Christmas Day--and I have no news, except that I am hungry, and that I am sitting in my room with a blanket around me, and with a miserable cold in my head. * * * * * It is the agony of an unheated room, an old acquaintance of mine, that comes with each bitter winter. I live in a house full of noisy people and foul odors; and so I keep my door shut while I try to read, and so my room is like a barn. I could not accomplish anything to-day--I could not read. I felt like a little child. I wanted nothing but to hide my head on some one's shoulder and sob out all my misery. I am nothing but a forlorn child, anyway, lost in this great, cruel city. --I am not much at pathos; but it was Christmas night, and I had one kind of cold in my head, and another kind in my feet. * * * * * December 27th. I tell you that my salvation was my impatience! My salvation was that I wasted not an instant, that I fought--that I fought! And each hour that I am forced to submit--that I am forced to endure and be still--that is an hour of ruin! It was those fearful seven weeks that began it--and now I shall have to go back to that again! Oh my God, how can I bear it? What can I do? The pain of it heaps itself up in my soul--I am desperate--I will go mad! Tell me what to do! Tell me what to do! * * * * * December 28th. I had a strange adventure to-night, a long, long adventure. I was free for once in my life! Free and glorious--and delivered from earth! It happened all in a dream; I sat crouching in the corner, thinking. * * * * * I had been walking down the street during the day and had seen a flower in a window, and had been made happy for a minute, thinking of last spring. My step had grown light, and I had forgotten the street around me. But then I had heard two little girls, sitting in a doorway, whisper excitedly: “Oh, look--he's laughing!” And instantly all my soul had shrunk up, and my dream had fled, and I had hurried past and turned the corner. * * * * * Is it not a strange thing? I mused--this as I sat by the window--that deep instinct of secrecy--that cowardice! Why is it that I would die before I would let any man see the life of my soul? What are these people to me? I know them not at all, and never shall. But I crouch back--I put on a mask--yes, think of it, I even _give_ up the life of my soul, rather than that any man should see me acting differently than himself! Somehow all at once that thought took hold of me with an overwhelming power--I saw the truth as I had never seen it before in my life. I saw how we live in society; and how social convention and triviality have us in such a grasp that it never even dawns upon us that the laws it dictates are not eternal and necessary! “You must be dignified, and calm, and commonplace,” say social convention and triviality.