But what can you expect? Have they not a right to talk?--Yes--all the world has a right to be as hideous as it can. And I have no right but to suffer and to choke in my rage. Three vile, ignorant serving-women! Serving-women--ah yes, and if they were _my_ servants! If I could pay them!--But who serves me! Of what consequence am I! * * * * * These things goad me, they are like poisoned thorns in my flesh. The infinite degradation of it all, the shame, the outrage! It has burned a brand deep into my flesh, and never while I live will it come out. Ah, you rich men! You who rule us, who own the treasures, the opportunities, the joys! You who trample the fair gardens of life like great blind beasts! Do you think it is nothing to me that the inspiration and the glory of my whole lifetime is to be trampled into nothingness for lack of what others spend upon one dress? Yes, of my whole lifetime! My whole lifetime! Give me but what another will spend upon one foolish gimcrack that he never looks at again, and I will live for a whole lifetime! And I will write such music--Bah! What am I doing? * * * * * --Sometimes when I think of these things a black shadow stalks over my heart. I hear a voice, “Fool, and do you still think that you are ever to escape from this? Do you not perceive that this sordid shame is your _lot_? Do you not perceive that you may writhe and twist, struggle and pant, toil and serve, till you foam at the lips? Who will heed you! Who will hear you! Who cares anything about you!--Who wants your Art! Who wants your work! Who wants your _life_!--Fool!” * * * * * --Of course this thing could not go on. And so of course,--stammering and writhing, as I always do when I have my nose pushed into this kind of filth--I had to speak to the landlady about it to-night.-- And of course the landlady was astonished. “Why, Mr. Stirling, can't a body talk in a body's own room?” Yes, a body can talk, but then other bodies have to move away. Now she's going to speak to her sister about it. And here I sit, writhing and trembling. Oh my God, suppose I have to move! Oh merciful Father, have pity on me--I can't bear much of this! To go tramping around this hot and horrible city, to go into some new and perhaps yet more dirty place! And oh, the agony, the shame--suppose _that_ will not do, and I have to keep on searching! Dragging this fearful burden with me! And I have only eighteen dollars left! * * * * * If I think of it any longer I shall scream with nervousness. * * * * * June 7th. And now it is all settled. A body has to talk in a body's own room, and a body's nose has to turn up with indignation as a body announces the fact. And so here I sit, waiting for the expressman to come for my trunk.