteen! These 
 glittering things appear fair. 
 
 There is really nothing evil in the 
 world. Some things appear distorted 
 and unnatural because they have been 
 badly done. Had they been perfect in 
 conception and execution they would 
 strike one only with admiration at their 
 fine, iridescent lights. You remember 
 Don Juan and Haidee. That, to be 
 sure, was not evil in any event — they 
 loved each other. But if they had had 
 only a passing, if intense, fancy for one 
 another, who would call it evil? Who 
 would call it anything but wonderful, 
 charming, ^enchanting? The Devil's 
 bad things — like the Devil's good 
 things — may gleam and glisten, oh, how 
 they may gleam and glisten! I have 
 seen them do so, not only in a poem of 
 Syron's, but in the life that is. 
 
 Always when the lead is in the sky I 
 would like to cultivate thoroughly this 
 
226 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 branch of the vineyard. Now doesn't 
 it make you shiver to think of this dear 
 little Mary Mac Lane wandering un- 
 loved through dark by-ways and deadly 
 labyrinths? It makes me shiver. But 
 it needn't. If I am to wander unloved, 
 why not as well wander there as through 
 Nothingness? 
 
 I fancy it must be wonderfully easy to 
 become' used to the many-sided Bad- 
 ness. I have lived my nineteen years 
 in the. midst of Nothingness, and I have 
 not yet become used to it. It has sharp 
 knives in it, has Nothingness. Badness 
 may have ^ome sharp knives also — but 
 there are other things. Yes, there are 
 other things. 
 
 Kind Devil, if you are not to fetch 
 me] Happiness, then slip off from your 
 great steel key-ring a bright little key 
 to the door of the glittering, gleaming 
 bad things, and give it me, and show 
 me the way, and wish me joy. 
 
 I would like to live about seven years 
 of judicious Badness, and then Death, 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 227 
 
 if you will. Nineteen years of damn- 
 able Nothingness, seven years of judi- 
 cious Badness — and then Death. A 
 noble ambition! But might it not be 
 worse? If not that, then nineteen 
 years of damnable Nothingness, and 
 then Death. No; when the lead is in 
 the sky that does not appeal to me. 
 My versatile mind turns to the seven 
 years of judicious Badness. 
 
 There is nothing in the world with- 
 out its element of Badness. It is in 
 literature; it is in every art — in pic- 
 tures, sculpture, even in music. There 
 are certain fine, deep, minute passages 
 in Beethoven and in Chopin that tell of 
 things wonderfully, sublimely bad. 
 Chopin one can not understand. Is 
 there any one in the world who can 
 understand him? But we know at once 
 that there is the Badness — and it is 
 music! 
 
 There is the element of Badness in 
 me. 
 
 I long to cultivate my element of 
 
228 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 Badness. Badness compared to Noth 
 ingness is beautiful. And so, then, I 
 wait also for some one to come over 
 the hill with things other than Happi- 
 ness. But whatever I wait for, nothing 
 comes. 
 
fl&arcb 20* 
 
 THERE were pictures in the red 
 sunset sky to-day. I looked at 
 them and was racked with pas- 
 sions of desire. I fancied to myself 
 that I could have any of the good 
 things in the pictures for the asking 
 and the waiting. The while I knew 
 that when the sunset should fade from 
 the sky I would be overwhelmed by 
 my heaviest woe. 
 
 There was a picture of intense peace. 
 There were stretches of flat, green 
 country, and oak-trees and aspens, and 
 a still, still lake. In the dim distance 
 you could see fields of wheat and 
 timothy-grass that moved a little as if 
 in the wind. You could fancy the cows 
 feeding just below the brow of the near 
 hills, and a hawk floating and wheeling 
 among the clouds. A rainbow arched 
 over the lake. There is nothing lack- 
 ing here, I thought. "Life and health 
 
 229 
 
23O THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 and peace possessing." Give me this, 
 kind Devil. 
 
 There was a picture of endless, limit- 
 less strength. There were the oak- 
 trees again but bereft now of every 
 leaf, and the bristling, jagged rocks 
 back of them were not more coldly 
 staunch. The sun poured brilliantly 
 bright upon them. A river flowed un- 
 moved and quiet between yellow clay 
 banks. A tornado might sweep over 
 this and not one twig would be dis- 
 placed, not one ripple would come to 
 the river. Is it not fine! I said to my- 
 self. No feeling, no self-analysis, no 
 aching, no pain — and the strength of 
 the Philistines. Oh, kind Devil, I en- 
 treat you, let me have that! 
 
 There was a picture of untrammeled 
 revel and forgetfulness. There were 
 fields of swaying daffodils and red lilies. 
 The young shrubs tossed their heads 
 and were joyous. Lambs gamboled 
 and the happy meadow -lark knew 
 whereof she sang. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 23 1 
 
 "The winds with wonder whist 
 Smoothly the waters kissed." 
 
 Be carefree, be light-hearted, be 
 wicked — above all, forget. The deeds 
 are what you will; the time is now; the 
 aftermath is nothing; the day of reck- 
 oning is never. Love things lightly, 
 take all that you see, and to the winds 
 with regret! Gracious Devil, I whis- 
 pered intensely, give me this and no 
 other! 
 
 There was a picture of raging ele- 
 ments. "The winds blew, and the rains 
 descended and the floods came." The 
 sky was overcast with rolling clouds. 
 The air was heavy with unrest. There 
 was a gray stone house set upon a 
 rocky point, and I had momentary 
 glimpses of an unquiet sea below it. 
 Back on the surface of the land slender 
 trees were waving wildly in the gale. 
 The wind and the rain were saying, 
 "Damn you, little earth, I have you 
 now, — I will rend and ruin you." They 
 whipped and raged in frenzied joy. 
 
232 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 The little earth liked it. The elements 
 whirled and whistled round the gray 
 stone house. A lurid light came from 
 a ghastly moon between clouds. The. 
 entire scene was desolately savage and 
 forlorn, but attractive. As I listened 
 in fancy to that shrieking, wailing wind, 
 and saw green branches jerked and 
 twisted asunder in the storm, my bar- 
 ren, defrauded heart leaped and ex- 
 ulted. If I could live in the midst of 
 this and be beaten and shaken 
 roughly, would not that deep sense for- 
 get to ache? Kind Devil, pray send me 
 some storms. It is Nothingness that 
 bears down heavy. 
 
 There was a picture of an exalted 
 spiritual life. There was that strange 
 bright light. And the things in the 
 picture were those things alone in this 
 world that are real, and the only things 
 that count. The old, soft green of the 
 old, old rolling hills was the green of 
 love — the earth-love and the love that 
 comes from beyond the earth. The air 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 233 
 
 and the blue water and the sunshine 
 were so beautifully real and true that 
 except for their deep-reaching, passion- 
 ate tenderness human strength could 
 not endure them. There were lanes of 
 climbing vines and white violets. Was 
 it my fancy that brought their thin 
 fragrance to me over piles of billowy 
 clouds? There was something there 
 that was old — old as the race. Those 
 green valleys were the same as when 
 the mists first lifted from the earth. As 
 I looked my life stood still. My soul 
 shivered faintly. As I looked I felt 
 nearer, my God, to thee — though I 
 have no God and everything is away 
 from me, nothing tender comes to 
 me. 
 
 Still it was nearer, my God, to thee. 
 
 A voice came out of the far, far dis- 
 tant ages and said very gently: "All 
 these shadows are falling in vain. You 
 are blinded and bewildered in the dark- 
 ness — the darkness is deep — deep. 
 There is not one dim ray of light. 
 
234 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 Your feet falter and stumble. You can 
 not see. But the shadows are falling 
 in vain." 
 
 I ask you, Why is this life not mine? 
 
 I implore and wring my hands in 
 agonized entreaty, and almost it seems 
 sometimes my fingers can grasp these 
 things — but there is something cold and 
 strong between them and me. Oh, 
 what is it! 
 
 There was a picture of various castles 
 in Spain. They were most beautiful, 
 were those castles. The lights that 
 shone on the battlements were soft, 
 bright lights. For one thing, I fancied 
 I saw myself and Fame with me. 
 Fame is very fine. The sun and moon 
 and stars may go dark in the Heavens. 
 Bitter rain may fall out of the clouds. 
 But never mind. Fame has a sun and 
 moon and gently brilliant stars of her 
 own, and these, shining once, shine 
 always. The green river may run dry 
 in the land. But Fame has a green 
 river that never runs dry. One may 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 235 
 
 wander over the face of the earth. 
 But Fame is herself a refuge. One 
 may be a target for stones and mud. 
 Yes — but Fame stands near with her 
 arm laid across one's shoulders — as no 
 other arm can be laid across one's 
 shoulders. Fame would fill several 
 empty places. Fame would continue 
 to fill them for some years. 
 
 Fame, if you please, Devil. 
 
 There was a picture of Death. I saw 
 a figure lying in the midst of a desert 
 that was rather like my sand and bar- 
 renness. Not far off a wolf sat on his 
 haunches and waited for the end. A 
 buzzard perched near and waited also. 
 They both appeared hungry. It 
 seemed as though the end might come 
 quickly. 
 
 Let it come, kind Devil. 
 
 And a wolf and a buzzard are better 
 than an undertaker and some worms. 
 Although that doesn't much matter. 
 
 And oh, there again was the dearest 
 picture of all — the red, red picture of 
 
236 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 Happiness for me, Happiness with the 
 sunshine falling on the Heaven-kissing 
 hills! There was I, and I loved and 
 was loved. I — out of loneliness into 
 perfect Happiness! The yellow-gold of 
 the glorious hot sun melted and poured 
 over the earth and over everything 
 that was there. The river ran and 
 rippled and sang the most sweetly glad 
 song that ever river sang. Winged 
 things sparkled in the gold light and 
 flew down the sky. "The wonderful 
 air was over me; the wonderful wind 
 was shaking the tree." The silent 
 voices in the air rang out like flutes and 
 clarionets. And the love of the man- 
 devil for me was everywhere — above 
 me, around me, within me. It would 
 last for a number of beautiful yellow- 
 gold days. I — out of the anguish of 
 loneliness into this! 
 
 My heart is filled with desire. 
 
 My soul is filled with passion. 
 
 My life is a life of longing. 
 
 All pictures fade before this picture. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 237 
 
 They fade completely. When the sun 
 itself faded I gazed over my sand and 
 barrenness with blurred, unseeing eyes 
 and wished only with a heavy, desolate 
 spirit for the coming of the Devil. 
 
flDarcb 21. 
 
 SOME people think, absurdly 
 enough, that to be Scotch or 
 descended from the Scottish clans 
 is to be rather strong, rather conserva- 
 tive, firm in faith, and all that. The 
 idea is one that should be completely 
 exploded by this time. I think that the 
 Scotch as a nation are the most difficult 
 of all to characterize. Their traits and 
 tendencies cover a wider field than 
 those of any other. To be Scotch is to 
 be anything. There is no man so 
 narrow as a Scotchman. There is no 
 man so broad as a Scotchman. There 
 is no mind so versatile as a Scotch mind. 
 At the same time only a Scotch mind is 
 capable of clinging with bull-dog 
 tenacity to one idea. A Scotch heart 
 out of all, and through all, can be true 
 as death. A Scotch heart — the same 
 one — can be cunning and treacherous 
 as false human hearts are made. To 
 
 be English is to have limits; the Ger- 
 
 238 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 239 
 
 mans, the French, the Russians — they 
 have all some inevitable attributes to 
 modify their genius. 
 
 But one may be anything — anything, 
 if one is Scotch. 
 
 Always I think of the cruel, hard- 
 ened, ferocious, weather-beaten, kilted 
 Clan Mac Lean wandering over bleak 
 winter hills, fighting the powerful Mac 
 Donalds and Mac Gregors — and gener- 
 ally wiping them from the earth, — 
 marching away with merrily shrieking 
 pipes ^from fields of withered, blood- 
 soaked heather — and all this merely to 
 gather intensified life for me. I feel 
 that the causes of my tragedy began 
 long, long ago from remote germs. 
 
 My Scotch blood added to my genius 
 sense has made me into a dangerous 
 chemical compound. By analyzing I 
 have brought an almost clear portrait 
 of myself up before my mind's eyes. 
 
 When 1 was a child I did not analyze 
 knowingly, but the child was this same 
 genius, though I am one of the kind 
 
240 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 that changes widely and decidedly in 
 the years. This weary unhappiness is 
 not a matter of development. 
 
 When I was a child I felt dumbly 
 what I feel now less dumbly. At the 
 age of five I used sometimes to weep 
 silently in the night — I did not know 
 why. It was that I felt my aloneness, 
 my foreignness to all things. I felt the 
 heavy, heavy weight of life — and I was 
 only five. 
 
 I was only five, and it seems a thou- 
 sand years ago. But sometimes back 
 through the long, winding, unused pas- 
 sages of my mind I hear that silent sob- 
 bing of the child and the unarmed 
 wailing of a tiny, tired soul. 
 
 It mingles with the bitter Nothing- 
 ness of the grown young woman, and 
 oh, with it all — with it all I air so un- 
 happy! 
 
 There is something subtly Scotch in 
 all this. 
 
 But Scotch or Indian or Japanese, 
 there is no stopping of the pain. 
 
flDarcb 22. 
 
 1FEAR, do you know, fine world, 
 that you do not yet know me really 
 well — particularly me of the flesh. 
 Me of the peculiar philosophy and the 
 unhappy spirit you know rather well by 
 now, unless you are stupider than I 
 think you are. But you might pass me 
 in the street — you might spend the day 
 with me — and never suspect that I am 
 I. Though for the matter of that, even 
 if I had set before you a most graphic 
 and minutely drawn portrait of myself, 
 I am certainly clever enough to act a 
 quite different role if I chose — when 
 you came to spend the day. Still, if 
 the world at large is to know me as I 
 desire it to know me without ever see- 
 ing me, I shall have to bring myself 
 into closer personal range with it — 
 and you may rise in your seats and 
 focus your opera-glasses, stare with 
 
 open mouths, stand on your hind-legs 
 241 
 
242 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 and gape — I will myself turn on glaring 
 green and orange lights from the 
 wings. 
 
