Latest / Noted Speeches of Abraham Lincoln / Diary of a Suicide-Wallace E. Baker

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Diary of a Suicide-Wallace E. Baker · Noted Speeches of Abraham Lincoln

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  Speaker 1: Section one of Diary of a Suicide. This is a
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: Recording by Lee Smalley. Diary of a Suicide by Wallace E. Baker,
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  Speaker 1: Section one forward. On September twenty eighth, nineteen thirteen, mister
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  Speaker 1: B Russell Hurtz of the International received the following letter,
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  Speaker 1: New York, September twenty seventh, nineteen thirteen. Mister B. Russell Hurts,
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  Speaker 1: care of International Magazine, New York City. Dear mister Hurtz,
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  Speaker 1: under separate cover, I am sending you a record of
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  Speaker 1: a young man who is about to commit suicide. My
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  Speaker 1: only object is that it may help, if published in
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  Speaker 1: part or whole, to ease the way for some who
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  Speaker 1: come after. If you will kindly read it through, especially
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  Speaker 1: the latter part, you will be able to judge whether
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  Speaker 1: you care to make any use of it. If not,
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  Speaker 1: kindly mail same to mister Blank, Toronto, Ontario. I have
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  Speaker 1: cut out references to places and people here and there
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  Speaker 1: for their sake, because naturally I cannot be worried about
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  Speaker 1: myself after death. Thanking you for giving this matter your attention.
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  Speaker 1: I remain blank. I do not sign this, but you
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  Speaker 1: may verify my death by communicating with mister Blank, whom
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  Speaker 1: I am writing to day, so that he may look
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  Speaker 1: after my effects. In New York, the body of a
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  Speaker 1: well dressed young man was found off Manhattan Beach September
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  Speaker 1: twenty eighth. In his pockets, a torn photograph of Strindberg
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  Speaker 1: and receipts for three registered letters were found. These receipts
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  Speaker 1: were traced to mister Hurtz and to friends in Toronto,
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  Speaker 1: one of whom identified the body on October second as
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  Speaker 1: that of Wallace E. Baker. He was buried on October
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  Speaker 1: third in Evergreen Cemetery, Brooklyn. Note. In cutting out his
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  Speaker 1: references to places and people, Baker marred some of the text.
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  Speaker 1: These excisions are indicated by dots, dashes, or stars. The
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  Speaker 1: Glebe is indebted to mister Hurtz and the International for
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  Speaker 1: the permission to publish the diary The Diary of a
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  Speaker 1: Suicide January twenty sixth, nineteen twelve. It is with mingled
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  Speaker 1: feelings of hope, discouragement, joy and pain that I begin
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  Speaker 1: the second book of my diary My hope springs from
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  Speaker 1: the fact that my outlook seems to be clearer ahead.
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  Speaker 1: The old uncertainty is more in the background. But there
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  Speaker 1: is another side to it all. My discouragement comes from
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  Speaker 1: my constant feeling of tiredness, less evident in the evening
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  Speaker 1: and for a while at night, but exceedingly strong during
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  Speaker 1: every afternoon. With few exceptions, this has resulted in my
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  Speaker 1: weak yielding to weakness at night, and only last night,
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  Speaker 1: after my confidence that I had gained a certain mastery,
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  Speaker 1: I was overcome. This was partly from the fact that
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  Speaker 1: I worked at the office until nearly ten o'clock, charging
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  Speaker 1: a supper with wine to the firm. Although I drink
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  Speaker 1: very little, now and again I have gone out and
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  Speaker 1: taken a decent meal with wine to get away from
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  Speaker 1: the monotonous boarding house fair a small bottle which I
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  Speaker 1: nearly emptied. Cheap wine resulted in making me feel good.
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  Speaker 1: I have never been under the influence of liquor more
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  Speaker 1: than to feel good, never without full possession of my faculties.
