ndon, but
I don't want to be one of them. They do nothing but rush about, dress,
gossip, laugh, love, and plunge into all the delights of life. That is
not my idea of existence. I am ambitious. I want to do something. I am
tired in my soul of doing nothing. Yes, it _has_ been that all along,
though I didn't like to tell you so before. There are people who are born
in the midst of greatness and they don't know how to use it. But to be
one of the world's celebrities, that is so different! To have won the
heart of the world, so that the world knows you and thinks of you and
loves you! Say it is by your voice you do it and that your world is the
concert hall, or even the music hall--what matter? You needn't _live_
music hall, whatever the life inside of it. And then that great dark void
peopled with faces; that laugh or cry just as you please to make
them--confess; that it would be magnificent, my dear ones!

"I am to go again to-night to hear what Mr. Sefton has to propose, but
already this dingy little bedroom smiles upon me, and even the broken
tiles in the backyard might be the pavement of paradise! If it is true
what he tells me---Well, he that hath the bride is the bridegroom, and if
my doings hereafter don't make your hair curl I will try to show the
inhabitants of this stupid old earth what a woman can do in spite of
every disadvantage. I shall not be sorry to leave this place either. The
rats in these old London houses (judging by their cries of woe) hold a
nightly carnival for the eating up of the younger members of the family.
And then Mrs. Jupe and Mr. Jupe--Mr. Dupe I call him--she deceives him so
dreadfully with her gadding about----But anon, anon, good people!

"It is New Year's Eve to-day, and nearly nine months since I came up to
London. _Tempus fugit!_ In fact _tempus_ is _fugit_-ing most fearfully,
considering that I am twenty-one on Sunday next, you know, and that I
haven't begun to do anything really. The snowdrops must be making a peep
at Glenfaba by this time, and Aunt Rachel will be cutting slips of the
rose trees and putting them in pots. Yandher place must he _urromassy_ [*
Out of mercy.] nice though, with snow on the roof and the sloping lawn,
and the windows glistening with frost--just like a girl in her
confirmation veil as she stands hack to look at herself in the glass. I
intend to see the New Year in this time on the outside of St. Paul's
Cathedral, where people congregate in thousands as tw