 I believe that it's the trivial little 
 facts about anything that describe it 
 the most effectively. In "Vanity Fair/' 
 when Beckey Sharpe was describing 
 young Crawley in a letter to her friend 
 Amelia, she stated that he had hay- 
 colored whiskers and straw-colored 
 hair. And knowing this you feel that 
 you know much more about the Craw- 
 ley than you would if Miss Sharpe had 
 not mentioned those things. And yet 
 it is but a mere matter of color! 
 
 When you think that Dickens was 
 extremely fond of cats you feel at once 
 that nothing could be more fitting. 
 Somehow that marvelously mingled 
 humor and pathos and gentle irony 
 seem to go exceedingly well with a 
 fondness for soft, green-eyed, purring 
 things. If you had not read the 
 pathetic humor, but knew about Dick- 
 ens and his warm feline friends you 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 243 
 
 might easily expect such things from 
 him. 
 
 When you read somewhere that Dr. 
 Johnson is said never to have washed 
 his neck and his ears, and then go and 
 read some of his powerful, original 
 philosophy, you say to yourself, "Yes, I 
 can readily believe that this man never 
 troubled himself to wash his neck and 
 his ears." I, for my part, having read 
 some of the things he has written, can 
 not reconcile myself to the fact that he 
 ever washed any part of his anatomy. 
 I admire Dr. Johnson — though I wash 
 my own neck occasionally. 
 
 When you think of Napoleon amus- 
 ing himself by taking a child on his 
 knee and pinching it to hear it cry, you 
 feel an ecstatic little wave of pleasure 
 at the perfect fitness of things. You 
 think of his hard, brilliant, continuous 
 victories, and you suspect that Napo- 
 leon Bonaparte lived but to gratify 
 Napoleon Bonaparte. When you think 
 of the heavy, muscular man smilingly 
 
244 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 pinching the child, you are quite sure 
 of it. Such a method of amusement 
 for that king among men is so ex- 
 quisitely appropriate that you wonder 
 why you had not thought of it yourself. 
 
 So, then, yes. I believe strenuously 
 in the efficacy of seemingly trivial facts 
 as portrayers of one's character — one's 
 individual humanness. 
 
 Now I will set down for your benefit 
 divers and varied observations relative 
 to me — an interesting one of woman- 
 kind and nineteen years, and curious 
 and fascinating withal. 
 
 Well, then. 
 
 Nearly every day I make me a plate 
 of hot, rich fudge, with brown sugar (I 
 should be an entirely different person 
 if I made it with white sugar — and the 
 fudge would not be nearly so good), 
 and take it upstairs to my room, with a 
 book or a newspaper. My mind then 
 takes in a part of what is contained in 
 the book or the newspaper, and the 
 stomach of the Mac Lane takes in all 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 245 
 
 of what is contained in the plate. I sit 
 by my window in a miserable, uncom- 
 fortable, stiff-backed chair, but I relieve 
 the strain by resting my feet on the 
 edge of the low bureau. Usually the 
 book that I read is an old dilapidated 
 bound volume of that erstwhile peri- 
 odical, "Our Young Folks." It is a 
 thing that possesses a charm for me. 
 I never grow tired of it. As I eat my 
 nice brown little squares of fudge I 
 read about a boy whose name is Jack 
 Hazard and who, J. T. Trowbridge in- 
 forms the reader, is doing his best, and 
 who seems to find it somewhat diffi- 
 cult. I believe I could repeat pages of 
 J. T. Trowbridge from memory, and 
 that ancient bound volume has become 
 a part of my life. I stop reading after 
 a few minutes, but I continue to eat — 
 and gaze at the toes of my shoes which 
 need polishing badly, or at the con- 
 glomeration of brilliant pictures on my 
 bedroom wall, or out of the window at 
 the children playing in the street. But 
 
246 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 mostly I gaze without seeing, and my 
 versatile mind is engaged either in 
 nothing or in repeating something over 
 and over, such as, "But the sweet face 
 of Lucy Gray will never more be seen." 
 Only I am not aware that I have been 
 repeating it until I happen to remem- 
 ber it afterward. 
 
 Always the fudge is very good, and I 
 eat and eat with unabated relish until 
 all the little squares are gone. A very 
 little of my fudge has been known to 
 give some people a most terrific stom- 
 ach-ache — but my own digestive organs 
 seem to like nothing better. It's so 
 brown — so rich! 
 
 I amuse myself with this for an hour 
 or two in the afternoon. Then I go 
 downstairs and work awhile. 
 
 There are few things that annoy me 
 so much as to be called a young lady. 
 I am no lady — as any one could see by 
 close inspection, and the phrase has an 
 odious sound. I would rather be 
 called a sweet little thing, or a fallen 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 247 
 
 woman, or a sensible girl — though they 
 would each be equally a lie. 
 
 Always I am glad when night comes 
 and I can sleep. My mind works busily 
 repeating things while I divest myself 
 of my various dusty garments. As I 
 remove a dozen or two of hairpins 
 from my head I say within me: 
 
 "You are old, father William, one would 
 hardly suppose 
 That your eye is as steady as ever; 
 Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your 
 nose — 
 What made you so awfully clever?" 
 
 Always I take a little clock to bed with 
 me and hang it by a cord at the head 
 of my bed for company. I have named 
 the clock Little Fido, because it is so 
 constant and ticks always. It is begin- 
 ning to stand in the same relation to me 
 as J. T. Trowbridge's magazine. If I 
 were to go away from here I should 
 take Little Fido and the magazine with 
 me. 
 
248 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 Every morning, being beautifully 
 hungry after my walk, I eat three 
 boiled eggs out of the shell for my 
 breakfast. The while I mentally thank 
 the kind Providence that invented hens. 
 Also I eat bits of toast. I have my 
 breakfast alone — because the rest of 
 the family are still sleeping, — sitting at 
 a corner of the kitchen table. I enjoy 
 those three eggs and those bits of toast. 
 Usually when I am eating my breakfast 
 I am thinking of three things: the vary- 
 ing price of any eggs that are fit to eat; 
 of what to do after I've finished my 
 housework and before lunch; and of 
 my one friend. And I meditatively 
 and gently kick the leg of the table 
 with the heel of my right foot. 
 
 I have beautiful hair. 
 
 In the front of my shirt-waist there 
 are nine cambric handkerchiefs cun- 
 ningly distributed. My figure is very 
 pretty, to be sure, but not so well de' 
 veloped as it will be in five years — if I 
 live so long. And so I help it out 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 249 
 
 materially with nine cambric handker- 
 chiefs. You can see by my picture that 
 my waist curves gracefully out. Only 
 it is not all flesh — some of it is hand- 
 kerchief. It amuses me to do this. It 
 is one of my petty vanities. 
 
 Likewise by an ingenious arrange- 
 ment of my striped moreen petticoat I 
 contrive to display a more evident pair 
 of hips than Nature seems to have in- 
 tended for me at this stage. Doubtless 
 they also will take on fuller proportions 
 when some years have passed. Still I 
 am not dissatisfied with them as they 
 are. It is not as if they were too well 
 developed — in which case I should have 
 need of all my skill in arranging my 
 moreen petticoat so as to lessen their 
 effect. It is easy enough to add on to 
 these things, but one would experience 
 serious difficulty in attempting to take 
 from them. I hate that heavy, aggres- 
 sive kind of hips. Moreover, small, 
 graceful ones are desirable when one is 
 nineteen. The world at large judges 
 
25O THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 you more leniently on that account — 
 usually. Narrow, shapely hips may 
 give one an effect of youth and harm- 
 lessness which is a distinct advantage, 
 when, for instance, one is writing a 
 Portrayal and so will be at the world's 
 mercy. I believe I should not think of 
 attempting to write a Portrayal if I had 
 hips like a pair of saddle-bags. Cer- 
 tainly it would avail me nothing. 
 
 Sometimes I look at my face in a 
 mirror and find it not plain but ugly. 
 And there are other times when I look 
 and find it not pretty but beautiful with 
 a Madonna-like sweetness. 
 
 I told you I might say more about 
 the liver that is within me before I 
 have done. Well, then, I will say this: 
 that the world, if it had a liver like 
 mine, would be very different from 
 what it is. The world would be many- 
 colored and mobile and passionate and 
 nervous and high-strung and intensely 
 alive and poetic and romantic and 
 philosophical and egotistic and pa- 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 25 1 
 
 thetic, and, oh, racked to the verge of 
 madness with the spirit of unrest — if 
 the world had a liver ^like mine. It is 
 not all of these now. It is rather 
 stupid. Gods and little fishes! would 
 not the world be wonderful if all in it 
 were like me? And it would be if it 
 had a liver like mine. For it is my 
 liver mostly that makes me what I 
 am — apart from my genius. My liver 
 is fine and perfect, but sensitive, and, 
 well — it's a dangerous thing to have 
 within you. 
 
 It is the liver of the Mac Lanes. 
 
 It is the foundation of the curious 
 castle of my existence. 
 
 And after all, fine, brave, stupid 
 world, you may be grateful to the Devil 
 that yours is not like it. 
 
 I have seventeen little engraved por- 
 traits of Napoleon that I keep in one of 
 my bureau-drawers. Often late in the 
 evening, between nine and ten o'clock, 
 when I come in from a walk over the 
 sand and barrenness, I take these pic- 
 
252 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 tures from the drawer and gaze at them 
 carefully a long time and think of that 
 man until I am stirred to the depths. 
 
 And then easily and naturally I fall 
 in love with Napoleon. 
 
 If only he were living now, I think to 
 myself, I would make my way to him 
 by whatever means and cast myself at 
 his feet. I would entreat him with the 
 most passionate humbleness of spirit to 
 take me into his life for three days. 
 To be the wife of Napoleon for three 
 days — that would be enough for a life- 
 time! I would be much more than 
 satisfied if I could get three such~days 
 out of life. 
 
 I suppose a man is either a villain or 
 a fool, though some of them seem to 
 be a judicious mingling of both. The 
 type of the distinct villain is preferable 
 to a mixture of the two, and to a plain 
 fool. I like a villain anyway — a villain 
 that can be rather tender at times. 
 And so, then, as I look at the pictures I 
 fall in love with the incomparable 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 253 
 
 Napoleon. The seventeen pictures 
 are all different and all alike. I fall in 
 love with each picture separately. 
 
 In one he is ugly and unattractive 
 — and strong. I fall in love with 
 him. 
 
 In another he is cruel and heartless 
 and utterly selfish — and strong. I fall 
 in love with him. 
 
 In a third he has a fat, pudgy look, 
 and is quite insignificant — and strong. 
 I fall in love with him. 
 
 In a fourth he is grandly sad and full 
 of despair — and strong. I fall in love 
 with him. 
 
 In the fifth he is greasy and greedy 
 and common-looking — and strong. I 
 fall in love with him. 
 
 In the sixth he is masterly and supe- 
 rior and exalted — and strong. I fall in 
 love with him. 
 
 In the seventh he is romantic and 
 beautiful — and strong. I fall in love 
 with him. 
 
 In the eighth he is obviously sensual 
 
254 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 and reeking with uncleanness — and 
 strong. I fall in love with him. 
 
 In the ninth he is unearthly and mys- 
 terious and unreal — and strong. I fall 
 in love with him. 
 
 In the tenth he is black and sullen- 
 browed, and ill-humored — and strong. 
 I fall in love with him. 
 
 In the eleventh he is inferior and 
 trifling and inane — and strong. I fall 
 in love with him. 
 
 In the twelfth he is rough and 
 ruffianly and uncouth — and strong. I 
 fall in love with him. 
 
 In the thirteenth he is little and wolf- 
 ish and vile — and strong. I fall in love 
 with him. 
 
 In the fourteenth he is calm and con- 
 fident and intellectual — and strong. I 
 fall in love with him. 
 
 In the fifteenth he is vacillating and 
 fretful and his mouth is like a wo- 
 man's — and still he is strong. I fall in 
 love with him. 
 
 In the sixteenth he is slow and heavy 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 255 
 
 and brutal — and strong. I fall in love 
 with him. 
 
 In the seventeenth he is rather ten- 
 der — and strong. I fall vividly in love 
 with him. 
 
 Napoleon was rather like the Devil, 
 I think as I* sit in the straight-backed 
 chair with my feet on the bureau and 
 gaze long and intently at the seventeen 
 pictures, late in the evening. 
 
 Then I wearily "put them away, mad- 
 dened with the sense of Nothingness, 
 and take Little Fido and go to 
 bed. 
 
 Sometimes, early in the evening just 
 before dinner, I sit in the stiff-backed 
 chair with my elbows on the window- 
 sill and my head resting on one hand, 
 and I look out of the window at a Pile 
 of Stones and a Barrel of Lime. These 
 are in the vacant lot next to this 
 house. 
 
 I fix my eyes intently on the Pile of 
 Stones and the Barrel of Lime. And I 
 fix my thoughts on them also. And 
 
256 THE STORY OF IWaRY MAC LANE 
 
 some of my widest thoughts come to 
 me then. 
 
 I feel an overwhelming wave of a 
 kind of pantheism which, at the mo- 
 ment I feel it, begins slowly to grow 
 less and less and continues in this until 
 finally it dwindles to a Pile of Stones 
 and a Barrel of Lime. 
 
 I feel at the moment that the uni- 
 verse is a Pile of Stones and a Barrel of 
 Lime. They alone are the Real Things. 
 
 Take anything at any point and de- 
 ceive yourself into thinking that you 
 are happy with it. But look at it 
 heavily; dig down underneath the lay- 
 ers and layers of rose-colored mists and 
 you will find that your Thing is a Pile 
 of Stones and a Barrel of Lime. 
 
 A struggle or two, a fight, an agony, 
 a passing — and then the only Real 
 Things: a Pile of Stones and a Barrel 
 of Lime. 
 
 Damn everything! Afterward you 
 will find that you have done all your 
 damning for naught. For there is 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 257 
 
 nothing worthy of damnation except a 
 Pile of Stones and a Barrel of Lime — 
 and they are not damnable. They 
 have never harmed you, and moreover 
 they alone are the Real Things. 
 
 Julius Caesar made many wars. Sir 
 Francis Drake went sailing over the 
 seas. It was all child's play and counts 
 for nothing. Here are the Pile of 
 Stones and a Barrel of Lime. 
 