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  Speaker 1: But on the rare occasions when I have taken a
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  Speaker 1: little I have sometimes noticed a weakening of the faculties,
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  Speaker 1: a sort of lack of moral restraint. I had enough
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  Speaker 1: last night to weaken for a time my newfound resolutions,
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  Speaker 1: but the succeeding absolute disgust and worry led me to
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  Speaker 1: believe that I was not wrong in thinking that the
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  Speaker 1: struggle is now on a higher plane. My salary was
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  Speaker 1: increased at the first of the year to twenty two
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  Speaker 1: fifty a week. Although glad of this, my old time
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  Speaker 1: pleasure at the receipt of more money each pay day
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  Speaker 1: is lacking money I must have to live further than that.
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  Speaker 1: It seems a pitiful waste of time to spend one's
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  Speaker 1: life in a mad endeavor to obtain wealth that the
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  Speaker 1: price of all that counts Havana, Cuba, February twenty ninth,
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  Speaker 1: nineteen twelve, leapier and a good opportunity to enter on
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  Speaker 1: a bigger fight. I must date my beginning this time
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  Speaker 1: as February eighteen, being the day after my last fall
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  Speaker 1: from grace. The week and a half since, however, makes
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  Speaker 1: me feel confident once more, despite that for three or
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  Speaker 1: four days I have been without a night's rest, owing
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  Speaker 1: to stomach trouble and the nervousness thereby engendered. But this
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  Speaker 1: is nothing unusual. That is the loss of sleep, for
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  Speaker 1: it is long since I have had a real good
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  Speaker 1: night's rest, and I know a crisis is approaching and
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  Speaker 1: I must get rested ere I collapse. I have read
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  Speaker 1: during this time Ibsen the a man, his art and
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  Speaker 1: his significance by Haldane might fall, and it has given
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  Speaker 1: me great encouragement and aroused intense enthusiasm. I feel that
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  Speaker 1: I am getting back my old enthusiasm, that I am
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  Speaker 1: recovering my ideals on a higher basis. Although I am
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  Speaker 1: undoubtedly weaker than ever physically, but with increased moral strength.
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  Speaker 1: I hoped soon to cut down the butts, howevers, all
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  Speaker 1: those and to stand forth with more decision, more firmness,
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  Speaker 1: and knowing myself, and with my ideas and ideals clarified.
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  Speaker 1: During the last two months, the first step in this
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  Speaker 1: attempted regeneration has been becoming more and more a determination
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  Speaker 1: emerging from a mere unsettled idea. Must return home for
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  Speaker 1: various reasons. First, I am played out physically and need rest.
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  Speaker 1: More important should be the fact that my mother is
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  Speaker 1: getting old, has been constantly calling to me to return.
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  Speaker 1: Worries about me needs me to put my shoulder to
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  Speaker 1: the wheel. Well more than I have done true. I
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  Speaker 1: have systematically put apart for my mother a certain amount
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  Speaker 1: every month for a long time, and have sent it
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  Speaker 1: without fail even when only earning ten dollars a week
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  Speaker 1: back in the early part of nineteen ten. This at
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  Speaker 1: least has kept me in constant touch with my dear
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  Speaker 1: old home full of strife. Though it was while I
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  Speaker 1: have at frequently recurring periods thought of returning home during
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  Speaker 1: the past year and a half, my resolution did not
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  Speaker 1: crystallize until I began to feel the compelling necessity of
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  Speaker 1: a rest bodily, mentally, and I might say morally, hot
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  Speaker 1: and cold, by turns lonely, sleepless, tired, and generally run down,
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  Speaker 1: I have not been able to look at things in
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  Speaker 1: their true proportion, and I must get away for a
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  Speaker 1: while from the daily struggle keeping up the mental and
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  Speaker 1: moral one. However, to this end I have practically cut
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  Speaker 1: out all amusement. Night after night, I come home, tired out,
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  Speaker 1: read a little, generally to lights are out at ten thirty,
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  Speaker 1: and then to my disturbed sleep. Getting up early as
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  Speaker 1: to day, seven o'clock to seven thirty being early for me,
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  Speaker 1: I either read, study, write as to day, or work
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  Speaker 1: on my story, which I started last August, and of
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  Speaker 1: which I will write more later. This elimination of outside
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  Speaker 1: distractions is helping to strengthen me, helping me to look
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  Speaker 1: forward to a life of service without the necessity of
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  Speaker 1: foolish excitement and the money I am saving by this
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  Speaker 1: closeness in everything except necessities, I hope to enable me
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  Speaker 1: to go home, rest, think, exercise, and study calmly and
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  Speaker 1: sanely for a year, paying my mother a regular weekly amount.
