Page:I, Mary MacLane (1917).pdf/244

 To-morrow

HE clearest lights on persons are small salient personal facts and items about them and their ways of life.

To know that a woman is 'sensitive' is to have but a blurred conception of her as one easily impressed, easily hurt. But to know that she wears thick union-suitish under-clothes and uncompromising cotton stockings is to know much about her: by those tokens she is plain: she is stupid: she is smugly virtuous: she is poor: she is narrow-thoughted: she lacks imagination: she is prosaic: she has a defective sense of humor: she is catty: she is 'kind': she catches cold: she is a thoroughly good woman.

To know that a child is 'bright' is to have no definite knowledge of the child. But to know she flies into rages and bites whisk-brooms, laces and her fragile grandmother is to have a wide-beamed far-reaching spirit-light upon her.

That I am 'thoughtful' means little or anything or nothing: that I love the odor of ink, that I hate the stings of conscience, that I never lounge untidily about the house or in my room but am always 'groomed,'—those tell me to myself.

Here for my enlightening I write a garbled list of my items and facts: