I dined at the Medill McCormick’s. A big party at small tables in several rooms. I sat next to Mr. Richard Washburn Child on one side. He is talked of as a possible United States Ambassador to Japan.[7] He looks very young. He asked me why I was “here,” which I took to mean America, not Washington, and I found myself telling him everything that I haven’t told even some of my best friends. He seemed to understand my feeling about the adventure of life. Some people never awaken, others start with their eyes wide open. I began late, I feel as if I had only waked up when I got to Russia. Perhaps I was slowly stirring ever since I began to work five years ago. But those years were too laden with overwork and anxiety as to the future, and the effort of attaining. I was conscious then of belonging to a world, but not to the world. But now I know the world is all mine for the discovering. I belong to every bit of it, and it all belongs to me. What care I where I live, so long as I find work, and sunshine, and from out the crowd one hand extended towards me in friendship?

When I got to Russia, I realized a great big new country that was thinking and working in a way I had never dreamt of. It was a tremendous awakening. And now, what hazard has led me back to my mother’s country? I find it is another great big new world, working and thinking in just as new and different a way, and as differently as Russia. But the size of these countries is what appeals to me. In Russia I could have (but I didn’t) taken a train for days, and travelled to other parts and been still in Russia. Here I have not, but I will—go west, go south, go north. For days and days I shall be able to go. From a commercial provincial town out into the land of endless flowers where there are no seasons, and the land gives out two crops a year.

I have a great desire to see more, and more, and yet more. To see it all, in fact. But I am tired (already) of civilization, of the luxury of baths and telephones, and the overabundance of food. I am tired of people, even of people who are kind, and people who are brilliant. I want to take Dick and get away somewhere into the wilds. Whenever I ask if there is some village in the hills; with an Inn, as for instance, in Cornwall, or in Italy, I am recommended a primitive wood, where there is “a colony.” I want to get away from the colony! Can’t I live for a while, as at Lerici, seeing only peasant people? Even outside Rome, within half an hour by rail, I found myself in Arcadian groves, where it seemed that only Pan had lived. I am told that here it is impossible, however remotely one travel to get away from the telegraph, telephone and motor cars. From England I had visualized this country, as consisting of New York, Washington and Chicago and Boston, and for the rest, that one mounted a horse, and rode out over prairies towards mountains. And I mean to find it is so. The land of the Red Indian must still contain some primitive unreclaimed spots. Anyway, there it all is, and mine if I choose to go and look for it. The world is a great wonder-place with wonder-people in it. I am drunk with love of it, love of the beauty and the capriciousness, and the unexpectedness of it. I want to see it all—Mexico, China, Egypt, Greece and back again to Russia, working all the way, hunting heads, and reading people and never arriving at any understanding, but loving it always as one loves the person who is big, generous, elusive, full of moods, and never to be understood.

Sometimes, though, I wish I could learn something from it all. I wish I could understand some of the problems, and have a few convictions. As I sit here and ruminate in front of my open window I think of many things, in a kaleidoscopic way. It is the first time I have had leisure to think since I landed in America. I have heard so many varied opinions over here, and I just begin to wish I knew for example: whether the Soviet form of government is right, or even partly right, or on the right trail, and whether the majority of the world which condemns it, is wrong, or frightened, or sensible.

I wish I knew if human nature on the whole is very grand and fine, or whether it is chiefly murky and ugly and very selfish.

I wish I knew if there is such a thing as love, apart from maternal love, or whether it is all only passion.

I wish I could make up my mind as to whether civilization is a very valuable evolution, or a very great curse.

I wish I could decide whether I want to live in America, France or Russia, and whether I should like my immediate headquarters to be in New York or Washington.

I wish I knew how much the people who are nice to me really like me, or how much I am a curiosity.

I wish I knew whether I am happier than anyone else or happy at all.