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  Speaker 1: And I hope at the end of the year to
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  Speaker 1: have sufficiently found myself to go ahead on my work
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  Speaker 1: with more collected ideas as to what I want and
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  Speaker 1: what I should want, and all to the better interests
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  Speaker 1: of my mother, myself, and the good of others with
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  Speaker 1: whom I may come in contact. By the middle of
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  Speaker 1: this year, I hoped to take the first step by
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  Speaker 1: returning home Havana Sunday, March seventeenth, nineteen twelve. The fifteenth
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  Speaker 1: ushered in a new start, and the sixteenth was a
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  Speaker 1: very important day. On the fourteenth I had been thinking
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  Speaker 1: very intently about future plans and went very carefully over
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  Speaker 1: the ground of a possible college course. I picked up
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  Speaker 1: my self educators and looked into the various subjects for study,
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  Speaker 1: estimated the time I would have to spend on a
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  Speaker 1: college course, the financial difficulties, my mother's need of my help,
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  Speaker 1: my temperament and pronounced predilection for certain things, and as
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  Speaker 1: pronounced aversion for others, my nervousness and constant mental struggle.
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  Speaker 1: The result of all this was to confirm what I
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  Speaker 1: wrote on January eighth, that I had about given up
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  Speaker 1: the idea. The only hope, or rather possibility I have
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  Speaker 1: in view now is that I may take a course
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  Speaker 1: in certain special subjects literature, drama, philosophy, logic, and sociology.
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  Speaker 1: But I hate mathematics. I pick up a book of
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  Speaker 1: algebra with extreme distaste. And although my enthusiasm in New
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  Speaker 1: York caused me to study this subject fairly assiduously, I
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  Speaker 1: see it was a mistake. I have a distinct tendency
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  Speaker 1: and deep enthusiasm for literature, gradually awakening from my first
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  Speaker 1: boyish effusions at the age of ten, and it was
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  Speaker 1: a waste of time to neglect what I can excel
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  Speaker 1: in for the sake of a mistaken idea that a
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  Speaker 1: college education means so much. The reason that the fifteenth
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  Speaker 1: of this month was an important day. Is that, following
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  Speaker 1: my decision of the previous day recollege and subsequent weakness,
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  Speaker 1: I made a big step towards finding myself on the fifteenth.
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  Speaker 1: While I had known for some time that I did
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  Speaker 1: not care for mathematics, Latin, Greek, and probably several other subjects,
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  Speaker 1: I still cherished the idea that I wanted to go
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  Speaker 1: deep into philosophy and possibly biology, and of course study sociology, logic,
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  Speaker 1: and perhaps economics. Seriously. This was sufficient to cause me
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  Speaker 1: to put in considerable wasted time on the subjects I
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  Speaker 1: did not like, especially algebra, on the day mentioned. But
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  Speaker 1: two days ago I looked into this matter in the
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  Speaker 1: view of a special college course eliminating mathematics. Then I
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  Speaker 1: realized that I liked the subjects as long as they
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  Speaker 1: did not become too abstruse or mathematical. I saw that biology,
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  Speaker 1: as soon as one gets past the popular books on
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  Speaker 1: the subject and the origin of species, becomes a subject
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  Speaker 1: of much mathematics and dry science, as evidenced by Huxley's essays,
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  Speaker 1: which I unsuccessfully endeavored to digest with enthusiasm. Now I
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  Speaker 1: know that I merely want to study biology in a
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  Speaker 1: general way for the sake of culture, and because of
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  Speaker 1: a thirst for knowledge, which however, is not sufficient to
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  Speaker 1: make me go into the dry details. I am interested, however,
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  Speaker 1: very much in the question of heredity, but not to
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  Speaker 1: specialize in the realization of this in regard to biology.
