And sometimes I see a woman in a fearful state of deshabille walk across the vacant lot next to this. “A plague on me,” I say then to myself, “if I ever become middle-aged and if my entire being seems to tip up in the front, and if I go about with no stays so that when I tie an apron around my waist my upper fatness hangs over the band like a natural blouse.” And so--I could go on writing all night these seemingly trivial but really significant details relating to the outer genius. But these will answer. These to any one who knows things will be a revelation. Sometimes you know things, fine brave world. You must know likewise that though I do ordinary things, when _I_ do them they cease to be ordinary. I make fudge--and a sweet girl makes fudge, but there are ways and ways of doing things. This entire affair of the fudge is one of my uniquest points. No sweet girl makes fudge and eats it, as I make fudge and eat it. So it is. But, oh--who is to understand all this? Who will understand any of this Portrayal? My unhappy soul has delved in shadows far, far beyond and below. March 23. My philosophy, I find after very little analysis, approaches precariously near to sensualism. It is wonderful how many sides there can be to just one character. Nature, with all those suns, and all those hilltops, and all those rivers, and all those stars, is inscrutable--intangible--maddening. It affects one with unutterable joy and anguish, but no one can ever begin to understand what it means. Human nature is yet more inscrutable--and nothing appears on the surface. One can have no idea of the things buried in the minds of one’s acquaintances. And mostly they are fools and have no idea themselves of what germs are in themselves--of what they are capable. And in most minds it is true the dormant devils never awaken and never are known. It is another sign of my analytical genius, that I, aged nineteen, recognize the devils in my character. I have not the slightest wish, since things are as they are with me, to rid myself of them. There is in me much more of evil than of good. Genius like mine must needs have with it manifold bad. “I have in me the germ of every crime.” I have no desire to destroy these germs. I should be glad indeed to have them develop into a ravaging disease. Something in this dreadful confusion would then give way. My wooden heart and my soul would cry out in the darkness less heavily, less bitterly. They want something--they know not what. I give them poison. They snatch it and eat it hungrily. Then they are not so hungry. They become quieter. The ravaging disease soothes them to sleep--it descends on them like rain in the autumn.