{"product_id":"2940148985457","title":"The Story of Mary MacLane (Illustrated)","description":"OF womankind and of nineteen years, will now begin to set down as full and frank a Portrayal as I am able of myself, Mary MacLane, for whom the world contains not a parallel.\u003cbr\u003eI am convinced of this, for I am odd.\u003cbr\u003eI am distinctly original innately and in development.\u003cbr\u003eI have in me a quite unusual intensity of life.\u003cbr\u003eI can feel.\u003cbr\u003eI have a marvelous capacity for misery and for happiness.\u003cbr\u003eI am broad-minded.\u003cbr\u003eI am a genius.\u003cbr\u003eI am a philosopher of my own good peripatetic school.\u003cbr\u003e[2]\u003cbr\u003eI care neither for right nor for wrong—my conscience is nil.\u003cbr\u003eMy brain is a conglomeration of aggressive versatility.\u003cbr\u003eI have reached a truly wonderful state of miserable morbid unhappiness.\u003cbr\u003eI know myself, oh, very well.\u003cbr\u003eI have attained an egotism that is rare indeed.\u003cbr\u003eI have gone into the deep shadows.\u003cbr\u003eAll this constitutes oddity. I find, therefore, that I am quite, quite odd.\u003cbr\u003eI have hunted for even the suggestion of a parallel among the several hundred persons that I call acquaintances. But in vain. There are people and people of varying depths and intricacies of character, but there is none to compare with me. The young ones of my own age—if I chance to give them but a glimpse of the real workings of my mind—can only stare at me in dazed stupidity, uncomprehending; and the old ones of forty and fifty—for forty and fifty are always old to nineteen—[3]can but either stare also in stupidity, or else, their own narrowness asserting itself, smile their little devilish smile of superiority which they reserve indiscriminately for all foolish young things. The utter idiocy of forty and fifty at times!\u003cbr\u003eThese, to be sure, are extreme instances. There are among my young acquaintances some who do not stare in stupidity, and yes, even at forty and fifty there are some who understand some phases of my complicated character, though none to comprehend it in its entirety.\u003cbr\u003eBut, as I said, even the suggestion of a parallel is not to be found among them.\u003cbr\u003eI think at this moment, however, of two minds famous in the world of letters between which and mine there are certain fine points of similarity. These are the minds of Lord Byron and of Marie Bashkirtseff. It is the Byron of “Don Juan” in whom I find suggestions [4]of myself. In this sublime outpouring there are few to admire the character of Don Juan, but all must admire Byron. He is truly admirable. He uncovered and exposed his soul of mingled good and bad—as the terms are—for the world to gaze upon. He knew the human race, and he knew himself.\u003cbr\u003eAs for that strange notable, Marie Bashkirtseff, yes, I am rather like her in many points, as I’ve been told. But in most things I go beyond her.\u003cbr\u003eWhere she is deep, I am deeper.\u003cbr\u003eWhere she is wonderful in her intensity, I am still more wonderful in my intensity.\u003cbr\u003eWhere she had philosophy, I am a philosopher.\u003cbr\u003eWhere she had astonishing vanity and conceit, I have yet more astonishing vanity and conceit.\u003cbr\u003eBut she, forsooth, could paint good pictures,—and I—what can I do?\u003cbr\u003eShe had a beautiful face, and I am a [5]plain-featured, insignificant little animal.\u003cbr\u003eShe was surrounded by admiring, sympathetic friends, and I am alone—alone, though there are people and people.\u003cbr\u003eShe was a genius, and still more am I a genius.\u003cbr\u003eShe suffered with the pain of a woman, young; and I suffer with the pain of a woman, young and all alone.\u003cbr\u003eAnd so it is.\u003cbr\u003eAlong some lines I have gotten to the edge of the world. A step more and I fall off. I do not take the step. I stand on the edge, and I suffer.\u003cbr\u003eNothing, oh, nothing on the earth can suffer like a woman young and all alone!\u003cbr\u003e—Before proceeding farther with the Portraying of Mary MacLane, I will write out some of her uninteresting history.\u003cbr\u003eI was born in 1881 at Winnepeg, in Canada. Whether Winnepeg will yet [6]live to be proud of this fact is a matter for some conjecture and anxiety on my part. When I was four years old I was taken with my family to a little town in western Minnesota, where I lived a more or less vapid and lonely life until I was ten. We came then to Montana.\u003cbr\u003eWhereat the aforesaid life was continued.\u003cbr\u003eMy father died when I was eight.\u003cbr\u003eApart from feeding and clothing me comfortably and sending me to school—which is no more than was due me—and transmitting to me the MacLane blood and character, I can not see that he ever gave me a single thought.\u003cbr\u003eCertainly he did not love me, for he was quite incapable of loving any one but himself. And since nothing is of any moment in this world without the love of human beings for each other, it is a matter of supreme indifference to me whether my father, Jim MacLane of selfish memory, lived or died.\u003cbr\u003e[7]\u003cbr\u003eHe is nothing to me.\u003cbr\u003eThere are with me still a mother, a sister, and two brothers.\u003cbr\u003eThey also are nothing to me.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Lost Leaf Publications","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47164635840752,"sku":"2940148985457","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940148985457_p0.jpg?v=1763710530","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940148985457","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}