From pleasant old ladies who tell a great many uninteresting, obvious lies; from men with watch-chains draped across their middles; from some paintings of the old masters which I am unable to appreciate; from side-saddles: Kind Devil, deliver me. From the kind of man who sings, “Oh, Promise Me!”--who sings _at_ it; from constipated dressmakers; from people who don’t wash their hair often enough: Kind Devil, deliver me. From a servant girl with false teeth; from persons who make a regular practice of rubbing oily mixtures into their faces; from a bed that sinks in the middle: Kind Devil, deliver me. And so on and on and on. And in each petition I am deeply sincere. But, kind Devil, only bring me Happiness and I will more than willingly be annoyed by all these things. Happiness for two days, kind Devil, and then, if you will, languishing widowers, lisle-thread stockings--anything, for the rest of my life. And hurry, kind Devil, pray--for I am weary. March 9. It is astonishing to me how very many contemptible, petty vanities are lodged in the crevices of my genius. My genius itself is one grand good vanity--but it is not contemptible. And even those little vanities--though they are contemptible, I do not hold them in contempt by any means. I smile involuntarily at their absurdness sometimes, but I know well that they have their function. They are peculiarly of my mind, my humanness, and they are useful therein. When this mind stretches out its hand for things and finds only wilderness and Nothingness all about it, and draws the hand back empty, then it can only turn back--like my soul--to itself. And it finds these innumerable little vanities to quiet it and help it. My soul has no vanity, and it has nothing, nothing to quiet it. My soul is wearing itself out, eating itself away. These vanities are a miserable substitute for the rose-colored treasures that it sees a great way off and even imagines in its folly that it may have, if it continues to reach after them. Yet the vanities are something. They prevent my erratic, analytical mind from finding a great Nothing when it turns back upon itself. If I were not so unceasingly engrossed with my sense of misery and loneliness my mind would produce beautiful, wonderful logic. I am a genius--a genius--a genius. Even after all this you may not realize that I am a genius. It is a hard thing to show. But, for myself, I feel it. It is enough for me that I feel it. I am not a genius because I am foreign to everything in the world, nor because I am intense, nor because I suffer. One may be all of these and yet not have this marvelous perceptive sense. My genius is because of nothing. It was born in me as germs of evil were born in me. And mine is a genius that has been given to no one else. The genius itself enables me to be thoroughly convinced of this. It is hopeless, never-ending loneliness!