they are wonderful!"

--I do not believe in my soul to-day, because I have none.

* * * * *

April 25th.

Would you like to know where I am, and how I am doing all these things?
I am in a lodging-house. I have one of three hall rooms in a kind of top
half-story. There is room for me to take four steps; so it is that I "walk
up and down" when I am excited. I have tried--I have not kept count of
how many places--and this is the quietest. The landlady's husband has a
carpenter shop down-stairs, but he is always drunk and doesn't work; it has
also been providentially arranged that the daughter, who sings, is sick for
some time. Next door to me there is a man who plays the 'cello in a dance
hall until I know not what hour of the night. He keeps his 'cello at the
dance hall. Next to him is a pale woman who sits and sews all day and
waits for her drunken husband to come home. In front there is some kind of
foolish girl who leaves her door open in the hope that I'll look in at her,
and a couple of inoffensive people not worth describing.

I get up--I never know the time in the morning; and sometimes I lie without
moving for hours--thinking--thinking. Or sometimes I go out and roam around
the streets; or sit perfectly motionless, gazing at the wall. When it will
not come, I make it. I breakfast on bread and milk, and I eat bread and
milk at all hours of the day when I am hungry. For dinner I cook a piece of
meat on a little oil-stove, and for supper I eat bread and milk. The rest
of the time I am sitting on the floor by the window, writing; or perhaps
kneeling by the bed with my head buried in my arms, and thinking until the