And so, bite by bite, the olive enters into my body and soul. Each bite brings with it a recurring wave of sensation and charm. No. We will not dispute with the brilliant mind that declared life a tragedy to those who feel. We will let that stand. However, there are parts of the tragedy that are not tragic. There are parts that admit of a turning aside. As the years pass, one after another, I shall continue to eat. And as I eat I shall have my quiet, my brief period of aberration. This is the art of Eating. I have acquired it by means of self-examination, analyzing--analyzing-- analyzing. Truly my genius is analytical. And it enables me to endure--if also to feel bitterly--the heavy, heavy weight of life. What a worm of misery I should be were it not for these bursts of philosophy, these turnings aside! If it please the Devil, one day I may have Happiness. That will be all-sufficient. I shall then analyze no more. I shall be a different being. But meanwhile I shall eat. When the last of the olive vanishes into the stomach, when it is there reduced to animated chyme, when I play with the olive-seed in my fingers, when I lean back in my chair and straighten out my spinal column,--oh, then do you not envy me, you fine, brave world, who are not a philosopher, who have not discovered the art of the small things, who have not conscious chyme in your stomach, who have not acquired the art of Good Eating! January 29. As I read over now and then what I have written of my Portrayal I have alternate periods of hope and despair. At times I think I am succeeding admirably--and again, what I have written compared to what I have felt seems vapid and tame. Who has not felt the futility of words when one would express feelings? I take this hope and despair as another mark of genius. Genius, apart from natural sensitiveness, is prone equally to unreasoning joy and to bitterest morbidness. I am more than fond of writing, though I have hours when I can not write any more than I could paint a picture, or play Wagner as it should be played. I think my style of writing has a wonderful intensity in it, and it is admirably suited to the creature it portrays. What sort of Portrayal of myself would I produce if I wrote with the long, elaborate periods of Henry James, or with the pleasant, ladylike phrasing of Howells? It would be rather like a little tin phonograph trolling out flowery poetry at breakneck speed, or like a deep-toned church organ pouring forth “Goo-Goo Eyes” with ponderous feeling. When I read a book I study it carefully to find whether the author _knows things_, and whether I could, with the same subject, write a better one myself. The latter question I usually decide in the affirmative.