 And so this is how it is early in the 
 evening just before dinner, when I sit 
 in the uncomfortable chair with my 
 elbows on the window-sill and my head 
 resting on one hand. 
 
 I have two pictures of Marie Bash- 
 kirtseff high upon my wall. Often I 
 lean my head on the back of the chair 
 with my feet on the bureau — always 
 with my feet on the bureau — and look 
 at these pictures. 
 
 In one of them she is eighteen years 
 old and wears a green frock which is 
 extremely becoming — of which fact the 
 person inside of it seems fully aware. 
 
25b' THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 The other picture is taken from her 
 last photograph, when she was twenty- 
 four. 
 
 Marie Bashkirtseff is a very beautiful 
 creature. And evidently she is not 
 obliged to arrange a moreen petticoat 
 over her plumpness. She has a won- 
 derfully voluptuous look for a woman 
 of eighteen years. In the later picture 
 vanity is written in every line of her 
 graceful form and in every feature of 
 that charming face. The picture fairly 
 yells: "I am Marie Bashkirtseff — and, 
 oh, I am splendid!" 
 
 And as 1 look at the pictures I am 
 glad. For though she was admirable 
 and splendid, and all, she was no such 
 genius as I. She had a genius of hel 
 own, it is true. But the Bashkirtseff, 
 with her voluptuous body and her at- 
 tractive personality, is after all a bit 
 ordinary. My genius, though not 
 powerful, is rare and deep, and no one 
 has ever had or ever will have a genius 
 like it. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 259 
 
 Mary Mac Lane, if you live — if you 
 live, my darling, the world will one day 
 recognize your genius. And when once 
 the world has recognized such genius 
 as this — oh, then no one will ever think 
 of profaning it by comparing it with 
 any Bashkirtseff! 
 
 But I would give up this genius 
 eagerly, gladly — at once and forever — ■ 
 for one dear, bright day free from 
 loneliness. 
 
 The portraits of the Bashkirtseff are 
 certainly beautiful, but there is some- 
 thing about them that is — well, not com- 
 mon, but bourgeois at least, as if she 
 were a German waitress of unusual ap- 
 pearance, or an aristocratic shop-girl, or 
 a nurse with good taste who would 
 walk out on pleasant forenoons wheel- 
 ing a go-cart — something of that sort. 
 Perhaps it is because her neck is too 
 short, or because her wrists are too 
 muscular-looking. I thank a gracious 
 Devil as I look up at the pictures that I 
 have not those particular points and 
 
260 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 that particular bourgeois air. I am 
 bound to confess that I have one of my 
 own, but mine is Highland Scotch — and 
 anyway, I am Mary Mac,Lane. 
 
 Marie Bashkirtseff is beautiful 
 enough, however, that she can easily 
 afford to look rather second-rate. 
 
 I like to look at my two pictures of 
 her. 
 
 I value money literally for its own 
 sake. I like the feeling of dollars and 
 quarters rubbing softly together in my 
 hand. Always it reminds me of those 
 lovely chestfuls of gold that Captain 
 Kidd buried — no one seems to know 
 just where. Usually I keep some fairly- 
 clean dollars and quarters to handle. 
 "Money is so nice!" I say to myself. 
 
 If you think, fine world, that I am 
 always interesting and striking and ad- 
 mirable, always original, showing up to 
 good advantage in a company of per- 
 sons, and all — why, then you are beau- 
 tifully mistaken. There are times, to 
 be sure, when I can rivet the attention 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 26 1 
 
 of the crowd heavily upon myself. But 
 mostly I am the very least among all 
 the idiots and fools. I show up to the 
 poorest possible advantage. 
 
 Of several ways that are mine there 
 is one that gives me a distinct and 
 hopeless air of insignificance. I have 
 seen people, having met me for the first 
 time, glance carelessly at me as if they 
 were quite sure I had not an idea in my 
 brain — if I had a brain; as if they won- 
 dered why I had been asked there; as if 
 they were fully aware that they had but 
 to fiddle and "It" would dance. Some- 
 times before this highly intellectual 
 gathering breaks up I manage to make 
 them change their minds with astonish- 
 ing suddenness. But nearly always I 
 don't bother about it at all. I go 
 among people occasionally because it 
 amuses me. It may be a literary club 
 where they talk theosophy, or it may 
 be a Cornish dance where they have 
 pasty and saffron cake and the chief 
 amusement is sending beer-bottles at 
 
262 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 various heads, or it may be a lady-like 
 circle of married women with cerise 
 silk drop-skirts and white kid gloves, 
 drinking chocolate in the afternoon and 
 talking about something "shocking!" 
 
 And often, as I say, I am the least of 
 them. 
 
 Genius is an odd thing. 
 
 When certain of my skirts need sew- 
 ing, they don't get sewed. I simply pin 
 the rents in them together and it lasts 
 as long or longer than if I had seated 
 myself in my stiff-backed chair with a 
 needle and thread and mended them — 
 like a sensible girl. (I hate a sensible 
 girl.) 
 
 Though' I have never yet hurriedly 
 pinned up a torn flounce or several 
 inches of skirt-binding without saying 
 softly to myself, using a trite, expres- 
 sive phrase, "Certainly, it's a hell of a 
 way to do." Still I never take a needle 
 and mend my garments. I couldn't, 
 nnyway. I never learned to sew, and I 
 don't intend ever to learn. It reminds 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 263 
 
 me too much of a constipated dress- 
 maker. 
 
 And so I pin up the torn places 
 —though, as I say, I never fail to 
 make use of the quaint, expressive 
 phrase. 
 
 All of which a reasonably astute 
 reader will recognize as an important 
 point in the portraying of any charac- 
 ter — whether mine or the queen of 
 Spain's. 
 
 I had for my dinner to-day some 
 whole-wheat bread, some liver-and- 
 bacon, and some green, green early 
 asparagus. While I was eating these 
 the world seemed a very nice place in- 
 deed. 
 
 I never see people walking along on 
 the opposite side of the street, as I sit 
 by my window, without wondering who 
 they are, and how they live, and how 
 ugly they would look if their bodies 
 were not adorned with clothes. Always 
 I feel certain that some of them are 
 bow-legged. 
 
264 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 And sometimes I see a woman in a 
 fearful state of deshabille walk across 
 the vacant lot next to this. "A plague 
 on me," I say then to myself, "if I ever 
 become middle-aged and if my entire 
 being seems to tip up in the front, and 
 if I go about with no stays so that when 
 I tie an apron around my waist my 
 upper fatness hangs over the band like 
 a natural blouse." 
 
 And so — I could go on writing all 
 night these seemingly trivial but really 
 significant details relating to the outer 
 genius. But these will answer. These 
 to any one who knows things will be a 
 revelation. 
 
 Sometimes you know things, fine 
 brave worlu. 
 
 You must know likewise that though 
 I do ordinary things, when / do them 
 they cease to be ordinary. I make 
 fudge — and a sweet girl makes fudge, 
 but there are ways and ways of doing 
 things. This entire affair of the fudge 
 is one of my uniquest points. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 265 
 
 No sweet girl makes fudge and eats 
 it, as I make fudge and eat it. 
 
 So it is. 
 
 But, oh — who is to understand all 
 this? Who will understand any of this 
 Portrayal? My unhappy soul has 
 delved in shadows far, far beyond and 
 below. 
 
flDarcb 23. 
 
 MY PHILOSOPHY, I find after 
 very little analysis, approaches 
 precariously near to sensualism. 
 
 It is wonderful how many sides there 
 can be to just one character. 
 
 Nature, with all those suns, and all 
 those hilltops, and all those rivers, and 
 all those stars, is inscrutable — intangi- 
 ble — maddening. It affects one with 
 unutterable joy and anguish, but no one 
 can ever begin to understand what it 
 means. 
 
 Human nature is yet more inscru- 
 table — and nothing appears on the sur- 
 face. One can have no idea of the 
 things buried in the minds of one's 
 acquaintances. And mostly they are 
 fools and have no idea themselves of 
 what germs are in themselves — of what 
 they are capable. And in most minds it 
 is true the dormant devils never awaken 
 and never are known. 
 
 266 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 267 
 
 It is another sign of my analytical 
 genius, that I, aged nineteen, recognize 
 the devils in my character. I have not 
 the slightest wish, since things are as 
 they are with me, to rid myself of 
 them. There is in me much more of 
 evil than of good. Genius like mine 
 must needs have with it manifold bad. 
 "I have in me the germ of every crime." 
 I have no desire to destroy these 
 germs. I should be glad indeed to 
 have them develop into a ravaging 
 disease. Something in this dreadful 
 confusion would then give way. My 
 wooden heart and my soul would cry out 
 in the darkness less heavily, less bitterly. 
 
 They want something — they know 
 not what. 
 
 I give them poison. 
 
 They snatch it and eat it hungrily. 
 
 Then they are not so hungry. They 
 become quieter. 
 
 The ravaging disease soothes them 
 to sleep — it descends on them like rain 
 in the autumn. 
 
268 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 When I hurry over my sand and bar- 
 renness my vivid passions come to me — 
 or when I sit and look at the horizon. 
 When I walk slowly I consider calmly 
 the question of how much evil I should 
 need to kill off my finer feelings, to 
 poison thoroughly this soul of unrest 
 and this wooden heart so that they 
 would never more be conscious of too- 
 brilliant lights, and to make myself 
 over into a quite different creature. 
 
 A little evil would do — a little of a 
 fine, good quality. 
 
 I should like a man to come (it is 
 always a man, have you ever noticed? — 
 whatever one contemplates when one is 
 of womankind and young). I should 
 like a man to come, I said calmly to 
 myself to-day as I walked slowly over 
 my barrenness — a perfect villain to 
 come and fascinate me and lead me 
 with strong, gentle allurements to what 
 would be technically termed my ruin. 
 And as the world views such things it 
 would be my ruin. But as I view such 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 269 
 
 things it would k not be ruin. It would 
 be a new lease on life. 
 
 Yes, I should like a man to come — 
 any man so that he is strong and 
 thoroughly a villain, and so that he fasci- 
 nates me. Particularly he must fasci- 
 nate me. There must be no falling in 
 love about it. I doubt if I could fasci- 
 nate] him, but I should ask him quite 
 humbly to lead me to my ruin. 
 
 I have never yet seen the man who 
 would not readily respond to such an 
 appeal. 
 
 This villain would be no exception. 
 
 I would then jerk my life out of this 
 Nothingness by the roots. Farewell, a 
 long farewell, I would say. Then I 
 would go forth with the man to my 
 ruin. The man would be bad to his 
 heart's core. And after living but a 
 short time with him my shy, sensitive 
 soul would be irretrievably poisoned 
 and polluted. The defilement of so 
 sacred and beautiful a thing as mar- 
 riage is surely the darkest evil that can 
 
27O THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 come to a life. And so everything 
 within me that had turned toward that 
 too-bright light would then drink deep 
 of the lees of death. 
 
 The thirst of this incessant unrest 
 and longing, this weariness of self, 
 would be quenched completely. 
 
 My life would be like fertile soil 
 planted thickly with rank wild mustard. 
 On every square inch of soil there 
 would be a dozen sprouts of wild mus- 
 tard. There would be no room — no 
 room at all — for an anemone to grow. 
 If one should start up, instantly it would 
 be choked and overrun with wild mus- 
 tard. But no anemone would start up. 
 
 My life now is a life of pain and revolt. 
 
 My life darkened and partly killed 
 would be more than content to drift 
 along with the current. 
 
 Oh, it would be a rest! 
 
 The Christians sing, there is rest for 
 the weary, on the other side of Jordan, 
 where the tree of life is blooming. But 
 that rest, of course, is for the Chris- 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 27 1 
 
 tians. My rest will have to come on 
 this side of Jordan. Let the impress of 
 a thoroughly evil and strong man be 
 stamped upon my inner life, and I am 
 convinced there would come a wonder- 
 ful settled quiet over it. Its spirit 
 would be broken. It would rest. Why 
 not? I have no virtue-sense. Nothing 
 to me is of any consequence except to 
 be rid of this unrest and pain. Yes, 
 surely I might rest. 
 
 The coming of the man-devil would 
 bring rest. But I am fool enough to 
 think that marriage — the real mar- 
 riage — is possible for me! 
 
 This other thing is within the reach 
 of every one — of fools and geniuses 
 alike — and of all that come between. 
 
 And so I want a fascinating wicked 
 man to come and make me positively, 
 rather than negatively, wicked. I feel 
 a terrific wave of utter weariness. My 
 life lies fallow. I am tired of sitting 
 here. The sand and barrenness is gray 
 with age. And I am gray with age. 
 
272 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 Happiness — the red of the sunset 
 sky — is the intensest desire of my life. 
 
 But I will grasp eagerly anything else 
 that is offered me — anything. 
 
 The poisoning of my soul — the pass- 
 ing of my unrest — would rouse my 
 mental power. My genius would re- 
 ceive a wonderful impetus from it. 
 You would marvel, good world, at the 
 things I should write. Not that they 
 would be exalted — not that they would 
 surge upward. Do men gather grapes 
 of thorns or figs of thistles? But they 
 would be marvels of fire and intensity. 
 I should no longer exhaust much of my 
 energy in grinding, grinding within. 
 The things that would come of the 
 thorns and thistles would excite your 
 astonishment and admiration, though 
 they be not grapes and figs. 
 
 And as for me — the real me — the 
 creature imbued with a spirit of intense 
 femininity, with a spirit of an intense 
 sense of Love — with a spirit like that 
 of the Magdalene who loved too much, 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 273 
 
 with the very soul of unrest and Noth- 
 ingness — this thing would vanish swiftly 
 into oblivion, and I should go down a 
 dark world and feel not. 
 
flDarcb 25. 
 
 ONE of the remarkable points 
 about my life is that it is so 
 completely, hopelessly alone — a 
 lonely, lonely life. This book of mine 
 contains but one character — myself. 
 
 There is also the Devil — as a possi- 
 bility. 
 
 And there is also the anemone lady — 
 my dearest beloved — as a memory. 
 