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  Speaker 1: Coming suddenly and sharply caused a sort of awakening. I
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  Speaker 1: began to search my other tendencies and realized that I
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  Speaker 1: did not like the dry, obstruse details of philosophy either
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  Speaker 1: nor economics, but that by way of working out a
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  Speaker 1: philosophy of life or conduct and hope for future, I
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  Speaker 1: was very greatly, more vitally interested in the subject. I
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  Speaker 1: like to read and study philosophy as giving a basis
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  Speaker 1: for a plan of life, But when you get to
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  Speaker 1: the brain wearying works of Kant and the like, it
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  Speaker 1: is different. For instance, in reading of Ibsen and Tolstoy
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  Speaker 1: in their philosophy of anarchism or their mystic realism as
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  Speaker 1: it has been described, I am intensely interested. I imagine Nietzsche
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  Speaker 1: would be of great interest to me, possibly Schopenhauer and others.
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  Speaker 1: I intend to look into Berrickson's divine impulse, but to
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  Speaker 1: go deep into a mass of details. No, I am
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  Speaker 1: looking for light for a philosophy of life, and I
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  Speaker 1: might mention James and his pragmatism as another one to
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  Speaker 1: look into about the same applies to psychology sociology I
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  Speaker 1: am still doubtful of. But all social questions and matters
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  Speaker 1: of world wide importance interest me. But when I turn
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  Speaker 1: to literature and the drama, it is no longer a
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  Speaker 1: matter of doubt. On March fifteenth, as I was in
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  Speaker 1: my room thinking over these questions and had come to
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  Speaker 1: the conclusions above, I realized in a flash that my
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  Speaker 1: temperament was more artistic than scientific, the latter coming from
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  Speaker 1: my German heredity and undoubtedly being strong. However, the little
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  Speaker 1: details of literary work do not bore me. Of course,
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  Speaker 1: I like the dreams best, and lately find it great
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  Speaker 1: pleasure to sit down and write right. I spend hours
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  Speaker 1: collecting scraps of books, authors, drama, and also philosophy and psychology, sociology,
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  Speaker 1: et cetera. But principally literature, drama and allied branches. Even
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  Speaker 1: the details of grammar do not seem tiresome any more.
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  Speaker 1: And compared to my aversion for algebra, I can see
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  Speaker 1: that the worst in the pursuit of literature is a
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  Speaker 1: pleasure compared to the best in other things, especially business.
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  Speaker 1: Of course, I have much to find out yet, but
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  Speaker 1: it was a great step to relieve myself of so
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  Speaker 1: many doubts and make literature my pursuit through thick and thin,
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  Speaker 1: as I have determined to do, knowing it is my
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  Speaker 1: one line. I am not sure whether I can write
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  Speaker 1: best short stories, novels or dramas. Short stories only appeal
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  Speaker 1: to me as means of expressing myself, where I have
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  Speaker 1: not a big enough idea for something bigger and better,
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  Speaker 1: but I love to write them just the same. I
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  Speaker 1: have only written one of eight thousand or more words,
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  Speaker 1: but I have taken numerous notes, written many articles of
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  Speaker 1: various kinds, and recorded incidents and anecdotes which I shall
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  Speaker 1: use fully later, and all this with an enthusiasm and pleasure,
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  Speaker 1: not gauged by thought of profit or even publication. In
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  Speaker 1: all cases. On the other hand, novels are an unknown quantity.
