The Story of Mary MacLane | Page 5

each other's hair, and scratch each other's faces, in our furious gallop after Happiness. For some it is embodied in Fame, for some in Money, for some in Power, for some in Virtue--and for me in something very much like love.
None of the other fools desires Happiness as I desire it. For one single hour of Happiness I would give up at once these things: Fame, and Money, and Power, and Virtue, and Honor, and Righteousness, and Truth, and Logic, and Philosophy, and Genius. The while I would say, What a little, little price to pay for dear Happiness.
I am ready and waiting to give all that I have to the Devil in exchange for Happiness. I have been tortured so long with the dull, dull misery of Nothingness--all my nineteen years. I want to be happy--oh, I want to be happy -
The Devil has not yet come. But I know that he usually comes, and I await him eagerly.
I am fortunate that I am not one of those burdened with an innate sense of virtue and honor which must come always before Happiness. They are but few who find their Happiness in their Virtue. The rest of them must be content to see it walk away. But with me virtue and honor are nothing.
I long unspeakably for Happiness.
And so I await the Devil's coming.

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January 18
And meanwhile--as I wait--my mind occupies itself with its own good odd philosophy, so that even the Nothingness becomes almost endurable.
The Devil has given me some good things--for I find that the Devil owns and rules the earth and all that therein is. He has given me, among other things--my admirable young woman's body, which I enjoy thoroughly and of which I am passionately fond.
A spasm of pleasure seizes me when I think in some acute moment of the buoyant health and vitality of this fine young body that is feminine in every fiber.
You may gaze at and admire the picture in the front of this book.It is the picture of a genius--a genius with a good strong young-woman's body,--and inside the pictured body is a liver, a MacLane liver, of admirable perfectness.
Other young women and older women and men of all ages have good bodies also, I doubt not--though the masculine body is merely flesh, it seems, flesh and bones and nothing else. But few recognize the value of their bodies; few have grasped the possibilities, the artistic graceful perfection, the poetry of human flesh in its health. Few have even sense enough indeed to keep their flesh in health, or to know what health is until they have ruined some vital organ, and so banished it forever.
I have not ruined any of my vital organs, and I appreciate what health is. I have grasped the art, the poetry of my fine feminine body.
- This at the age of nineteen is a triumph for me. -
Sometime in the midst of the brightness of an October I have walked for miles in the still high air under the blue of the sky. The brightness of the day and the blue of the sky and the incomparable high air have entered into my veins and flowed with my red blood. They have penetrated into every remote nerve-center and into the marrow of my bones.
At such a time this young body glows with life.
My red blood flows swiftly and joyously--in the midst of thebrightness of October.
My sound sensitive liver rests gently with its thin yellow bile in sweet content.
My calm beautiful stomach silently sings as I walk a song of peace, the while it hugs within itself the chyme that was my lunch.
My lungs, saturated with mountain ozone and the perfume of the pines, expand in continuous ecstasy.
My heart beats like the music of Schumann, in easy graceful rhythm with an undertone of power.
My very intestine even basks contentedly in its place like a snake in the hot dust, vibrating with conscious life.
My strong and sensitive nerves are reeking and swimming in sensuality like drunken little Bacchantes, gay and garlanded in mad revelling.
The entire wonderful graceful mechanism of my woman's-body has fallen at the time--like the wonderful graceful mechanism of my woman's-mind--under the enchanting spell of a day in October.
"It is good," I think to myself, "oh, it is good to be alive! It is wondrously good to be a woman young in the fullness of nineteen springs. It is unutterably lovely to be a healthy young animal living on this charmed earth."
After I have walked for several hours I reach a region where the sulphur smoke has not penetrated, and I sit on the ground with drawn-up knees and rest as the shadows lengthen. The shadows lengthen early in October.
Presently I lie flat on my back and stretch my lithe slimness to its utmost