 I have read books that were written 
 to portray but one character, and there 
 were various people brought in to help 
 in the portraying. But my one friend 
 is gone, and there is no person who 
 enters into my inner life in the very 
 least. I am always alone. I might 
 mingle with people intimately every 
 hour of my life — still I should be alone. 
 
 Always alone — alone. 
 
 Not even a God to worship. 
 
 How do I bear this? How do I get 
 through the days and days? 
 274 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 275 
 
 And, oh, when it all comes over me, 
 what frightful rage — what long agony 
 of my breaking heart — what utter woe! 
 
 When the stars shine down upon me 
 with cold hatred; when miles and miles 
 of barrenness stretch out around me 
 and envelop me in their weary, weary 
 Nothingness; when the wind blows 
 over me like the breath of a vicious 
 giant; when the ugly, ugly sun radiates 
 centuries of hard, heavy bitterness 
 around me from its stinging rays; when 
 the sky maddens me with its cold, care- 
 less blue; when the rivers that are flow- 
 ing over the earth send echoes to me of 
 their hateful voices; when I hear wild 
 geese honking in bitter wailing melody; 
 when bristling edges of jagged rocks 
 cut sharply into my tired life; when 
 drops of rain fall on me and pierce me 
 like steel points; when the voices in the 
 air shriek little-minded malice in my 
 ears; when the green of Nature is the 
 green of spitefulness and cruelty; when 
 the red, red of the setting sun burns 
 
276 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 and consumes me with its horrid fever- 
 ish effervescence; when I feel the all- 
 hatred of the Universe for its poor little 
 earth-bugs: then it is that I approach 
 nearest to Rest. 
 
 The softnesses are my Unrest. 
 
 I do not want those bitter things. 
 
 But I must have them if I would rest. 
 
 I want the softnesses and I want Rest! 
 
 Oh, dear faint soul, it is hard — hard 
 for us. 
 
 We are sick with loneliness. 
 
/IDarcb 26. 
 
 NOW and again I have torturing 
 glimpses of a Paradise. And I 
 feel my soul in its pain every 
 moment of my life. Otherwise, how 
 gladly would I deny the existence of a 
 soul and a life to come! 
 
 For my soul is beset with Nothing- 
 ness, and the Paradise that shows itself 
 is not for me. 
 
 «77 
 
/fcarcb 28. 
 
 HATRED, after all, is the easiest 
 thing of all to bear. 
 If you have been forgotten by 
 the one who must have made you, and 
 if you have been left alone of human 
 beings all your life — all your nineteen 
 years — then, when at last you see some 
 one looking toward you with beautiful 
 eyes, and extending to you a beautiful 
 hand, and showing you a beautiful 
 heart wherein is just a little of beauti- 
 ful sympathy for you — for you— oh, 
 that is harder than anything to bear. 
 Harder than the loneliness and the bit- 
 terness — and the tears are nearer and 
 nearer. 
 
 But one would be hurt often, often 
 for the sake of the beautiful things. 
 Yes, one would gladly be hurt long and 
 often. 
 
 I shall never forget how it was with 
 
 me when I first saw the beautiful eyes 
 
 378 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 279 
 
 of my dearest anemone lady when they 
 were looking gently — at me — and the 
 beautiful hand, and the beautiful heart. 
 
 The awakening of my racked soul is 
 hardly more heavily laden with passion 
 and pain. I shall never forget. 
 
 Though I feel away from her also, she 
 is the only one out of all to look gently 
 at me. 
 
 Let me writhe and falter with pain; 
 let me go mad — but oh, worldful of 
 people — for the love of your God — give 
 me out of this seething darkness only 
 one beautiful human hand to touch 
 mine with love, one beautiful human 
 heart to know the aching sad loneliness 
 of mine, one beautiful, human soul to 
 mingle with mine in long, long Rest. 
 
 Oh, for a human being, my soul 
 wails — a human being to love me! 
 
 Oh, to know — just once — what it is to 
 be loved! 
 
 Nineteen years without one faint 
 shadow of love is mouldy, crumbling 
 age — is gray with the dust of centuries. 
 
280 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 How long have I lived? 
 
 How long must I live? 
 
 I am shrieking at you, cold, stupid 
 world. 
 
 Oh, the long, long waiting! 
 
 The millions of human beings! 
 
 I am a human being and there is no 
 one — no one — no one. 
 
 Who can know this that has not felt 
 it? You do not know — you can not 
 know. 
 
 Surely I do not ask too much. But 
 whether or not it is too much I can not 
 go through the years without it — oh, I 
 can not! 
 
 You have lived your nineteen years, 
 fine world, and you have lived through 
 some after years. 
 
 But in your nineteen years there was 
 some one to love you. 
 
 It is that that counts. 
 
 Since you have had that some one, in 
 your nineteen years, can you under- 
 stand what life is to me — me — in my 
 loneliness? 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 28 1 
 
 My wailing, waiting soul burns with 
 but one desire: to be loved — oh, to be 
 loved. 
 
/»arcb 29. 
 
 1AM making the world my confessor 
 in this Portrayal. My mind is 
 fairly bursting with egotism and 
 pain, and in writing this I find a merci- 
 ful outlet. I have become fond of my 
 Portrayal. Often I lay my forehead 
 and my lips caressingly upon the 
 pages. 
 
 And I wish to let you know that 
 there is in existence a genius — an un- 
 happy genius, a genius starving in Mon- 
 tana in the barrenness — but still a 
 genius. I am a creature the like of 
 which you have never before hap- 
 pened upon. You have never suspected 
 that there is such a person. I know 
 that there is not such another. As I 
 said in the beginning, the world con- 
 tains not my parallel. 
 
 I am a fantasy — an absurdity — a 
 genius! 
 
 Had I been one of the beasts that 
 
 282 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 283 
 
 perish I had been likewise a fantasy. I 
 think I should have been a small ani- 
 mal composite of a pig, a leopard, and a 
 skunk: an animal that I fancy would 
 be uncanny to look upon but admirable 
 for a pet. 
 
 However, I am not one of the beasts 
 that perish. 
 
 I am human. 
 
 That is another remarkable point. 
 
 I have heard persons say they can 
 hardly befieve I am quite human. 
 
 I am the most human creature that 
 ever was placed on the earth. The 
 geniuses are always more human than 
 the herd. Almost a perfection of 
 humanness is reached in me. This by 
 itself makes me extraordinary. The 
 rarest thing in the world, I find, is the 
 quality of humanness. 
 
 Humanity and humaneness are much 
 less rare. 
 
 "It is a brave thing to understand 
 something of what we see." Indeed it 
 is. An exceeding brave thing. The 
 
284 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 one who said that had surely gone out 
 on the highways and byways and found 
 how little he could understand. 
 
 To understand oneself is not so 
 brave a thing. To go in among the 
 hidden gray shadows of the deep 
 things is a fool's errand. It is not 
 from choice that I do it. No one car- 
 ries a mill-stone around her neck from 
 choice. When I see what is among the 
 hidden gray shadows — when I see a 
 vision of Myself — I am seized with a 
 strange, sick terror. 
 
 A fool's errand — but one that I must 
 need go — and for that matter I myself 
 am a fool. 
 
 Yet to know oneself well is a rare 
 fine art. 
 
 I analyze myself now. I analyzed 
 myself when I was three years old. 
 
 The only difference is that at the age 
 of three I was not aware that I ana- 
 lyzed. It is true, that is a great differ- 
 ence. Now I know that I am analyzing 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 285 
 
 at nineteen, and now I know that I 
 analyzed at three. 
 
 And at the age of nineteen I know 
 that I am a genius. 
 
 A genius who does not know that he 
 is a genius is no genius. A drunken 
 man might stagger up to a piano and 
 accidentally play music that vibrates to 
 the soul — that touches upon the mys- 
 teries. But he does not know his 
 power, and he is no genius, though men 
 awaken and go mad therefrom. 
 
 I know that I am a genius more than 
 any genius that has lived. 
 
 I have a feeling that^ the world will 
 never know this. 
 
 And as I think of it I wonder if 
 angels are not weeping somewhere 
 because of it. 
 
fl>arcb 3t. 
 
 "She only said: 'My life is dreary, 
 He cometh not,' she said; 
 She said, 4 I am aweary, aweary. 
 I would that I were dead!' " 
 
 ALL day long this heart-sickening 
 song of Mariana has been reel- 
 ing and swimming in my brain. 
 I awoke with it early in the morning, 
 and it is still with me now in the late- 
 ness. I wondered at times during the 
 day why that very gentle and devilishly 
 persistent refrain did not drive me in- 
 sane or send me into convulsions I 
 tried vainly to fix my mind on a book. 
 I began reading "Mill on the Floss," 
 but that weird poem was not to be 
 foiled. It bewitched my brain Now, 
 as I write, I hear twenty voices chant- 
 ing in a sad minor key — twenty voices 
 that fill my brain with sound to the 
 
 bursting point. "He cometh not — he 
 
 286 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 287 
 
 cometh not — he cometh not." "That I 
 were dead" — "I am aweary, aweary, — 
 "that I were dead — that I were dead." 
 "He cometh not — that I were dead." 
 
 It is maddening in that it is set sub- 
 limely to the music of my own life. 
 
 Now that I have written it I can hope 
 that it may leave me. If it follows me 
 through the night, and if I awake to 
 another day of it the cords of my over- 
 worked mind will surely break. 
 
 But let me thank the kind Devil. 
 
 It is leaving me now! 
 
 It is as if tons were lifted from my 
 brain. 
 
Hpril 2- 
 
 HOW can any one bring a child 
 into the world and not wrap it 
 round with a certain wondrous 
 tenderness that will stay with it always! 
 There are persons whose souls have 
 never entered into them. 
 
 My mother has some fondness for 
 me — for my body because it came of 
 hers. That is nothing — nothing. 
 A hen loves its Qgg. 
 A hen! 
 
 a88 
 
Hpril 3. 
 
 THIS evening in the slow-deepen- 
 ing dusk I sat by my window and 
 spent an hour in passionate con- 
 versation with the Devil. I fancied I sat, 
 with my hands folded and my feet 
 crossed, on an ugly but comfortable red 
 velvet sofa in some nondescript room. 
 
 And the fascinating man-devil was 
 seated near in a frail willow chair. 
 
 He had willingly come to pass the 
 time of day with me. He was in a 
 good-humored mood, and I amused and 
 interested him* And for myself, I was 
 extremely glad to see the Devil sitting 
 there and felt vividly as always. But I 
 sat quietly enough. 
 
 The fascinating man-devil has fasci- 
 nating steel-gray eyes, and they looked 
 at me with every variety of glance — 
 from quizzical to tender. 
 
 It were easy — oh, how easy — to fol- 
 low those eyes to the earth's ends. 
 
 a8 9 
 
290 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 The Devil leaned back in the frail 
 willow chair and looked at me. 
 
 "And now that I am here, Mary Mac 
 Lane," he said, "what would you?" 
 
 "I want you to marry me," I replied 
 at once. "And I want it more than 
 ever anything was wanted since the 
 world began " 
 
 "So? I am flattered," said the Devil, 
 and smiled gently, enchantingly. 
 
 At that smile I was ravished and 
 transported, and a spasm of some rare 
 emotion thrilled all the little nerves in 
 me from my heels to my forehead. 
 And yet the smile was not for me but 
 rather somewhat at my expense. 
 
 "But," he went on, "you must know it 
 is not my custom to marry women." 
 
 "I am sure it is not," I agreed, "and I 
 do not ask to be peculiarly favored. 
 Anything that you may give me. how- 
 ever little, will constitute marriage for 
 me. 
 
 "And would marriage itself be so 
 small a thing?" asked the Devil. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 29 1 
 
 "Marriage," I said, "would be a 
 great, oh, a wonderful thing, and the 
 most beautiful of all. I want what is 
 good according to my lights, and be- 
 cause I am a genius my lights are many 
 and far-reaching." 
 
 "What do your lights tell you?" the 
 man-devil inquired. 
 
 "They tell me this: that nothing in 
 the world matters unless love is with it, 
 and if love is with it and it seems to the 
 virtuous a barren and infamous thing, 
 still — because of the love — it partakes 
 of the very highest." 
 
 "And have you the courage of your 
 convictions?" he said. 
 
 "If you offered me," I replied, "that 
 which to the blindly virtuous seems the 
 worst possible thing, it would yet be for 
 me the red, red line on the sky, my 
 heart's desire* my life, my rest. You 
 are the Devil. I have fallen in love 
 with you." 
 
 "I believe you have," said the Devil. 
 "And how does it feel to be in love?" 
 
2<)2 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 Sitting composedly on the ugly red 
 velvet sofa, with my hands folded and 
 my feet crossed, I attempted to define 
 that wonderful feeling. 
 
 "It feels," I said, "as if sparks of fire 
 and ice crystals ran riot in my veins 
 with my blood; as if a thousand pin- 
 points pierced my flesh, and every 
 other point a point of pleasure, and 
 every other point a point of pain; as if 
 my heart were laid to rest in a bed of 
 velvet and cotton-wool but kept awake 
 by sweet violin arias; as if milk and 
 honey and the blossoms of the cherry 
 flowed into my stomach and then van- 
 ished utterly; as if strange, beautiful 
 worlds lay spread out before my eyes, 
 alternately in dazzling light and com- 
 plete darkness with chaotic rapidity; as 
 if orris-root were sprinkled in the folds 
 of my brain; as if sprigs of dripping- 
 wet sweet-fern were stuck inside my 
 hot linen collar; as if — well, you know," 
 I ended suddenly. 
 
 "Very good," said the Devil. "You 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 293 
 
 are in love. And you say you are in 
 love with me." 
 
 "Oh, with you!" I exclaimed with sup- 
 pressed violence. The effort to sup- 
 press this violence cost me pounds of 
 nerve-power. But I kept my hands 
 still quietly folded and my feet crossed, 
 and it was a triumph of self-control. 
 "I want you to marry me," I added 
 despairingly. 
 
 "And you think," he inquired, "that 
 apart from the opinion of the wise 
 world, it would be a suitable marriage?" 
 
 "A suitable marriage!" I exclaimed. 
 "I hate a suitable marriage! No, it 
 would not be suitable. It would be 
 Bohemian, outlandish, adorable!" 
 
 The Devil smiled. 
 