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  Speaker 1: I do not know whether I am a good descriptive writer.
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  Speaker 1: Whether character drawing is my forte or narration is a
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  Speaker 1: strong point with me, although I find I can write
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  Speaker 1: along without hesitation in writing of occurrences, and I notice
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  Speaker 1: the peculiarities and little foibles of my fellow borders, and
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  Speaker 1: see what good material there is here for character drawing.
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  Speaker 1: But I do not find it so easy to put
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  Speaker 1: this down on paper with that human touch which makes
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  Speaker 1: one like to read some authors, notably Dickens. Again, the
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  Speaker 1: drama has always made a powerful appeal to me. I
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  Speaker 1: always liked a strong drama, enjoyed Shakespeare both in reading
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  Speaker 1: and acting, eagerly devoured dramatic criticisms. And I have thought
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  Speaker 1: lately very much about this, and I know I should
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  Speaker 1: like to write strong dramas of our modern life. However,
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  Speaker 1: I shall have to study Ibsen, Strindberg, brew Shaw and
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  Speaker 1: others before I can come to any conclusion as to this. However,
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  Speaker 1: a sea of doubts are now behind, and the vista
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  Speaker 1: before me is bright. Yesterday, however, while a day of
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  Speaker 1: great interest is also one of misery, which perhaps accounts
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  Speaker 1: for my optimism today, action and reaction being very often
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  Speaker 1: equal and opposite with me. End of section one, Section
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  Speaker 1: two of Diary of a Suicide by Wallace E. Baker.
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  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Section two
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  Speaker 1: Havana Sunday, March twenty fourth, nineteen twelve. Another beginning today,
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  Speaker 1: and I hope a good one. The unfinished story of
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  Speaker 1: the sixteenth Saturday, which I failed to relate last Sunday,
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  Speaker 1: was the burial of the main. Deciding at the last
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  Speaker 1: moment to witness this, I boarded the Purisma Concepcion at
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  Speaker 1: about one o'clock. After a short time, while looking overboard
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  Speaker 1: at the struggling crowds, a lot of rope and tackle
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  Speaker 1: came down on me from overhead and took half of
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  Speaker 1: the day's pleasure away in the shape of my glasses. Thereafter,
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  Speaker 1: I witnessed all the events with my one remaining lens
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  Speaker 1: held over one eye and tied to a handkerchief covering
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  Speaker 1: the other and tied behind my ear. It was a
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  Speaker 1: miserable subterfuge, and to add to it all, I had
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  Speaker 1: a beautiful headache, cold in the fear of glass in
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  Speaker 1: my eye, for one lens was smashed right over my eye. However,
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  Speaker 1: a day's strain was all that happened, and when it
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  Speaker 1: was all over, I voted that the day's pleasure was
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  Speaker 1: worth it. The sea was very rough and many people
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  Speaker 1: were sea sick, but I enjoyed it very much. About
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  Speaker 1: five o'clock we were all lined up, the United States
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  Speaker 1: naval vessels North Carolina and Birmingham, the Main in between,
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  Speaker 1: and beyond on the side opposite us, the diminutive Cuban Navy.
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  Speaker 1: The sea cocks were opened, and we all looked with
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  Speaker 1: intense interest, eye straining my one eye, with everything forgotten.
