Page:I, Mary MacLane (1917).pdf/213

 menacing look.

I have quick intelligence.

Josephina is markedly stupid.

I live in a quiet clean bungalow.

Josephina lives in an unusually filthy unrestful little house.

I own two dresses whose personnel alters at intervals.

Josephina owns one unchanging dress, septic, maculate and repellent.

I have a sense of humor vivid and intriguing to myself.

Josephina has no more sense of humor than a flatiron.

I bathe foamily icily each morning.

Josephina would seem never to have had a bath. She cleans windows and floors and rugs for thirty-five cents an hour. She would regard it as a fantastic waste of time and soap to clean herself for nothing.

I own in a still flawed life one phase which is an endless treasure of beauty and power and charm and light: my love for John Keats.

The Finn woman owns about the same thing in a life which may be more still and flawed than mine: her love for strong drink.

There begins a curious line of similitude between us.

I feel oddly joyous and light of heart on a solitary veranda corner with the John-Keats poetry book