So when I was out, and being made so curiously to feel conspicuous and
disliked, the knowledge that the only alternative was to go back to the
muffled unfriendliness at Frau Berg's did make me feel a little
forlorn. I can tell you now, because of the joy I've had since. I
don't mind any more. I'm raised up and blessed now. Indeed I feel
I've got much more by a long way than my share of good things, and with
what Kloster said hugged secretly to my heart I'm placed outside the
ordinary toiling-moiling that life means for most women who have got to
wring a living out of it without having anything special to wring with.
It's the sheerest, wonderfullest, most radiant luck that I've got this.
Won't I just work. Won't this funny frowning bedroom of mine become a
temple of happiness. I'm going to play Bach to it till it turns
beautiful.

I don't know why I always think of Bach first when I write about music.
I think of him first as naturally when I think of music as I think of
Wordsworth first when I think of poetry. I know neither of them is the
greatest, though Bach is the equal of the greatest, but they are the
ones I love best. What a world it is, my sweetest little mother! It
is so full of beauty. And then there's the hard work that makes
everything taste so good. You have to have the hard work; I've found
that out. I do think it's a splendid world,--full of glory created in
the past and lighting us up while we create still greater glory. One
has only got to shut out the parts of the present one doesn't like, to
see this all clear and feel so happy. I shut myself up in this
bedroom, this ugly dingy bedroom with its silly heavy trappings, and
get out my violin, and instantly it becomes a place of light, a place
full of sound,--shivering with light and sound, the light and sound of
the beautiful gracious things great men felt and thought long ago. Who
cares then about Frau Berg's boarders not speaking to one, and the