[Transcriber’s Note: Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and small-capital text by =equal signs=.] The STORY of MARY MACLANE [Photograph: _MARY MACLANE_] The STORY of MARY MACLANE BY HERSELF [Illustration: Publisher’s logo] CHICAGO HERBERT S. STONE AND COMPANY MCMII COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY HERBERT S. STONE & CO PUBLISHED APRIL 26, 1902 The Story of Mary MacLane Butte, Montana, January 13, 1901. I of womankind and of nineteen years, will now begin to set down as full and frank a Portrayal as I am able of myself, Mary MacLane, for whom the world contains not a parallel. I am convinced of this, for I am odd. I am distinctly original innately and in development. I have in me a quite unusual intensity of life. I can feel. I have a marvelous capacity for misery and for happiness. I am broad-minded. I am a genius. I am a philosopher of my own good peripatetic school. I care neither for right nor for wrong--my conscience is nil. My brain is a conglomeration of aggressive versatility. I have reached a truly wonderful state of miserable morbid unhappiness. I know myself, oh, very well. I have attained an egotism that is rare indeed. I have gone into the deep shadows. All this constitutes oddity. I find, therefore, that I am quite, quite odd. I have hunted for even the suggestion of a parallel among the several hundred persons that I call acquaintances. But in vain. There are people and people of varying depths and intricacies of character, but there is none to compare with me. The young ones of my own age--if I chance to give them but a glimpse of the real workings of my mind--can only stare at me in dazed stupidity, uncomprehending; and the old ones of forty and fifty--for forty and fifty are always old to nineteen--can but either stare also in stupidity, or else, their own narrowness asserting itself, smile their little devilish smile of superiority which they reserve indiscriminately for all foolish young things. The utter idiocy of forty and fifty at times! These, to be sure, are extreme instances. There are among my young acquaintances some who do not stare in stupidity, and yes, even at forty and fifty there are some who understand some phases of my complicated character, though none to comprehend it in its entirety. But, as I said, even the suggestion of a parallel is not to be found among them.