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  Speaker 1: For twenty minutes. The main did not seem to be
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  Speaker 1: filling very rapidly. At five twenty, however, the sinking was noticeable.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: Then as we stared, she settled deeper and deeper the
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  Speaker 1: stern where the bulkhead was sinking first. Then suddenly she turned,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: the stern went under. The forward was up in the
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: air at an angle of forty five degrees or more.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: It was a thrilling sight. Then, with gathering momentum, she
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  Speaker 1: went down. At five twenty seven. The waters of the
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  Speaker 1: gulf covered the last vestiges of one of the greatest
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  Speaker 1: tragedies of history. It was a grand sight. Nature herself
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: seemed in mourning for the day, bright and clear in
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: the forenoon and early afternoon had granted. July become darker,
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  Speaker 1: and she disappeared, with the sky overcast and a solemn
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: hush over everything I know. This was the way it
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  Speaker 1: impressed me, and all my petty troubles were forgotten in
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  Speaker 1: the grand scene before me. In an endeavor to discover
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: my feelings of a day from the tenth to the fifteenth,
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: I kept a short record by way of finding out
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  Speaker 1: how much I could count on myself in my struggle,
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  Speaker 1: and the result showed me that I lack exercise them,
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  Speaker 1: too nervous and overstrung to put forth my best efforts,
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  Speaker 1: all of which confirms the wisdom of my decision to
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  Speaker 1: return home to find myself after a rest. Sunday March tenth,
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  Speaker 1: fair in morning, depressed later Monday March eleven, fine until
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  Speaker 1: middle of afternoon, then tired and nervously depressed. Night, cheerful
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  Speaker 1: again bedtime, terribly nervous, depressed, wakeful, worried and despairing. Tuesday,
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  Speaker 1: March twelve, tired from previous night's depths of gloom, calm,
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  Speaker 1: later fair night Wednesday, March thirteenth, calm and enthusiastic, tired
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  Speaker 1: but not depressed, later restless in bed. Thursday March fourteen,
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  Speaker 1: quiet and calm, exhausted from previous flurries. Later storm again,
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  Speaker 1: very bad and depths of morbid despair. Friday, March fifteen,
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  Speaker 1: ambitious and determined, fine all day, restless night. The above
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  Speaker 1: pretty well represents my struggle for a long time. But
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  Speaker 1: through it all I have had a confidence in the
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: final triumph and a constant return to my ideals and ambition.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: And I am noticing a gradual elimination of some weaknesses.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: The blue moods I am beginning to check before going
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: too far, and the ecstasy I am also holding in
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: an endeavor to preserve a calm ceaselessly persistent demeanor, neither
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: too hot nor too cold to to day. I hope
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  Speaker 1: to be a model one, one of steady work, writing, studying,
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  Speaker 1: arranging papers, no time for self consciousness, worrying, or anything else.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: So far, from six twenty five to eight twenty five,
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  Speaker 1: it has been ideal. March twenty fourth, nineteen twelve, nine
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  Speaker 1: fifty three pm, after another despicable fall, following on a
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  Speaker 1: good and bad day, I am almost desperate and realized
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  Speaker 1: that the fight for life must come to a head soon.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: I wrote the proceeding from seven thirty five to eight
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: twenty five this morning, following that I started in on
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: my scraps, and about eleven o'clock my plan for a
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: hard day's work came to naught because of a disturbed mind.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: Do as I know, to too much of one thing.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: I simply have not the capacity to stick to one
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: thing very long, although the things I like are always fresh.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: After diversion going out for a change, some of the
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: boys asked me to cross the river for a good walk.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: I consented, and after dinner hal muerzo or breakfast here,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: we took bumboat to landing near Morrow, walked to Kogimar,
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: across country along shore and on roads, and thence to Rigla.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: The hot sun and dusty roads tired me, and to night,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: tired and wearied, I fell. Too much is killing for me.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: I must hold off and simply cannot stand any day
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: too much of anything there simply has got to be
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: a readjustment, or I shall go crazy or become desperate.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: Below all this, I feel the fight welling up in me, however,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: and tomorrow must hold forth better promise. Havana. Tuesday, April ninth,
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: nineteen twelve, twelve thirty a m. Somebody has said war
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: is hell. I say life is hell with a capital H. God,
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: But I would not have believed it possible a few
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: years ago that a man could go through such prolonged
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: mental agony? Am I a degenerate? Is there some insidious
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: form of insanity slowly creeping over me? Gautier has said
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: that nothing is beyond words. I deny this. I could
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: be as eloquent as ever man was, have as fine
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: a command of language, be as fluent brilliant as the
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: best of the masters. But I could not describe the
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: agony of the past few weeks. It is not alone
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: the nervousness, loneliness, and the old tired feeling, the sudden
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: bursts of enthusiasm followed by strange periods of peculiar calmness,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: now peaceful, now raging, now with an unholy joy in
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: I know not what then black despair, seemingly without cause.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: It is more than this self consciousness to an extreme
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: fight it as I will, and yet a deep absorption
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: in anything which really interests me, so that I lose
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: my identity in it. Thus my deep love for the
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: theater even more moving picture dramas for the strong stories
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: of love, passion and mental states of the French writers,
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: little as I have read of them. If I could
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: always find something to interest me. The solution might be
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: at hand, but with the same dreary prospect of day
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: after day of hell hell hell the other word for business,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: to an artistic temperament. How can I get a night's rest?