 This time the smile was for me. 
 And, oh, the long, old, overpowering 
 enchantment of the smile of steel-gray 
 eyes! — the steel-gray eyes of the Devil! 
 
 It is one of those things that one re- 
 members. 
 
 "You are a beautifully frank, little 
 
294 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 feminine creature," he said. "Frank- 
 ness is in these days a lost art." 
 
 "Yes, I am beautifully frank," I re- 
 plied. "Out of countless millions of the 
 Devil's anointed I am one to acknowl- 
 edge myself." 
 
 "But withal you are not true," said 
 the man-devil. 
 
 "I am a liar," I answered. 
 
 "You are a liar, surely," he said, "but 
 you stay with your lies. To stay with 
 anything is Truth." 
 
 "It is so," I replied "Nevertheless I 
 am false as woman can be." 
 
 "But you know what you want." 
 
 "Oh, yes," I said, "I know what I 
 want. I want you to marry me." 
 
 "And why?" 
 
 "Because I love you." 
 
 "That seems an excellent reason, 
 certainly," said the Devil. 
 
 "I want to be happy for once in my 
 life," I said. "I have never been happy. 
 And if I could be happy once for one 
 gold day, I should be satisfied, and I 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 295 
 
 snould have that to remember in the 
 long years." 
 
 "And you are a strangely pathetic 
 little animal," said the Devil. 
 
 "I am pathetic," I said. I clasped my 
 hands very tightly. "I know that I am 
 pathetic: and for this reason I am the 
 most terribly pathetic of all in the 
 world." 
 
 "Poor little Mary Mac Lane!" said 
 the Devil. He leaned toward me. He 
 looked at me with those strange, won- 
 derfully tender, divine steel-gray eyes. 
 "Poor little Mary Mac Lane!" he said 
 again in a voice that was like the Gray 
 Dawn. And the eyes — the glance of 
 the steel-gray eyes entered into me and 
 thrilled me through and through. It 
 frightened and soothed me. It racked 
 and comforted me. It ravished me 
 with inconceivable gentleness so that I 
 bent my head down and sobbed as I 
 breathed. 
 
 "Don't you know, you little thing," 
 said the man-devil, softly-compassion- 
 
296 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 ate, "y° ur life will be very hard for you 
 always — harder when you are happy 
 than when you go in Nothingness?" 
 
 "I know — I know. Nevertheless I 
 want to be happy," I sobbed. I felt a 
 rush of an old thick, heavy anguish. 
 "It is day after day. It is week after 
 week. It is month after month. It is 
 year after year. It is only time going 
 and going. There is no joy. There is 
 no lightness of heart. It is only the 
 passing of days. I am young and all 
 alone. Always I have been alone: 
 when I was five and lay in the damp 
 grass and tortured myself to keep back 
 tears; and through the long, cold, 
 lonely years till now — and now all the 
 torture does not keep back the tears. 
 There is no one — nothing — to help me 
 bear it. It is more than pathetic when 
 one is nineteen in all young, new feel 
 ing and sees Nothing anywhere — ex- 
 cept long, dark, lonely years behind her 
 and before her. No one that loves me 
 and long, long years." 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 297 
 
 I stopped. The gray eyes were fixed 
 on me. Oh, they were the steel-gray 
 eyes! — and they had a look in them. 
 The long, bitter pageant of my Noth- 
 ingness mingled with this look and the 
 coming together of these was like the 
 joining of two halves. 
 
 I do not know which brings me the 
 deeper pain — the loneliness and weari- 
 ness of my sand and barrenness, or the 
 look in the steel-gray eyes. But as 
 always I would gladly leave all and fol- 
 low the eyes to the world's end. They 
 are like the sun's setting. And they 
 are like the pale, beautiful stars. And 
 they are like the shadows of earth and 
 sky that come together in the dark. 
 
 "Why," asked the Devil, "are you in 
 love with me?" 
 
 "You know so much — so much," I 
 answered. "I think it must be that. 
 The wisdom of the spheres is in your 
 brain. And so, then, you must under- 
 stand me. Because no one understands 
 all these smouldering feelings my great- 
 
298 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 est agony is. You must need know the 
 very finest of them. And your eyes! 
 Oh, it's no matter why I'm in love with 
 you. It's enough that I am. And if 
 you married me I would make you 
 happier than you are." 
 
 "I am not happy at all," said the man- 
 devil. "I am merely contented." 
 
 "Contentment," I said, "in place of 
 Happiness, is a horrid feeling. Not 
 one of your countless advocates loves 
 you. They all serve you faithfully and 
 well, but with it all they hate you. 
 Always people hate their tyrant. You 
 are my tyrant, but I love you absorb- 
 ingly, madly. Happiness for me would 
 be to live with you and see you made 
 happy by the overwhelming flood of my 
 love." 
 
 "It interests me," he said. "You are 
 a most interesting feminine philoso- 
 pher — and your philosophy is after my 
 own heart, in its lack of virtue. It is 
 to be hoped you are not 'intellectual/ 
 which is an unpardonable trait." 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 299 
 
 "Indeed, I am not," I replied. "In- 
 tellectual people are detestable. They 
 have pale faces and bad stomachs and 
 bad livers, and if they are women their 
 corsets are sure to be too tight, and 
 probably black, and if they are men 
 they are soft, which is worse. And they 
 never by any chance know what it 
 means to walk all day in the rain, or to 
 roll around on the ground in the dirt. 
 And, above all, they never fall in love 
 with the Devil." 
 
 "They are tiresome," the Devil 
 agreed. "If I were to marry you how 
 long would you be happy?" 
 
 "For three days." 
 
 "You are wise," he said. "You are 
 wonderfully wise in some things, though 
 you are still very young." 
 
 "I am wise," I answered. "Being of 
 womankind and nineteen years, I am 
 more than ready to give up absolutely 
 everything that is good in the world's 
 sight, though they are contemptible 
 things enough in my own, for love, 
 
300 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 All for love. Therefore I am wise. 
 Also I am a fool." 
 
 "Why are you a fool?" 
 
 "Because I am a genius." 
 
 "Your logic is good logic," said the 
 Devil. 
 
 "My logic — oh, I don't care anything 
 about logic," I said with sudden com- 
 plete weariness. I felt buried and 
 wrapped round and round in weariness. 
 Everything lost its color. Everything 
 turned cold. 
 
 "At this moment," said the Devil, 
 "you feel as if you cared for nothing at 
 all. But if I chose I could bring about 
 a transfiguration. I could kiss your 
 soul into Paradise." 
 
 I answered, "Yes," without emo- 
 tion. 
 
 "An hour," said the Devil, "is not 
 very long. But we know it is long 
 enough to "suffer in, and go mad in, and 
 live in, and be happy in. And the 
 world contains a great many hours. 
 Now I am leaving you. It is likely that 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 3OI 
 
 1 may never come again, and it is likely 
 that I may come again." 
 
 It all vanished. I still sat by my win- 
 dow in the gloom. "It is dreary," I 
 said. 
 
 But yes. The world contains a great 
 many hours. 
 
Bptil 4* 
 
 I HAVE asked for bread, some- 
 times, and I have been given a 
 stone. 
 
 Oh, it is a bitter thing — oh, it is 
 piteous, piteous! 
 
 I find that I am not far apart from 
 human beings I can still be crushed, 
 wounded, stunned, by the attitude of 
 human beings. 
 
 To-day I looked for human-kindness, 
 and I was given coldness. I repelled 
 human beings. 
 
 I asked for bread and I was given a 
 stone. 
 
 Oh, it is bitter — bitter. 
 
 Oh, is there a thing in the wide 
 world more bitter? 
 
 God, where are you! I am crushed, 
 wounded, stunned — and, oh — I am 
 alone! 
 
 302 
 
Hprfl 10, 
 
 1HAVE a sense of humor that par- 
 takes of the divine in life — for there 
 are things even in this chaotic 
 irony that are divine. My genius is 
 not divine. My patheticness is not 
 divine. My philosophy is not divine, 
 nor my originality, nor my audacity of 
 thought. These are peculiarly of the 
 earth. But my sense of humor — 
 
 It is humor that is far too deep to 
 admit of laughter. It is humor that 
 makes my heart melt with a high, un- 
 equaled sense of pleasure and ripple 
 down through my body like old yellow 
 wine. 
 
 A rare tone in a person's voice, a 
 densely wrathful expression in a pair 
 of slate-colored eyes, a fine, fine shade 
 of comparison and contrast between a 
 word in a conversation and an angle- 
 worm pattern in a calico dressing- 
 jack' *• — these are things that make me 
 conscious of divine emotion. 
 301 
 
304 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 One day last summer an Italian ped- 
 dler-woman stopped at the back door 
 and rested herself. I stood in the 
 doorway, and the peddler-woman and I 
 talked. She had a dirty white handker- 
 chief tied over her head — as all Italian 
 peddler-women do — and she had a tele- 
 scope valise filled with garters, and 
 hairpins, and soap, and combs, and 
 pencils, and china buttons on blue 
 cards, and bean-shooters, and tacks, and 
 dream-books, and mouth-organs, and 
 green glass beads, and jews-harps. 
 There is something fascinating about a 
 peddler-woman's telescope valise. This 
 peddler-woman wore a black satine 
 wrapper and an ancient cape. She said 
 that she would like to stop and rest a 
 while, and I told her she might. I had 
 always wanted to talk to a peddler- 
 woman, and my mother never would 
 allow one in the house. 
 
 "Is it nice to be a peddler?" I asked her. 
 
 "It ain't bad," replied the per 3 Her- 
 woman. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 305 
 
 "Do you make a great deal of 
 money?" I next inquired. 
 
 "Sometime I do, and sometime I 
 don't," said the woman. She spoke 
 with an accent that, while it sounded 
 Italian, still showed unmistakably that 
 she had lived in Butte. 
 
 "Well, do you make just enough to 
 live on, or have you saved some 
 money?" I asked. 
 
 "I got four hundred dollar in the 
 bank," she replied. "I been peddlin' 
 eight year." 
 
 "Eight years of tramping around in 
 all kinds of weather," I said. "Your 
 philosophy must be peripatetic, too. 
 Haven't you ever had rheumatism in 
 your knees?" 
 
 "I got rheumatism in every joint in 
 my body," said the woman. "I have to 
 lay off, sometime." 
 
 "Have you a husband?" I wished to 
 know. 
 
 "I had a man — oh, yes," said the ped- 
 dler-woman. 
 
306 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 "And where is he?" 
 
 "Back home— in Italy." 
 
 "Why doesn't he come out here and 
 work for you?" I asked. 
 
 "Yes, w'y don't he?" said the woman. 
 "Dat-a man, he's dem lucky w'en he can 
 get enough to eat — he is." 
 
 "Why don't you send him some 
 money to pay his way out, since you've 
 saved so much?" I inquired. 
 
 "Holy God!" said the peddler-woman. 
 "I work hard for dat-a money. I save 
 ev'ry cent. I ain't go'n now to t'row it 
 away — I ain't. Dat-a man, he's all 
 right w'ere he is — he is." 
 
 "What did you marry him for?" I 
 asked. 
 
 The peddler-woman looked at me 
 with that look which seems to convey 
 the information that curiosity once 
 killed a cat. 
 
 "What for?" I persisted— "for love?" 
 
 "I marry him w'en I was young girl. 
 And he was young, too." 
 
 "Yes — but what did you do it for? 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE $°7 
 
 Was he awfully nice, and did he say 
 awfully sweet things to you?" 
 
 "He was dem sweet — oh, yes/' said 
 the peddler-woman. She grinned. 
 "And I was young." 
 
 "And you liked it when you were 
 young and he was sweet, didn't you?" 
 
 "Yes, I guess so. I was young," she 
 answered. 
 
 The fact that one is young seems to 
 imply — in the Italian peddler mind — a 
 lacking in some essential points. 
 
 "And don't you like your man now?" 
 I asked. 
 
 "Dat-a man, he's all right, in Italy — 
 he is," replied the woman. 
 
 "Well," I observed, "if I had a man 
 who had been dem sweet once, when I 
 had been young, but who was not sweet 
 any more, I think I should leave him in 
 Italy, too." 
 
 "You'll git a man some day soon," 
 said the peddler-woman. 
 
 I was interested to know that. 
 
 "They all do — oh, yes," she said. 
 
308 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 "But you likely to be better off peddlin', 
 I tell you." 
 
 "Yes, I think it would be amusing to 
 be a peddler for a while/' I said. "But 
 I should want the man, too, as long as 
 he was dem sweet." 
 
 The peddler-woman picked up the 
 telescope valise. 
 
 "Yes," she remarked, "a man, he's 
 sweet two days, t'ree days, then — holy 
 God! he never work, he git- a drunk, 
 he make - a rough - house, he raise 
 hell." 
 
 The peddler-woman nodded at me 
 and limped out of the yard. The tele- 
 scope valise was heavy. When she 
 walked every muscle in her body 
 seemed to be pressed into the service. 
 She had a heavy, solid look. She 
 seemed as though she might weigh 
 three hundred pounds, though she was 
 not large. The afternoon sun shone 
 down brightly on her dirty white hand- 
 kerchief, on her brown comely face, on 
 her brown brass-ringed hands, on her 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 309 
 
 black satine wrapper, on her ancient 
 cape. 
 
 As I watched her out of sight I 
 thought to myself: "Two days, t'ree 
 days, then — holy God! he never work, 
 he git-a drunk, he make-a rough-house, 
 he raise hell." 
 
 I was conscious of an intense humor 
 that was so far beyond laughter that it 
 was too deep even for tears. But I felt 
 tears vaguely as I watched the peddler- 
 woman limping up the road. 
 
 It was not pathos. It was humor — 
 humor. . My emotion was one of vivid 
 pleasure — pleasure at the sight of the 
 woman, and at the telescope valise, and 
 at her conversation supplemented by 
 my own. 
 
 This emotion is divine, and I can not 
 grasp it. 
 
 As I looked after the Italian peddler- 
 woman it came to me with sudden force 
 that the earth is only the earth, but 
 that it is touched here and there bril- 
 liantly with divine fingers. 
 
3IO THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 Long and often as I've sat in intense 
 silent passion and gazed at the red, red 
 sunset sky, I have never then felt this 
 sense of the divine. 
 
