Out of all the various types of human beings I think I hate the class called poets most. I used to love them and believe in them; but I know them now to be mere weavers of lies,--builders of cloud castles in which no throbbing life can breathe, no weary heart find rest. Love is their chief motive,--they either idealize or degrade it,--and of the love we women long for most, they have no conception. They can only sing of brute passion or ethical impossibilities,--of the mutual great sympathy, the ungrudging patient tenderness that should make love lovely, they have no sweet things to say. Between their strained æstheticism and unbridled sensualism, my spirit has been stretched on the rack and broken on the wheel, ... I should think many a wretched woman wrecked among love's disillusions must curse them as I do! * * * * * I am ready now, I think. There is nothing more to say. I offer no excuses for myself. I am as I was made,--a proud and rebellious woman, self-willed and sensual, seeing no fault in free love, and no crime in conjugal infidelity,--and if I am vicious, I can honestly declare that my vices have been encouraged and fostered in me by most of the literary teachers of my time. I married, as most women of my set marry, merely for money,--I loved, as most women of my set love, for mere bodily attraction,--I die, as most women of my set will die, either naturally or self-slain, in utter atheism, rejoicing that there is no God and no Hereafter! * * * * *