_God_, where are you! I am crushed, wounded, stunned--and, oh--I am alone! April 10. I have a sense of humor that partakes of the divine in life--for there are things even in this chaotic irony that are divine. My genius is not divine. My patheticness is not divine. My philosophy is not divine, nor my originality, nor my audacity of thought. These are peculiarly of the earth. But my sense of humor-- It is humor that is far too deep to admit of laughter. It is humor that makes my heart melt with a high, unequaled sense of pleasure and ripple down through my body like old yellow wine. A rare tone in a person’s voice, a densely wrathful expression in a pair of slate-colored eyes, a fine, fine shade of comparison and contrast between a word in a conversation and an angleworm pattern in a calico dressing-jacket--these are things that make me conscious of divine emotion. One day last summer an Italian peddler-woman stopped at the back door and rested herself. I stood in the doorway, and the peddler-woman and I talked. She had a dirty white handkerchief tied over her head--as all Italian peddler-women do--and she had a telescope valise filled with garters, and hairpins, and soap, and combs, and pencils, and china buttons on blue cards, and bean-shooters, and tacks, and dream-books, and mouth-organs, and green glass beads, and jews-harps. There is something fascinating about a peddler-woman’s telescope valise. This peddler-woman wore a black satine wrapper and an ancient cape. She said that she would like to stop and rest a while, and I told her she might. I had always wanted to talk to a peddler-woman, and my mother never would allow one in the house. “Is it nice to be a peddler?” I asked her. “It ain’t bad,” replied the peddler-woman. “Do you make a great deal of money?” I next inquired. “Sometime I do, and sometime I don’t,” said the woman. She spoke with an accent that, while it sounded Italian, still showed unmistakably that she had lived in Butte. “Well, do you make just enough to live on, or have you saved some money?” I asked. “I got four hundred dollar in the bank,” she replied. “I been peddlin’ eight year.” “Eight years of tramping around in all kinds of weather,” I said. “Your philosophy must be peripatetic, too. Haven’t you ever had rheumatism in your knees?” “I got rheumatism in every joint in my body,” said the woman. “I have to lay off, sometime.” “Have you a husband?” I wished to know. “I had a man--oh, yes,” said the peddler-woman. “And where is he?” “Back home--in Italy.” “Why doesn’t he come out here and work for you?” I asked. “Yes, w’y don’t he?” said the woman. “Dat-a man, he’s dem lucky w’en he can get enough to eat--he is.” “Why don’t you send him some money to pay his way out, since you’ve saved so much?” I inquired.