Oh, it is funny--yes, funny!--Let us laugh at it. The dance-hall musician has brought home his 'cello! I heard him come bumping up the stairs with it--God damn his soul! And there he sits, sawing away at some loathsome jig tunes! And he has two friends in there--I listen to their wit between the tunes. Here I sit, like a wild beast pent in a cage. I tell you I can bear any work in the world, but I can not bear things such as this. That I, who am seeking a new faith for men--who am writing, or trying to write, what will mean new life to millions--should have my soul ripped into pieces by such loathsome, insulting indignities! Oh, laugh!--but _I_ can't laugh--I sit here foaming at the lips, and crying! And suppose he's lost his position, and does this every day! Now every day I must lay aside what I am doing and sit and shudder when I hear him coming up the steps--and wait for him to begin this! I tell you, I demand to be free--I _demand_ it! I want nothing in this world but to be let alone. I don't want anybody to wait on me.--_I don't want anything from this hellish world but to be let alone!_ It is pouring rain outside, and my overcoat is thin; but I must go out and pace the streets and wait until a filthy Dutchman gets through scraping ragtime on a 'cello. All day wasted! All day! Does it not seem that these things persecute you by system? I came in, cold and wet, and got into bed, and then he began again! And the friends came back and they had beer, and more music. And I had to get up and put on the wet clothes once more. * * * * * May 2d. I was crouching out on one of the docks last night. I had no place else to go. I can think anywhere, if it is quiet. A wonderful thing is the night. I bless Thee for the night, oh “_süsse, heilige Natur_”! It was a voice in my soul, as clear as could be. --She can not bear too long the sight of men, sweet, holy Nature: the swarming hives--the millions of tiny creatures, each drunk and blind with his own selfishness; and so she lays her great hand upon it all, and hides it out of her sight. Once it was all silent, and formless as the desert; soon it shall all be silent and formless again; and meanwhile--the night, the night! * * * * * Oh, I hunger for the desert! I do not care for beauty--I have no time for beauty, I want the earth stern and forbidding. Give me some place where no one else would want to go--an iron crag where the oceans beat--a mountain-top where the lightning splinters on the rocks. * * * * *