The Story of Mary MacLane/January 17
AS I have said, I want Fame. I want to write—to write such things as compel the admiring acclamations of the world at large; such things as are written but once in years, things subtly but distinctly different from the books written every day.
I can do this.
Let me but make a beginning, let me but strike the world in a vulnerable spot, and I can take it by storm. Let me but win my spurs, and then you will see me—of womankind and young—valiantly astride a charger riding down the world, with Fame following at the charger's heels, and the multitudes agape.
But oh, more than all this I want to be happy!
Fame is indeed benign and gentle and satisfying. But Happiness is something at once tender and brilliant beyond all things.
I want Fame more than I can tell.
But more than I want Fame I want Happiness. I have never been happy in my weary young life.
Think, oh, think, of being happy for a year—for a day! How brilliantly blue the sky would be; how swiftly and joyously would the green rivers run; how madly, merrily triumphant the four winds of heaven would sweep round the corners of the fair earth!
What would I not give for one day, one hour, of that charmed thing Happiness! What would I not give up?
How we eager fools tread on each other's heels, and tear 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 wait him eagerly.
I am fortunate that I am not one of those who are 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.