This is a hard thing to write about. Of all things it is the most liable to be misunderstood. You will probably misunderstand it, for I have not succeeded in giving the right idea of it. I aimed at it and missed it. It eluded me completely.
You must take the idea as I have just now presented it for what it may be worth. This is as near as I can come to it. But it is something infinitely finer and rarer.
It is a difficult task to show to others a thing which, though I feel and recognize it thoroughly, I have not yet analyzed for myself.
But this is a complete Portrayal of me—as I await the Devil’s coming—and I must tell everything—everything.
[February 13.]
SO THEN, yes. As I have said, I find that I am quite, quite odd. My various acquaintances say that I am funny. They say, “Oh, it’s that May MacLane, Dolly’s younger sister. She’s funny.” But I call it oddity. I bear the hall-mark of oddity.
There was a time, a year or two since, when I was an exceedingly sensitive little fool—sensitive in that it used to strike very deep when my young acquaintances would call me funny and find in me a vent for their distinctly unfriendly ridicule. My years in the high school were not years of joy. Two years ago I had not yet risen above these things. I was a sensitive little fool.
But that sensitiveness, I rejoice to say, has gone from me. The opinion of these young people, or of these old people, is now a thing that is quite unable to affect me.
The more I see of conventionality, it seems, the more I am odd.