I Await the Devil's Coming - Unexpurgated and Annotated by Mary MacLane

woman’s-body, her mind, her soul.
    - The world may run and read. -
    I will tell you what I did with the three dollars. In Dublin Gulch, which is a rough quarter of Butte inhabited by extremely Irish people, there lives an old world-soured, wrinkle-faced woman. She lives alone in a small untidy house. She swears frightfully like a parrot, and her reputation is bad - so bad indeed that even the old woman’s compatriots in Dublin Gulch do not visit her lest they damage their own. It is true that the profane old woman’s morals are not good - have never been good - judged by the world’s standards. She bears various marks of cold, rough handling on her mind and body. Her life has all but run its course. She is worn out.
    Once in a while I go to visit this old woman. - My reputation must be sadly damaged now. -
    I sit with her for an hour or two and listen to her. She is extremely glad to have me here. Except me she has no one to talk to but the milk man, the grocery man, and the butcher. So always she is glad to see me. There is a certain bond of sympathy between her and me. We are fond of each other. When she sees me picking my way toward her house, her hard sour face softens wonderfully and a light of distinct friendliness comes into her green eyes.
    Don’t you know, there are few people enough in the world whose hard sour faces will soften at the sight of you and a distinctly friendly light come into their green eyes. For myself I find such people few indeed.
    So the profane old woman and I are fond of each other. No question of morals, or of immorals, comes between us. We are equals.
    I talk to her a little - but mostly she talks. She tells me of the time when she lived in County Galway, when she was young - and of her several husbands, and of some who were not husbands, and of her children scattered over the earth. And she shows me old tin-types of these people. She has told me the varied tale of her life a great many times. I like to hear her tell it. It is like nothing else I have heard. The story in its unblushing simplicity, the sour-faced old woman sitting telling it, and the tin-types, - contain a thing that is absurdly, grotesquely, tearlessly sad.
    Once when I went to her house I brought with me six immense heavy fragrant chrysanthemums.
    They had been bought with the three dollars I had stolen.
    It pleased me to buy them for the profane old woman. They pleased her also - not because she cares much for flowers, but because I brought them to her. I knew they would please her, but that was not the reason I gave her them.
    I did it purely and simply to please myself.
    I knew the profane old woman would not be at all concerned as to whether they had been bought with stolen money or not, and my only regret was that I had not had an opportunity to steal a larger sum so that I might have bought more chrysanthemums without inconveniencing my purse.
    But as it was they filled her dirty little dwelling with perfume and color.
    Long ago when I was six I was a thief - only I was not then, as now, a graceful, light-fingered thief - I had not the philosophy of stealing.
    When I would steal a copper cent out of my mother’s pocket-book I would feel a dreadful suffocating sinking in my bad heart, and for days and nights afterwards - long after I had eaten the chocolate mouse - the copper cent would haunt me and haunt me, and oh, how I wished it back in that pocket-book with the clasp shut tight and the bureau-drawer locked!
    And so is it not fine to be nineteen and a thief, with the philosophy of stealing - than to be six and haunted day and night by a copper cent?
    For now always my only regret is, when I have stolen five dollars, that I did not steal ten while I was about it.
    It is a long time ago since I was six.

    February 17
    To-day I walked over the hill where the sun vanishes down in the afternoon.
    I followed the sun so far as I could, but two even very good legs can do no more than carry one into the midst of the