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: I lie awake and go through all the hot passions,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: wild enthusiasms, ecstatic feelings, morbid thoughts, wrath at the existing
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: order of things. I damn everything, and yet I realize
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: how feudile my scheme of life would be for others.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: Since I last wrote I had started afresh. I have
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: three times lost control over myself, and but an hour
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: ago the last time. It is terrible with such noble
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: thoughts that come upon me, sometimes such beautiful ideas, when
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: I feel in tune with everything in the world, and
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: then always the hellish reaction. Oh God, what a sorry
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: mess you have made of things? How could you do it?
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: You have made a terrible mistake to make me such
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: a shattered wreck before I was out of my youth,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: to take from me everything, strip me naked, so that
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: I can say now that I am absolutely indifferent to
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: everything except to express myself before I die. That idea
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: has taken possession of me. If only I can write
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: such a book as will express all these mad imaginings,
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: hopeless longings, the void in my life, complete absence of
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: feminine companionship, doubly trying to one of my hot passionate moods.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: Harlot's discussed me increasingly. It is not morality, for I
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: have come to the state where things are not moral
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: and immoral. They are just so I would not consider
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: it immoral tonight, for instance, to have intercourse with a
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: girl who pleased me. But I cannot sacrifice what I
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: have in me on the couch of one who sells
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: her passion. I want love, if I understand it aright.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: And yet this is not an ever consuming passion. I
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: had just as much or nearly so much longing for
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: education up till lately, and have only dropped the idea
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: of going to college because I feel the approach of
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: dissolution unless I can get up north, rouse my physical
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: self and mayhap feel for once physically fit. Lately, I
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: have realized that there is something deeper than I before realized.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: In all these things. My brain is overtired, fagged out,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: wearied with too much thought, worry, reading, hate, fear. I
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: know not what but a change must come soon. It
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: cannot go on. Perhaps there is something organically wrong with me. God,
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: if you exist, you should have given me some manly
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: vigor commensurate with the mental strength I imagine I have. And
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: after all, is my mind weak? Or has my poor
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: weak body and abuse merely dragged it down? And is
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: it capable of resurrection? It seems impossible that I should
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: be born to get so near to some things which
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: touch the deepest strings of human conduct, the deepest emotions
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: of heart and brain, To have such a keen sense
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: of humor, to see the tragedy underlying it all, To
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: feel a sympathetic note with the foibles and weaknesses of others,
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: even as I laugh at them or become cynical about them.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: To walk by the sea and drink in her varying moods,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: The misty ethereal early mornings, the calmness of gradually settling
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: twilight on a day when the waves scarcely ripple, the
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: blood red sunsets with ever changing cloud effects, The deep
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: mysterious shadows on a dark night with the moon reflected
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: from behind the clouds, The night when the moon is
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: in her glory, the day when an overcast sky symbolizes
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: my overcast soul. These and more have I thrilled with,
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: and all for naught. Give me but strength for a
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: few more years, and I will vend myself. But I
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: must break away from this agony soon, overpowering overwhelming, Why
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: O God? End of section two, Section three of Diary
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: of a Suicide by Wallace E. Baker. This LibriVox recording
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: is in the public domain. Section three April nineteenth, nineteen twelve,
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: nine ten pm. It is just ten days since my
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: terrible night of agony, and I now hope again. Following
