She has always been incapable of learning from benefit or disaster. If a man cheat her she will remember that man with a violence that I have seldom seen equaled but so far as that could have an influence on her judgment of the next man or woman, she might be living in Eden. And indeed she is, an impoverished, ravished Eden but one indestructible as the imagination itself. Whatever is before her is sufficient to itself and so to be valued. Her meat though more delicate in fiber is of a kind with that of Villon and La Grosse Margot: Vente, gresle, gelle, j’ai mon pain cuit! Carl Sandburg sings a negro cotton picker’s song of the bol weevil. Verse after verse tells what they would do to the insect. They propose to place it in the sand, in hot ashes, in the river, and other unlikely places but the bol weevil’s refrain is always: “That’ll be ma HOME! That’ll be ma HOOME!” My mother is given over to frequent periods of great depression being as I believe by nature the most light-hearted thing in the world. But there comes a grotesque turn to her talk, a macabre anecdote concerning some dream, a passionate statement about death, which elevates her mood without marring it, sometimes in a most startling way. Looking out at our parlor window one day I said to her: “We see all the shows from here, don’t we, all the weddings and funerals?” (They had been preparing a funeral across the street, the undertaker was just putting on his overcoat.) She replied: “Funny profession that, burying the dead people. I should think they wouldn’t have any delusions of life left.” W.—Oh yes, it’s merely a profession. M.—Hm. And how they study it! They say sometimes people look terrible and they come and make them look fine. They push things into their mouths! (Realistic gesture) W.—Mama! M.—Yes, when they haven’t any teeth. By some such dark turn at the end she raises her story out of the commonplace: “Look at that chair, look at it! (The plasterers had just left) If Mrs. J. or Mrs. D. saw that they would have a fit.” W.—Call them in, maybe it will kill them. M.—But they’re not near as bad as that woman, you know, her husband was in the chorus,—has a little daughter Helen. Mrs. B. yes. She once wanted to take rooms here. I didn’t want her. They told me: ‘Mrs. Williams, I heard you’re going to have Mrs. B. _She_ is particular.’ She said so herself. Oh no! Once she burnt all her face painting under the sink. Thus seeing the thing itself without forethought or afterthought but with great intensity of perception my mother loses her bearings or associates with some disreputable person or translates a dark mood. She is a creature of great imagination. I might say this is her sole remaining quality. She is a despoiled, moulted castaway but by this power she still breaks life between her fingers. * * * * *