ostmen always
hurry out with no evidence of a desire to loiter.

10 P.M.--As I write this I hear no sound but the deep murmur of the
distant traffic and the low sighing of the wind. The two sounds melt
into one another. Now and again a cat raises its shrill, uncanny cry
upon the darkness. The cats are always there under my windows when the
darkness falls. The wind is dropping into the funnel with a noise like
the sudden sweeping of immense distant wings. It is a dreary night. I
feel lost and forgotten.

* * * * *

Nov. 3.--From my windows I can see arrivals. When anyone comes to the
door I can just see the hat and shoulders and the hand on the bell. Only
two fellows have been to see me since I came here two months ago. Both
of them I saw from the window before they came up, and heard their
voices asking if I was in. Neither of them ever came back.

I have finished the ponderous article. On reading it through, however, I
was dissatisfied with it, and drew my pencil through almost every page.
There were strange expressions and ideas in it that I could not explain,
and viewed with amazement, not to say alarm. They did not sound like my
_very own_, and I could not remember having written them. Can it be that
my memory is beginning to be affected?

My pens are never to be found. That stupid old woman puts them in a
different place each day. I must give her due credit for finding so many
new hiding places; such ingenuity is wonderful. I have told her
repeatedly, but she always says, "I'll speak to Emily, sir." Emily
always says, "I'll tell Mrs. Monson, sir." Their foolishness makes me
irritable and scatters all my thoughts. I should like to stick the lost
pens into them and turn them out, blind-eyed, to be scratched and mauled
by those thousand hungry cats. Whew! What a ghastly thought! Where in
the world did it come from? Such an idea is no more my own than it is
the policeman's. Yet I felt I _had_ to write it. It was like a voice
singing in my head, and my pen wouldn't stop till the last word was
finished. What ridiculous nonsense! I must and will restrain myself. I
must take more regular exercise; my nerves and liver plague me horribly.

* * * * *

Nov. 4.--I attended a curious lecture in the French quarter on "Death,"
but the room was so hot and I was so weary that I fell asleep. The only
part I heard, however, touched my imagination vividly. Speaking of