 It comes only through humor. 
 
 It comes only with things like an 
 Italian peddler-woman in a black satine 
 wrapper and an ancient cape. 
 
 My soul — how heavily it goes. 
 
 Life is a journeying up a spring-time 
 hill. And at the top we wonder why 
 we are there. Have mercy on me, I im- 
 plore in a dull idea that the journey is 
 so long — so long, and a human being is 
 less than an atom. 
 
 The solid, heavy figure of an Italian 
 peddler-woman with a telescope valise, 
 limping away in the afternoon sun- 
 shine, is more convincing of the Things 
 that Are than would be the sound of 
 the wailing of legions of lost souls, 
 could it be heard. 
 
 For the world must be amused. 
 
 And the world's wind listeth as it 
 bloweth. 
 
Bprfl It. 
 
 I WRITE a great many letters to the 
 dear anemone lady. I send some 
 of them to her and others I keep to 
 read myself. I like to read letters that 
 I have written — particularly that I have 
 written to her. 
 
 This is a letter that I wrote two days 
 ago to my one friend: 
 
 "To you: — 
 
 "And don't you know, my dearest, 
 my friendship with you contains other 
 things? It contains infatuation, and 
 worship, and bewitchment, and idol- 
 atry, and a tiny altar in my soul-cham- 
 ber whereon is burning sweet incense in 
 a little dish of blue and gold. 
 
 "Yes, all of these. 
 
 "My life is made up of many out- 
 pourings. All the outpourings have 
 one point of coming-together. You are 
 311 
 
312 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 the point of coming-together. There is 
 no other. 
 
 "You are the anemone lady. 
 
 "You are the one whom I may love. 
 
 "To think that the world contains 
 one beautiful human being for rne to 
 love! 
 
 "It is wonderful. 
 
 "My life is longing for the sight of 
 you. My senses are aching for lack of 
 an anemone to diffuse itself among 
 them. 
 
 "A year ago, when you were in the 
 high school, often I used to go over 
 there when you would be going home, 
 so that my life could be made momen- 
 tarily replete by the sight of you. You 
 didn't know I was there — only a few 
 times when I spoke to you. 
 
 "And now it is that I remember 
 you. 
 
 "Oh, my dearest — you are the only 
 one in the world! 
 
 "We are two women. You do not 
 love me, but I love you. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 313 
 
 "You have been wonderfully, beauti- 
 fully kind to me. 
 
 "You are the only one who has ever 
 been kind to me. 
 
 "There is something delirious in 
 this — something of the nameless quan- 
 tity. 
 
 "It is old grief and woe to live nine- 
 teen years and to remember no person 
 ever to have been kind. But what is 
 it — do you think? — at the end of nine- 
 teen years, to come at last upon one 
 who is wonderfully, beautifully kind! 
 
 "Those persons who have had some 
 one always to be kind to them can 
 never remotely imagine how this 
 feels. 
 
 "Sometimes in these spring days 
 when I walk miles down into the coun- 
 try to the little wet gulch of the sweet- 
 flags, I wonder why it is that this thing 
 does not make me happy. 'She is 
 wonderfully, beautifully kind/ I say to 
 myself — 'and she is the anemone lady 
 She is wondrously kind, and though 
 
314 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 she's gone, nothing can ever change 
 that/ 
 
 "But I am not happy. 
 
 "Oh, my one friend — what is the 
 matter with me? What is this feeling? 
 Why am I not happy? 
 
 "But how can you know? 
 
 "You are beautiful. 
 
 "I am a small, vile creature. 
 
 "Always I awake to this fact when I 
 think of the anemone lady. 
 
 "I am not good. 
 
 "But you are kind to me — you are 
 kind to me — you are kind to me. 
 
 "You have written me two letters. 
 
 "The anemone lady came down from 
 her high places and wrote me two let- 
 ters. 
 
 "It is said that God is somewhere. 
 It may be so. 
 
 "But God has never come down from 
 his high places to write me two letters. 
 
 "Dear — do you see? — you are the only 
 one in the world. 
 
 "Mary Mac Lane." 
 
Bprtl 12. 
 
 OH, THE dreariness, the Nothing- 
 ness! 
 
 Day after day — week after 
 week, — it is dull and gray and weary. 
 It is dull y dull, DULL! 
 
 No one loves me the least in the 
 world. 
 
 "My life is dreary — he cometh not." 
 
 I am unhappy — unhappy. 
 
 It rains. The blue sky is weeping. 
 But it is not weeping because I am un- 
 happy. 
 
 I hate the blue sky, and the rain, and 
 the wet ground, and everything. This 
 morning I walked far away over the 
 sand, and these things made me think 
 they loved me — and that I loved them. 
 But they fooled me. Everything fools 
 me. I am a fool. 
 
 No one loves me. There are people 
 here. But no one loves me — no one 
 understands — no one cares. 
 315 
 
316 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 It is I and the barrenness. It is I — 
 young and all alone. 
 
 Pitiful Heaven! — but no, Heaven is 
 not pitiful. 
 
 Heaven also has fooled me, more 
 than once. 
 
 There is something for every one 
 that I have ever known — some tender 
 thing. But what is there for me? 
 What have I to remember out of the 
 long years? 
 
 The blue sky is weeping, but not for 
 me. The rain is persistent and heavy 
 as damnation. It falls on my mind and 
 it maddens my mind. It falls on my 
 soul and it hurts my soul. — Every- 
 thing hurts my soul. — It falls on my 
 heart and it warps the wood in my 
 heart. 
 
 Of womankind and nineteen years, a 
 philosopher of the peripatetic school, a 
 thief, a genius, a liar, and a fool — and 
 unhappy, and filled with anguish and 
 hopeless despair. What is my life? 
 Oh, what is there for mel 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 317 
 
 There has always been Nothing. 
 There will always be Nothing. 
 
 There was a miserable, damnable, 
 wretched, lonely childhood. Itself has 
 passed, but the pain of it has not 
 passed. The pain of it is with me and 
 is added to the pain of now. It is pain 
 that never lets itself be forgotten. The 
 pain of the childhood was the pain of 
 Nothing. The pain of now is the pain 
 of Nothing. Oh, the pathetic bur- 
 lesque-tragedy of Nothing! 
 
 It is burlesque, but it is none the less 
 tragedy. It is tragedy that eats its 
 way inward. 
 
 It is only I and the sand and barren- 
 ness. 
 
 I have never a tender thing in my 
 life. The sand and barrenness has 
 never a grass-blade. 
 
 I want a human being to love me. I 
 have need of it. I am starving to 
 death for lack of it. 
 
 Bitterest salt tears surge upward — 
 sobs are shaking themselves out from 
 
318 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 the depths. Oh, the salt is bitter. 1 
 might lay me down and weep all day 
 and all night — and the salt would grow 
 more bitter and more bitter. 
 
 But life in its Nothingness is more 
 bitter still. 
 
 It is burlesque-tragedy that is the 
 most tragic of all. 
 
 It is an inward dying that never 
 ends. It is the bitterness of death 
 added to the bitterness of life. 
 
 What hell is there like that of one 
 weak little human being placed on the 
 earth — and left alone? 
 
 There are people who live and enjoy. 
 But my soul and I — we find life too bit- 
 ter, and too heavy to carry alone. Too 
 bitter, and too heavy. 
 
 Oh, that I and my soul might perish 
 at this moment, foreverl 
 
Hprfl 13. 
 
 1AM sitting writing out on my sand 
 and barrenness. The sky is pale 
 and faded now in the west, but a 
 few minutes ago there was the same old- 
 time, always-new miracle of roses and 
 gold, and glints and gleams of silver 
 and green, and a river in vermilions 
 and purples — and lastly the dear, the 
 beautiful: the red, red line. 
 
 There also are heavy black shadows. 
 
 I have given my heart into the keep- 
 ing of this. 
 
 And still, as always, I look at it — and 
 feel it all with thrilling passion — and 
 await the Devil's coming. 
 
 319 
 
l envoi: 
 
 October 28, 1901. 
 
 AND so there you have my Por- 
 trayal. It is the record of three 
 months of Nothingness. Those 
 three months are very like the three 
 months that preceded them, to be sure, 
 and the three that followed them — and 
 like all the months that have come and 
 gone with me, since time was. There 
 is never anything different; nothing 
 ever happens. 
 
 Now I will send my Portrayal into 
 the wise wide world. It may stop short 
 at the publisher; or it may fall still- 
 born from the press; or it may go 
 farther, indeed, and be its own undoing. 
 
 That's as may be. 
 
 I will send it. 
 
 What else is there for me, if not this 
 
 book? 
 
 320 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 32 1 
 
 And, oh, that some one may under- 
 stand it! 
 
 — I am not good. I am not virtuous. I 
 am not sympathetic. I am not gener- 
 ous. I am merely and above all a 
 creature of intense passionate feeling. 
 I feel — everything. It is my genius. 
 It burns me like fire. — 
 
 My Portrayal in its analysis and 
 egotism and bitterness will surely be of 
 interest to some. Whether to that one 
 alone who may understand it; or to 
 some who have themselves been left 
 alone; or to those three whom I, on 
 three dreary days, asked for bread, and 
 who each gave me a stone — and whom 
 I do not forgive (for that is the bitterest 
 thing of all): it may be to all of these. 
 
 But none of them, r nor any one, can 
 know the feeling made of relief and 
 pain and despair that comes over me 
 at the thought of sending all this to the 
 wise wide world. It is bits of my 
 wooden heart broken off and given 
 away. It is strings of amber beads 
 
322 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 taken from the fair neck of my soul. 
 It is shining little gold coins from out 
 of my mind's red leather purse. It is 
 my little old life-tragedy. 
 
 It means everything to me. 
 
 Do you see? — it means everything to 
 me. 
 
 It will amuse you. It will arouse 
 your interest. It will stir your curiosity. 
 Some sorts of persons will find it ridic- 
 ulous. It will puzzle you. 
 
 But am I to suppose that it will also 
 awaken compassion in cool, indifferent 
 hearts? And will the sand and barren- 
 ness look so unspeakably gray and 
 dreary to coldly critical eyes as to 
 mine? And shall my bitter little story 
 fall easily and comfortably upon undis- 
 turbed ears, and linger for an hour, and 
 be forgotten? 
 
 Will the wise wide world itself give 
 me in my outstretched hand a stone? 
 
3Butte t flDontana, 
 December 31, 1910* 
 
 I, OF womankind and eight-and-twenty 
 years, will now make a fleeting flash- 
 light portrait, in high lights and half 
 tones, of what is to me, when all's said, the 
 most fascinating thing in the world, my own 
 personality : for which, belike, the world 
 contains no parallel. 
 
 I am not, I admit, quite convinced of that 
 — for I know by experience of it that the 
 world, in ways, is very, very wide. Still, 
 contemplating myself dispassionately I know 
 that I am odd — a thing of mystery, subtlety 
 and brains. 
 
 Insomuch, therefore, I am unusual. I 
 care neither for right nor for wrong. My 
 conscience is like a rotten ribbon bound 
 lightly about the moral codes. 
 
 I am sane, broad-minded, level-headed, 
 yet prone to all the crass littlenesses and 
 narrownesses withal. 
 
 I am complex and inconsistent to the last 
 degree. 
 
 323 
 
324 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 I have somewhat remarkable gifts of 
 analysis and intuition, and of expression 
 by way of written English. 
 
 I have a sense of humor that is rarer than 
 ether, deeper-reaching than clairvoyance, 
 and infinitely more precious to me than 
 would be the sure cognizance of a rose- 
 grown Paradise after death. 
 
 I am extremely egotistic, but I contend 
 that I'm not more so than is all the world : 
 only more frankly. Yes, I am frightfully 
 but frankly egotistic. 
 
 I have a superficially kind heart — and a 
 heart that's full of the utmost abyssmal 
 folly ; a heart that follows whither its loves 
 lead, down rocky roads, through brambly 
 pastures and tangled underbrush, passing by 
 on the other side always the Gold and the 
 Worldly advantage. 
 
 I am wrapped around in a sort of compre- 
 hensive personal vanity that is more endur- 
 ing and more useful and necessary — it has 
 saved me from many a slip 'twixt the cup 
 and the lip— than any garment of righteous- 
 ness. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 325 
 
 I have no ambition of any sort what- 
 soever. The top of my desire is for a 
 measure of inward peace. For I have none 
 — none. 
 
 The sum of seven dollars is wealth to me 
 always. One hundred and fifty dollars is a 
 tantalization and an exasperation. For one 
 thousand dollars I would murder any one 
 who was not my friend, if I saw a chance 
 to do it painlessly and tidily : for I hate phy- 
 sical pain for myself or another, and I hate 
 sloppy things like bleeding flesh. 
 
 My every-day mood is made of indiffer- 
 ence, a deep joy of living, a most somber, 
 melancholy and reckless disregard of for- 
 tune, all of which are quite genuinely real. 
 
 The day's business for me always in- 
 cludes a flash of horror, a nameless terror, 
 a sort of look-in at the mysterious delirium 
 of Life, brief as the passing of the winds 
 around a house-corner, but black as a bot- 
 tomless pit. 
 
 I have the passionate-sensual gray eyes 
 of a world-weary courtesan, and the virginal 
 pink lips of a cloistered nun. 
 
326 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 I have the capable hands of a strong- 
 hearted and womanly woman, and the slim 
 wanton feet of an undisciplined girl. 
 
 I have the brain of a highway robber, and 
 the soul of a subtle child. 
 
 Life never bores me. I find always a 
 deep thrall in it — in the simplest things, and 
 in all others. But a little bit of death seems 
 to lurk in all things for me. I feel myself 
 literally wearing out against the hard sur- 
 faces of this great glittering world. My 
 life is a conscious dead march, a slow, seduc- 
 tive journey toward my grave. 
 
 C*w*U 31, WO) 
 
 After all these years, and once more back 
 in Butte, Montana, I, Mary MacLane, of 
 womankind and eight-and-twenty years, in 
 the stillness of one Saturday night, take up a 
 worn purple pen to add this afterword. For 
 the first time in years I have looked into this 
 little old book that once was so near, so vital, 
 so real to me : so near as is, at this moment, 
 the beating heart within me, so vital as the 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 327 
 
 red blood it sends pulsing through my slim 
 young body, and so real as my white ringers 
 which write this and my two gray eyes 
 which watch the pen moving upon the paper. 
 
