--But I am _not_ dignified--I am _not_ calm!--I am _not_ commonplace! Well, then, you must _seem_ so. You must walk quietly; you must gaze around indifferently; you must keep a vacant face; you must try to look innocent of a thought. If you can't manage that--if you really want to think--why then you must flee away to the woods, where you are sure no one will come upon you and find you out. And if you can't do that--why then there's nothing for you to do but give up thinking, give up living, become like everybody else! * * * * * That idea shook me all of a sudden, it made me quite wild--it made me dig my nails into my hands. It was the truth--I saw that--it was the truth! Here I was, a miserable, pining, starving wretch--and for no reason in the world but that I was a coward, but that I was a coward--a blind fool! Because I had not let the empty-headed and sodden, the placid and smug, the fat and greasy citizens of our great metropolis, tell _me_--the servant of the muses--how I ought to look, how I ought to act, what I ought to be! The very breath of my body is prayer--is effort--is vision; to dwell in my own light, to behold my own soul, to know my own truth--that is my one business in this world! To assert my own force--to be what I like--that is my duty, that is my hope, my one hope in all the world! And I do not, I can not, I dare not do it! I am sick and starved and dying, and I crouch in corners while I pray for help, and if a gleam of sunshine comes from a flower to me, it goes because a child sees me laughing! I sat burning with the rage of that. What am I to do? I cried. How is it to be changed? Shall I live my life in spite of all men? And then I heard one of my devils--my commonplace devil--say, “But people would think you were crazy!” “What do I care what people think?” I burst out. Then came another of my devils--my facetious devil--and he made me laugh. “By all means,” said he, “let us get together a few eager poets, and establish a Society for the Propagation of Lunacy. Let us break down these conventions and confound the eyes of the fat and greasy citizens, and win freedom for our souls at any price. Let us wear strange clothes, and recite our poetry upon the streets. Let us--”