Page:Terminations (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1895).djvu/55

Rh kindly allows me to transcribe from my letters a few of the passages in which that hateful sojourn is candidly commemorated.

 

 IX

" I ought to enjoy the joke of what's going on here," I wrote, "but somehow it doesn't amuse me. Pessimism on the contrary possesses me and cynicism solicits. I positively feel my own flesh sore from the brass nails in Neil Paraday's social harness. The house is full of people who like him, as they mention, awfully, and with whom his talent for talking nonsense has prodigious success. I delight in his nonsense myself; why is it therefore that I grudge these happy folk their artless satisfaction? Mystery of the human heart—abyss of the critical spirit! Mrs. Wimbush thinks she can answer that question, and, as my want of gayety has at last worn out her patience, she has given me a glimpse of her shrewd guess. I am made restless by the selfishness of the insincere friend—I want to monopolize Paraday in order that he may push me on. To be intimate with him is a feather in my cap; it gives me an importance that I couldn't naturally pretend to, and I seek to deprive him of social refreshment because I fear that meeting more disinterested people may enlighten him as to my real motive. All the 