 I am asking me if any of the things in 
 the book are real to me now. 
 
 At first they seem real only as ghosts and 
 spirits and memories are real, only as cher- 
 ished dead flowers are real — the poor, poor 
 little crumbled petals! — and as the ashes 
 of once-glowing fires are real, and the 
 traces of dried tears. But how those little 
 ghosts can live again — in the stillness of a 
 Saturday night. How real is young grief 
 and young scorn, even to look back upon. 
 How much bitterer, even, are the tears of 
 nineteen slowly and reluctantly shed again 
 at eight-and-twenty, mingled with a deep 
 and comprehensive and subtle regret. I'm 
 asking me, too, what are the loneliness and 
 solitude of the lost little Mary MacLane of 
 nineteen-two, whose pathway was but 
 scantly marked by one or two vague foot- 
 steps, compared to this solitude of me in 
 nineteen-ten with my devious path, reach- 
 
328 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 ing from Butte to New York and to Boston 
 and Chicago, crossed, re-crossed, trampled 
 upon, begrimed by the prints of a thousand 
 human feet. For every footprint I can 
 trace and recognize upon my pathway I feel 
 an added bit of loneliness. For every hu- 
 man being whose life has touched mine — 
 whose lips and whose hands have pressed 
 my two lips and my two hands — I feel in 
 this moment of clear vision, upon a Satur- 
 day night, an added solitude. For I have 
 just re-read, for the first time in years, some 
 chapters from this little old book. My life 
 then — I know it so much better now even 
 than I knew it then — was absolutely barren 
 of human beings. My life was drawn all 
 in the black and the white of its own 
 thoughts. There were no myriad shadow- 
 ings and glowings, and blues and crimsons 
 and rose-tints, reflected from the facets of 
 countless other human equations surround- 
 ing it and touching it. I have all those 
 things now. They do not make for less 
 solitude and less loneliness. They but ac- 
 centuate one's aloofness. Doubtless I am 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 329 
 
 not more aloof from all the world than is 
 each other atom in it. There are hidden 
 chasms to divide us all. But I have a realiz- 
 ing sense of my own aloofness upon a Sat- 
 urday night like this — an overwhelming 
 sense of it. It is a thing to dread, to fear, 
 to contemplate death for, that one may 
 escape it. 
 
 All of this that I now write I write in 
 complete sincerity — a more complete sincer- 
 ity, when all's said, than anything in the 
 little old book itself. There are in that one 
 or two picturesque lies. I was very young 
 then. I did not quite know that there is 
 more of thrall and witchery and enchant- 
 ment in one almost ordinary bit of truth — 
 that is truth — than can be imagined into ten 
 poetic lies. I can tell easily in a day a hun- 
 dred lies. Many days I do. Without the 
 lies I tell daily, my life as it is would totter, 
 crumble, fall like a ruined bell-tower. A 
 delicate web of a marvelous falseness wraps 
 
330 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 me round like a veil. But because more 
 lies than ordinary are my portion — so much 
 the more clearly do I see Truth. Two 
 things in me are like bits of divine fire : my 
 analytic intuition and my sense of humor. 
 If in all other ways I'm possessed of devils, 
 by the truth of those two things alone I'm 
 anon the companion of gods and angels. By 
 those two things which are real, though I 
 myself may be a liar of lies, I claim the 
 right to be, in moments like this, upon a 
 Saturday night, absolutely sincere and to 
 deal in truths alone. 
 
 The first thing I think as I re-read my 
 nineteen-year-old book is, " What a clever 
 and ridiculous and wonderful child ! " 
 
 A thousand taut-drawn cords have 
 snapped in me since I wrote that book. A 
 thousand half-formed ideals have withered 
 and faded and blown down the winds since 
 the day of the Gray Dawn, the Devil, the 
 Anemone Lady and the Red Line on the 
 sky. At nineteen I was strong, full of the 
 ardors of revolt, full of the revolts of adoles- 
 cence, and at that exquisite pregnant mo- 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 331 
 
 ment of physical and mental awakening 
 which comes but once. And I was pos- 
 sessed with what seems to me now an in- 
 comprehensible desire to be " Happy." 
 
 Oh, the treasured thoughts of youth — the 
 stuff that dreams are made of! It may be 
 — in middle life, in the dissolutions of age, 
 or in the last hours when one's grave yawns 
 — that they come again, they live again. 
 But five or six or seven or eight years after 
 they're first dreamed — they are dead, dead, 
 dead. Absolutely they are dead. 
 
 My young dream of the phantom Happi- 
 ness was real to me then as the breath upon 
 my lips, and sweeter to all my senses than 
 blooming rosemary. And now, Happiness 
 — whatever it may be — might be a pool of 
 stagnant water by a roadside for what inter- 
 est I have in it, or for what I care. 
 
 Next after that, the first difference be- 
 tween the me of now and the me of then 
 has to do with things of bone and flesh. At 
 nineteen I had a strong young body with 
 but an intermittent touch of languor upon 
 it. I used to take long walks over the bar- 
 
332 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 ren sand-dunes which surround this little 
 town, rather thinly clad, and in all weathers 
 — in cold November rainstorms and in the 
 teeth of January gales and flying snow. 
 And I thrived upon it. At eight-and- 
 twenty my slim young body is as fragile a 
 thing as ever found itself tossed and bat- 
 tered by this glittering world, preyed upon 
 and consumed by countless emotions, racked 
 by the oft-swept gamut of my nerves. 
 Wrapped heavily in furs I shrink from the 
 winter winds on street corners, and I shiver, 
 as I lean upon my window-sill, at only the 
 sight of the cold sky and the cold, beautiful 
 hills. 
 
 To myself that explains much. It has 
 always been as if the physical in me were 
 connected by live wires with the mental in 
 me. My slim young body is the half-sister 
 of my erratic brain. They mourn together, 
 they quarrel with each other, and one is calm 
 (but when the other is aalmt When the 
 light glows in one, the red flame consumes 
 the other. When false emotions play upon 
 my heart, a false vitality stimulates my body. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 333 
 
 And by that token, when those things are, 
 as by natural and visible decadence I feel 
 myself brought yet a little closer to the 
 Narrow House which somewhere awaits 
 me, wherein — who knows? — may be peace. 
 
 I daresay I am not peculiar in that. In- 
 deed I have known many, many emotion- 
 ridden young women whose minds and 
 bodies were strung like harps, with the sen- 
 sitive strings reaching from the one to the 
 other in perilous accord. But also I have 
 known a fat woman with a body like a bar- 
 rel of blubber — and a heart slowly consum- 
 ing in its own bitternesses. 
 
 Therefore it's mostly because my slim 
 young body has become fragile and quies- 
 cent to the ways of the conventional world, 
 which it never was at nineteen, that my 
 mind and my heart and my soul — for I still 
 believe that I have all of those — no longer 
 know those profound and passionate revolts 
 and protests against the long-established 
 Order of Things. At nineteen I combated 
 the universe daily with the same mad 
 young scorn which must have come into 
 
334 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 fashion when Eve was young, and is in 
 truth the epic of Youth. 
 
 Other things besides the dreams in my 
 nineteen-year-old book have changed and 
 passed away. I'm so very different a per- 
 son now! When I was writing that book 
 I had had no book published — I was an 
 obscure little girl buoyed up by a talent and 
 a keen ambition. There was nothing in the 
 world for me except the book I was writing 
 and my hopes for it. 
 
 And now, well — the book has been pub- 
 lished, and eight years have slipped away. 
 
 What a thing it was for me — what 
 changes it brought into my life, and how 
 well I recall all the events of that crucial 
 kaleidoscopic summer of Nineteen-two ! 
 The book was published in April, nineteen- 
 two, and never since that time — since the 
 showery day when came the telegram of ac- 
 ceptance from the publishers — has anything 
 been quite the same for me. My attitudes 
 toward everything were changed, perforce, 
 by the stress of a thousand new circum- 
 stances. I was yanked out of the obscurities 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 335 
 
 of my life in Butte into a none-too-friendly 
 limelight of far-reaching radiation — all by 
 way of my mooted little book of the Devil, 
 the Olive, the Tooth-Brushes and the word 
 " Damn." The notoriety which encom- 
 passed me was a bewildering thing. It 
 reached from sea to sea, from Chicago to 
 London — the yellow newspapers blazoned 
 me from Dan to Beersheba and back again. 
 My little girl's-diary drew instant blood 
 from the public-at-large, the newspapers, 
 Anthony Comstock and the vaudeville stage. 
 I had been far-seeing, marvelously so, inas- 
 much as I was quite without experience of 
 either the world or the book-market or any- 
 thing beyond my own quiet life. But I did 
 not anticipate quite the breadth and the vir- 
 ulence of the storm which my little old book 
 would raise. A talent of some brilliance 
 combined with unlimited audacity and 
 woven together in a warp and woof of per- 
 sonal confession was a thing that they all 
 fell for. It brought me an astounding no- 
 toriety and much good gold money. 
 
 By way of the good gold money I was 
 
336 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 able to leave Butte behind me and to go 
 forth. On the fifth of July, Nineteen-two, 
 alone and in a mood of mingled eagerness 
 and contempt, I went into the eastern cities. 
 I remember my absolute lack of excitement 
 or agitation as I felt myself borne rapidly 
 farther and farther from the " sand and 
 barrenness " and watched the landscape 
 changing from aridness to green " middle- 
 western " as the train rushed on. Seven 
 years rolled away, as easily and naturally 
 as a black eagle winging down the sky, be- 
 fore I came back again to this shadowy 
 Butte — one little year ago to-night. 
 
 With the eastern cities and all things 
 thereunto pertaining, I have an old, long 
 familiarity now. But in Nineteen-two they 
 were all untried ground. And they were 
 full of beckoning lights. They were col- 
 ored and perfumed and garlanded with fair, 
 sweet flowers — the lily and the rose, and 
 eke with wolfsbane and nightshade. I was 
 fain to go and gather them all. That was 
 my eagerness. 
 
 But meanwhile the deadly yellow press 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 337 
 
 of those same cities had poured a rancid 
 venom, in a plethoric stream, upon me and 
 my rash book with the utmost indiscrimi- 
 nation. If in the early weeks it hurt me like 
 caustic upon young wounds, thereafter — 
 and ever since — it raised up in me only an 
 antagonistic scorn for the irrational craven- 
 ness of it all. It attacked the delights and 
 delicacies of the book with the same thick 
 ink it used on the obvious discords, the 
 while it was unaware of the steel-bowed 
 compliment it paid the book by the per- 
 sistence of its philippics. Doubly was it un- 
 aware of the still surer compliment it paid 
 in that 'twas vituperation always. Had it 
 been praises and paeans, from the yellows: 
 alas for me! And that was my contempt. 
 
 But whatever were my lesser attitudes 
 there remained beneath it all a sweet and 
 subtle sense of triumph that I, myself, aged 
 only nineteen, had achieved the thing that 
 had wrought a so radical change upon the 
 face of all my world. I felt myself the 
 master of my fate. Not in any intoxicating 
 headlong victorious sort of way, truly, but 
 
338 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 with a cold and quiet sense of superior in- 
 ward potence which could cause heavy- 
 locked doors to open before me and iron 
 gates to give way, and could make me free 
 of the highway. I feared nothing — I rever- 
 enced nothing — I besought nothing. As, of 
 a truth, I do not to this day. But I have 
 now at least a callous quality for my pro- 
 tecting which I then entirely wanted. And 
 there's a tragic pathos about the me that I 
 look back to, standing alone at the begin- 
 ning of the hardpaved road she had opened 
 for herself, in the summer of Nineteen-two. 
 
 Well, then, I traveled the road and I paid 
 the tolls. It has been worth even the price 
 it exacted. 
 
 I encountered along the roadway what 
 has proved more wonderful than any picture 
 my lonely imagination ever conjured for me 
 out of the sunset skies above the barren 
 deserts, more wonderful even than the sud- 
 den success of my book, a thing I had be- 
 fore had no realizing sense of, namely, 
 People. I had been a solitary woman-child 
 in Butte with no other companionship than 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 339 
 
 the phantoms of my own fancy. But in 
 Chicago, Boston, New York, humanity in 
 many phases seemed to sweep and break 
 over me like the changing sea upon a float- 
 ing buoy. The readers of my book were 
 legion and most of them gave me of their 
 best. I met and mingled with and rubbed 
 up against human beings — the most excit- 
 ingly enthralling thing the world contains. 
 I have had Loves and Friendships to which 
 I have given my heart's blood by the gallon, 
 to which my worn nerves have paid their 
 last and utmost tribute of thrilled tension. 
 Oftener than not they have left me worsted, 
 frazzled, wounded, but — they were worth 
 the price. I at last felt that I, too, was a 
 human being, one with the multitudes and 
 masses. Not that I worship people — far, 
 indeed, from it. Only there's a seduction 
 for me in the personalities of my friends 
 which is like a lyrical if intensely human 
 poetry. It exhilarates and exhausts me like 
 reading aloud the Shakespeare sonnets or 
 playing upon a harp. 
 
340 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 New York, damaging as it is to every 
 attribute in me, is yet the Place of my 
 Dreams. I lived there all by myself for two 
 years. I know its vast and cruel sordid- 
 ness. There is nothing in it gentler than 
 the hard, gray cobblestones which pave the 
 down-town streets. I know its infinite pre- 
 occupation. I know the treachery of its 
 charm. But by those tokens it teaches you 
 absolutisms which someway grow precious 
 to you the more you know them — they're 
 like diamonds and emeralds and rubies. By 
 its million vanities and its billion weaknesses 
 and its vampire's ethics it hurls truth — ada- 
 mant truth — into one's teeth. Two years of 
 by no means easy living and plaisance on the 
 Isle of Manhattan, and one knows the hu- 
 man race like a book. One can distinguish 
 true things from false things. It costs you 
 your slim young body by the ounce and 
 your mentality by the cubic inch — if you're 
 made that way: but it's to know the cold 
 truths as they are. 
 
