w do we live when
we feel so much? And the world, so great, so piercing in its
beauty--how it presses upon us! Yet I suppose there must be a certain
habit of inner control; for though it is beautiful to Zoe, she does not
ache as I do. No, she laughs. I must get the habit of laughter. But you
see I have been up all night, thinking of this woman and the world she
opens to me; of her and the woman I love. Of Zoe I think always,
father; but you know I couldn't write that. No man could, could he?

... I have been to church. It is strangely disappointing. Of the church
itself it is not necessary to speak. It seems there are no great
cathedrals here; I had not realized that. The music was fine, but
faint; I found I had expected not a quartette but a chorus, a multitude
praising God. Then the clergyman spoke. It was very vague and very
long. It seemed to me unnecessary for him to have written anything,
when he might have read Emerson or Ruskin. I forgot him, after a time,
and began to think of Lone Mountain and the rhythm of the wind over the
firs. The sermon was something about St. John's visions and the church.
It seemed to me belittling, as if a primer should be written to explain
the gods. But perhaps I have to get the habit of church-going also.

I have been introduced to dozens of people. Dozens? let me say
hundreds. They are very kind. You ask me to speak frankly of civilized
life. Frankly then, these people we meet in battalions I do not like.
That is, I might like them individually if they appeared under a
different system; but society seems to me an intricate sort of game
which anybody could play, but which is very puzzling to the onlooker
and not in the least worth learning. For example, their conversation: a
great deal of it is mere personality, and they only speak of a certain
set. That may be a truism. I have apparently said that they do not talk
of the people they do not know because they only talk of the people
they know. But I find there are such different ways of talking. People
seem to be in groups, and each group is labeled. I am in the smart set!
I fancy some of them consider the persons who play and sing and write
books (that is unless they don't do it particularly well) as a class of
beings made for their amusement; and if it is necessary to speak of
scientists or diplomats, they do it with a certain languid interest,
and then put them aside in a drawer. There is a great deal of
philanthropy, but it is n