IN THE RED DEEPS

The more or less common-place incidents of the outer world are well enough for those poor unfortunates who m nature has given no inner one. As for me who have lived in my short life all the intensest pains and pleasures that human nature is capable of experiencing, I disdain to waste even a passing pen-stroke on such paltry details.

My mind from childhood was one which constantly fed on itself. I would seize every possible excuse to be alone so that I might dream, might lose myself in intense emotions by the side of which all else paled into insignificance. How I loved even the cold piercing air that made my flesh quiver and tingle, and Then the delight of crouching down behind some shelter to feel the reactionary returning warmth and then once more to rise and be chilled and shrink and tingle with the joy of my anguish pain. When I had a hurt I would press it till the agony of the pain thrilled me with an exquisite delight.

As in the physical so in the mental world did I revel in the joy of suffering. I was never content to rest with the cruelties that Richardss the Thirds and Gessler s could invent, but while dreaming over their tortures, I would invent others even worse and enjoy inflicting them. Thus I came to feel keenly every possible delight to be found in the sufferings of others.

Shortly after this period there came unconsciously a complete reaction . and now I i instead of enjoying the pains of others I came to have a horror of being possibly forced to inflict them. With this came a terrible and haunting fear of loss of self-control and consequent indulgence in those enormities I once dreamed of with so much delight. This fear of madness reached its climax one night when I went to see Mansfield play Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde. My own fear was so completely expressed and so terribly portrayed that I fled left at the end of the second act with the fearful story burned into my brain. No pen can describe the torments I endured during the nights that followed. How sleepless night after night passed sleepless by I tossed until just at dawn from sheer exhaustion my brain would cease its struggle with wild fears. How listening to my sister’s quiet breathing fearful thoughts would crowd upon me dreadful possibilities of dark deeds, until, distracted I would try to cool my burning head, would I would by knocking it against the wall in desperation anything to silence that dreadful iteration of horrible thoughts. How often have I tried to pray to heaven whose ministrations I had alas! no faith in so even here I found no peace.

One night I was alone down-stairs reading a practice . I loved to read in spite of the fact that often when thus engaged there came suddenly into my consciousness without my being able to explain why a suddenfear of something unknown , intangible, that seemed to be around me everywhere. This night it was the Cenci of Shelley that I was reading. I went on and on until I came to pa the passage where Beatrice having just left her father returns to her mother and brother fear, horror, almost madness in her face; I dropped the book , for before my eyes , shrinking toward the wall was the veritable Beatrice in her flowing white robes. This was truly the most horrid of the deeps. Oh her beautiful face! I can never lose sight of it as I saw it that night and none can paint the look with which she gazed one me. Gazed, no gazes on me now. Enough enough! I cannot tell you more. I fear it, I fear it still.