 Then, too, allow for the treachery and lo, 
 the charm, the human charm of it all. The 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 341 
 
 Cafe Martin at Twenty-sixth and Fifth, at 
 five in the afternoon of an April day, with 
 that incomparable picture of Youth, the St. 
 Gaudens Diana on the Tower hard by, op- 
 posite and overlooking one's gaiety; the 
 Spring jonquils abloom on the little tables; 
 the amber tea and the bit of lemon in the 
 thin cups; the pallid absinthe in the slender 
 glasses, the sensuous music, the throng of 
 gay-clad women with the mark of a restless 
 joie de vivre upon their brows and lips, the 
 delectable friend sitting opposite oneself: 
 there's a delight and a magic in it. And 
 one knows one's New York and does not 
 lose one's head. 
 
 Beneath all the pleasant things is the 
 ceaseless cry of the cobblestones. It is a 
 harsh sound and wherever in New York you 
 are you hear it. It is hard as steel nails 
 and it disciplines your personality and tears 
 away your illusions. 
 
 At that, and with it all, New York is full 
 of romance and poetry. The Flatiron at 
 six o'clock on a late summer evening with 
 the gold sunset lights upon its battlements— - 
 
342 
 
 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 an exquisite gray stone castle! And in it 
 and all about it, by thousands, people, no 
 more and no less wondrous than those who 
 lived and moved by the waters of Rome and 
 Babylon, before Vikings were. Even the 
 kingdom of heaven — that quaint conceit, 
 which at first thought seems a so tire- 
 some bore — must forsooth be an enchant- 
 ing and enchanted place if real people are 
 there. 
 
 My two years in New York were like a 
 chain of beads of alternate pattern and color. 
 They were of alternate luxury and hungri- 
 ness, of comparative wealth and half-vaga- 
 bondish but very real poverty, of padded 
 comfort and all-too-wearing deprivation — 
 the exigencies of fluctuating fortune. It 
 would be hard to say which I enjoyed the 
 more — now that it's all over. I tell over 
 the beads daily in the far remoteness of this 
 shadowy Butte, for New York is indeed the 
 place of my dreams. And there's a mem- 
 oried bewitchment in each of them — " my 
 rosary, my rosary." The while I count 
 them there's an echo in my brain of the 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 343 
 
 voice of the cobblestones, and in my heart 
 a certain exultation at its flintiness. 
 
 I look forward to the time when I shall 
 again be afloat, like a little catboat with but 
 one sail fending the varying winds, upon 
 that sea of treacherous charm. 
 
 I 
 
 Yes, truly, the leopard, somehow, some- 
 way, has changed her spots. 
 
 At nineteen I wrote myself down a 
 " genius " in every other page of my book. 
 At twenty-eight the word and my use of it 
 inspire in me chiefly an idle mirthfulness. 
 I think now that I don't quite know what it 
 means, and it seems an extremely uninter- 
 esting word in any case. I am so appall- 
 ingly human that I doubt if the most tran- 
 scendent " genius " could make headway in 
 me, if I had it. 
 
 At nineteen I imagined I bore many re- 
 semblances to that singular Russian woman, 
 Marie Bashkirtseff, and I even believed I 
 
344 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 outbashkirtseffed her at every point. At 
 twenty-eight I think it highly unlikely that 
 I ever had the slightest quality in common 
 with her. She was analytical, but in a neb- 
 ulous metaphysical sort of way — whilst my 
 analyses are material and almost viciously 
 detailed. My reading of the Bashkirtseff, 
 now, is that she was a patrician, a high- 
 brow, a Brahmin of the French type, with a 
 very unusual breadth and cast of mind : and 
 entirely lacking in the fascinating trivialities, 
 the iridescent romanticnesses, the pictur- 
 esque follies which chiefly go to make up 
 the sum and substance of me. Also I think 
 she must have lacked the subconscious sense 
 of humor which I quite expect will bring me 
 one day to the inner gates of paradise. 
 
 At nineteen I wrote it coldly that I stole 
 three dollars. (That, by the way, was one 
 of the quaint lies which I told in the book.) 
 Well, I daresay I might have been capable of 
 it then. But at twenty-eight — there's a 
 small vulgarness about the thieving of such 
 a sum which absolutely turns my stomach. 
 I would hold up a train, though, or a late- 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 345 
 
 homing pedestrian, if I had the nerve and 
 the verve, and if I wanted money that much. 
 But as to that, one always wants money. 
 
 At nineteen I looked forward to a Future 
 as to something wonderful and alluring and 
 replete with treasure. I placed no faith in 
 it, still there was a wealth of wavering an- 
 ticipation in the thought of it and what it 
 might bring me that made my days at times 
 opalescent ; and my nights, if I lay wakeful 
 in the dark, were filled with rainbows and 
 roses. At twenty-eight the future near 
 and far off, inspires in me the feeling that 
 is the nearest thing I know to fear. If I 
 see a vision of my future it shadows a day 
 for me. It is a vision from an underworld, 
 dark, desolate, sinister, forlorn. So it will 
 always look to me, let it bring what gifts it 
 may, for the coming nearer of the future 
 means the going farther of my youth — 
 fleeting exquisite youth. I want nothing, 
 nothing, that I must exchange for it. 
 Rather the Narrow House. 
 
 At nineteen I " wanted to be loved " — 
 poor child, poor child! At twenty-eight I 
 
346 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 look back to one resting, though she knew 
 it not, between the devil and the deep sea — 
 between the lack and the luxury of loves. 
 Take it from me, at twenty-eight, that love 
 of any kind (except the long-suffering 
 affection of one's own family) is a thing of 
 countless cross-purpose, of corroding and 
 cankering self-torture and an endless chain 
 of Jealousy — jealousy in every possible 
 form and hue : so that each love that comes 
 into one's life is like, despite its encompass- 
 ing fascinations, a wan little bit of hell. 
 
 At nineteen I found a mental and physical 
 fantastic rapture in the nibbling of the green 
 and briny olive. At twenty-eight there 
 seems to be nothing in the way of food that 
 pleasures me sufficiently to engage a so min- 
 ute analysis. Yet at this moment I could 
 write a thousand words easily upon that 
 thing of " pit-fall and of gin," the Dry Mar- 
 tini Cocktail — not twelve of them, and not 
 six of them, and not two of them: just one. 
 Pale melted gold in a cup of glass, how often 
 has it brought my shivering soul back from 
 the realm of ghosts and forebodings into the 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 347 
 
 sweet sunshine of human things I Its effect 
 upon all of me is delicately demoralizing — 
 it is the undoing of my wits. But nimporte 
 — since it marks my translation from damp 
 cellars to bright, sparkling-aired roof-tops. 
 — " The Cup that clears to-day of past Re- 
 gret and future Fears." Also at twenty- 
 eight though the first eagerness of my 
 palate is for the red meat of slain cattle, I 
 sit eating it in a slim and languorous greedi- 
 ness with my mind and imagination fast 
 asleep in limbo. But I could write three 
 pages of lambent prose upon the subject of 
 Orange Marmalade, whose bitter-sweet, 
 deep-gold translucence I have dipped up 
 upon the end of a silver spoon, and gathered 
 in with my soft pink lips and my cruel red 
 tongue, and crushed with my sharp white 
 teeth, and swallowed, till I became all of a 
 delectable surfeit with it. I used to sit in 
 the Hotel Belmont restaurant at ten o'clock 
 on a Sunday morning, at a little white table 
 in the sun, and eat a chaste and dallying 
 breakfast of Orange Marmalade. The 
 while I held little conversations with myself, 
 
348 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 and addressed me as Marie-Marmalade. It- 
 self is like sunshine — lumps of sticky sun- 
 shine, and it, too, lightly but really, betides 
 and betokens lightness of heart. 
 
 At nineteen I waited and longed for the 
 coming of a concrete Devil. (That extra- 
 ordinary Devil! How useful he was as 
 the foil-character and how plausible did he 
 render the book!) At twenty-eight, after 
 years of experience with dozens of quasi 
 and pseudo and imitation devils, my dic- 
 tum is — May my path ever be quit of the 
 breed! They themselves fancied they were 
 devils, but they were only men — all kinds, 
 from litterateurs to prize-fighters, with 
 every known brand of philosophy or lack 
 of it, and with every shade of subtlety or 
 lack of it — mostly lack of it. And they all 
 had the one crude purpose : the seducing of 
 me — what in old-fashioned novels would be 
 called " to lead me astray " (a most pre- 
 posterous phrase). The folly and the as- 
 surance of them to even think they could, 
 when the man who can really seduce even 
 the simplest maid — regarding seduction, 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 349 
 
 which it is, as a high art — is rare as the 
 night-blooming flower of the moon! 
 
 At nineteen I cherished a friend I called 
 the Anemone Lady. At twenty-eight I 
 know it for but the pallid shadow of a 
 friendship that it was. But it was a natural 
 conceit at the time. I was at the age which 
 hugs its delusions, especially the delusions 
 of its own making, and bedecks shadows 
 with its most precious gems. Her I called 
 the Anemone Lady was the closest friend I 
 had at nineteen, and I barely knew her. She 
 would be now half a stranger. For I have 
 since known real friendships — things to con- 
 jure with. My friendships are always af- 
 fairs of the heart, as are those of any one 
 who has a soul above cakes and ale, to 
 whom sentiment is real and vital. To ex- 
 change bits of one's personality for bits of 
 another personality, to sweep with one's 
 finger-tips the infinitely sensitive idealisms 
 of another human equation, to happen upon 
 and softly to open the tiny doors back of 
 which lives the spirit-guest in one's friend 
 — those things, in truth, make of friendship 
 
350 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 an Affair of the Heart. On my friendships 
 I have bestowed, always, the votive offering 
 of all that I had to give — quite all. They 
 were worth it. But — Friendship can lay 
 waste ofttimes, like the avenging gods. 
 And ofttimes the lees of Friendship are ex- 
 ceeding bitter. 
 
 At nineteen I wrote the chapter of the 
 Six Toothbrushes and I fancied I meant it 
 and all it symbolized. At twenty-eight it's 
 chiefly for that chapter that I say as I read, 
 " clever and ridiculous child ! " It is, per- 
 haps, the subtlest and the best written in the 
 book — and the foolishest and the falsest. 
 The words in it were sincere, I daresay, and 
 certainly it makes a true-to-life picture of 
 the discontented, restless girl — whose name 
 is legion in the kingdoms of the world. But 
 despite the passion of my mood there was an 
 unconscious regarding beneath it, of the en- 
 during ties of blood. At twenty-eight the 
 loyalty in me for my immediate kinfolk is 
 the one ever-abiding, ever-glowing taper on 
 the shadowed altar in my Room of Things 
 Beloved. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 351 
 
 At nineteen I inclined toward Sunsets 
 and Gray Dawns. At twenty-eight all my 
 desire is in the dusk of the day. I remem- 
 ber lingering, one nightfall, on the edge of 
 a woods in Massachusetts. The dews were 
 gathering on a crumbling stone wall which 
 lay between it and the highway. The lonely 
 cry of a whip-poor-will came from the 
 woods. There was an ancient mournful- 
 ness all about. And I had a rare moment 
 of rest and peace. I should like to go to a 
 heaven of Always Nightfall. 
 
 From drunk people; from false teeth; 
 from a fish too long dead; from the dread 
 Mood of Discontent : " Kind Devil, deliver 
 
 Also, and herein lies the crux of the mat- 
 ter — for whatever else I may be I am first 
 of all a woman and young — I was at nine- 
 teen a plain little thing with a child's rather 
 
352 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 than a girl's personality and with no femin- 
 ine arts. And now — I say it in cold blood 
 and with an assurance gained from the atti- 
 tude toward me of countless men I have 
 known — I am a comely and quite graceful 
 young woman with a penchant and a fond- 
 ness for beautiful clothes and all that that 
 signifies : the crux of the matter without a 
 doubt. 
 
 In scores of ways has the leopard 
 changed her spots. And there are some 
 spots, willy-nilly, that never change. Look- 
 ing at myself disinterestedly — I think I can 
 — I see that I am in truth an untoward char- 
 acter. Anarchism goes on within me all the 
 time. And I can see no slightest sign of 
 insanity. I am uncompromisingly sane. 
 
 So once more I take leave of myself and 
 of those who run and read, in the stillness 
 
THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 353 
 
 of a Saturday night. No telling how and 
 when I'll next take up the Worn Purple 
 Pen, but — sometime, I daresay. For be- 
 lieve me, there's a deal of scorn and inso- 
 lence in me yet that have withstood the 
 slings and arrows. And when you least ex- 
 pect it, belike — out 'twill come! 
 
 I can fancy me reading both this book 
 and this afterword when another nine years 
 have slipped away — and wondering within 
 me which is the more weird. 
 
 Another thousand experiences will have 
 alit, like a flock of a thousand blackbirds, 
 upon the field of my living and moving. 
 
 Or these three things might happen : 
 
 I might be dead. 
 
 I might be in a convent. 
 
 I might be married. 
 
 All of which I have contemplated. But 
 in my contemplating there was always this 
 doubt : 
 
 If I were dead — would I stay dead? I 
 have heard there are other worlds. 
 
 If I joined a veiled sisterhood — would I 
 stay in it ? For all on a Spring day I might 
 
354 THE STORY OF MARY MAC LANE 
 
 remember the bronze Diana on the Tower : 
 the call of Manhattan. 
 
 If I married — would I stay married? 
 Which seems the unlikeliest thing of all. 
 
 The world, all told, is rilled with things 
 of beauty. There are the silken shadows 
 of dusk which come back every evening. 
 There is the voice of Caruso which is now. 
 There are the grandeurs of the by-gone 
 poets which we have always with us : and 
 all of them as much Mine as Yours. 
 
 Upon my neck, as I sit writing, rests a 
 string of amber beads. My slim young 
 body (how I love that phrase!) is clad in a 
 little black serge princess frock of the ut- 
 most plainness and nicety of fit. And on 
 my wicked, wicked feet — my scarlet shoes! 
 — my scarlet Louis Quatorze shoes with the 
 little buckles of brass. Take those three 
 signs with you, runners and readers, and 
 know by them : if I live, we shall meet again 
 at Philippi. 
 
 e X 
 
I— I — I 
 
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