I feel like an old Woman, in black cloak, trying to hold imaginary readers, if any, for half a minute with some long phthisical tale of distress, which they listen to with many a bob of the head, smack of finger tips on the keyboard and other symptoms of impatience, though afterwards I know it was a most faithful and circumstantial monologue, which I forget sooner than the rest. I love this masquerade of a wise woman, sententious; and full of profound remarks on shallow subjects.

I am not alone in this vain exercise; dwelling upon the minute recollections of irrevocable past imparts pleasure. Absorbed in melancholia as I am, I am overlooked here for seeking relief in this manner, however tenuous and temporary, in the rambling monotones. To my blunted fancy these trifles assume an adventitious importance, for they shaped my dubious destiny which soon overshadows us.

Life is far from over and I am not yet inured to suffering; certainly I have to see many similar scenes, much more of the flotsam and jetsam of the human tide. At times passion would be invisible but I’d catch a flicker, burning against the dark hulk of the littoral, modulated by a mist of flying spindrift. Love isn't requisite, it will happen or it won’t, but to gather as many pearls as possible, and to give out as few, is the desideratum ..