Some of these days I hope to live in a beautiful world, where a man may speak to a pretty girl on the street. Badness is its own punishment, let the bad world observe. I would rather look at a beautiful woman than do anything else I know of in this world, except listen to music. * * * * * May 18th. I often think how I shall spend my money after The Captive is done. I shall take a band of chosen youths, seekers and worshipers, and we shall build a house on a mountain-top and worship the Lord in the beauty of music! I shall have to begin at the beginning--I have never had any one to teach me music. But oh, if I did know!--And if I ever got hold of an orchestra--_how_ I would make it go! And in the middle of it the astonished orchestra would see the conductor take wings unto himself and fly off through the roof. A book that I mean to write some day will be called The Pleasures of Music, and it will sing the joys of being clean and strong, of cold water and the early morning and a free heart. It will show how all the unhappiness of men is that they live in the body and in self, and how the world is to be saved through music, which is not of the body, nor of self--which is free and infinite, swift as the winds, vast as the oceans, endless as time, and happy as whole meadows of flowers! The more who come to partake of it, the better it is; for generous is “Frau Musika,” her heart is made wholly of love. --And when I have shown all these things, Frau Musika, I shall tell of the golden lands that I have visited upon the wings of thy spirit!-- What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain! What fields or waves or mountains, What shapes of sky or plain! What love of thine own kind, what ignorance of pain! * * * * * May 20th. I live among the poor people and that keeps me humble. There is not much chance for freedom, I hear them say, there are not many who can dwell in the forests. Prove your right to it--prove what you can do--the law is stern. I am not afraid of the challenge; I will prove what I can do. But I see one here and there with whom the law is not so strict, I think. * * * * * I met a merchant the other night. I dreamed of him. He said: “I buy such goods as men need; I buy them as cheaply as I can, since life is grim. I sell them as cheaply as I can, since men are poor and suffering. I make of profit what I need to live humbly. I am not of the world's seekers; I am of the finders.” * * * * * I met also a guileless fool. We passed a great mansion. “I should like to know the man who lives there,” said the fool. “Should you?” said I. “Is he a hero?” asked the fool. “No,” said I. “Is he a poet?” asked the fool. “No,” said I. “Must he not be very beautiful,” said the fool, “that men judge him worthy of so much beauty?” * * * * * May 21st.