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: that night, I had almost a week of peace, a
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: nervous sort of calm, which however, was better than the other.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: Then another fall, and the last one tonight, I really
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: hope the last. It certainly has been my salvation that
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: I always come back strong in the fight again after
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: a blow. But there are several things which have weakened me,
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: and it is in spirit only that I recover. The
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: physical weakness remains and increases nerves as a strong man. Mentally,
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: I should hesitate to confess it. But I am worse
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: than the average woman in my hysterical nervous state lately,
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: and moreover, I feel very often that there is something
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: vitally wrong deeper. Either that or I am considerably run down,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: so much so in fact, that a good night's sleep
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: is a godsend, a calm, quiet day joy. And yet
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: I would not want too many of the latter, for
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: my adventurous spirit defies my body and says be up
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: in doing. Now to night. I am feeling calm and hopeful,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: and I must win out on one thing. At least
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: this will help me with others. True, I have by
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: no means found myself. Yet I still am pulled in
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: many directions. But a hopeful sign is the abhorrence nearly
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: always with me now of the low, common and vulgar.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: I could overlook in myself a little laxness in many things,
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: but I never forgive myself the vulgar act and speech.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: Despite my lack of moral code at present, and my
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: artistic indifference, to which is added lately, but only temporarily.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: I hope a lethargic indifference born of that ever recurring
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: tired feeling. An idea which has gradually been forming in
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: my mind. I hope to begin to put into definite
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: form just four weeks from tonight, and I then hope
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: to have four clean weeks behind me as a start
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: for my year's abstention from passion. During this time, while
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: endeavoring to obtain a foothold in the magazine field with
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: short stories, my big idea is to write a novel
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: of the various struggles and emotions of an ambitious, erratic
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: youth with a premature weariness, and unless preempted by another,
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: I shall very probably call this a youth who was
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: prematurely tired, suggested by a criticism of Mademoiselle de Monpint.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: But this is to be all altogether different, and is
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: to touch the depths of agony and despair, contrasted with
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: the heights of ecstasy and the fierce hungry longings, terrible disappointments,
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: unrelieved passion, loneliness, ambition, morbidity, deep poetic feeling, and the
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: other emotions of a sensitive, over nervous youth of artistic
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: temperament and large insight, tempered by many paradoxes in character.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: I have found myself enough to see the necessity of
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: one course, at least, that is to preserve a dignified
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: silence the coarse, vulgar familiarity of the fellows I have
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: met has jarred on me more and more, and I
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: see that my only escape in the future is to
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: maintain a reserve and a dignity beyond which no man
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: may penetrate. Anything I reveal will be by writing, not
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: by speech. I have made considerable progress, but still I
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: have to fight a foolish talkativeness on occasions. Another policy
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: I expect I will follow Lake, or at least will
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: be the cultivation of courtesy and a more gentlemanly treatment
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: of others, friends and Otherwise. I only have to overcome
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: one or two little weaknesses and to recover what I
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: have lost physically to be able to win out, and
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: I will. Sunday, April twenty one, nineteen twelve, after another
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: relapse last night, I am beginning to think that much
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: of my so called idealism is merely a pitiable, boyish,
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: conceited foolishness. This has often come to my mind, but
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: I hesitate to express it. But if I am sincere,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: I must record the other side of the question. Today
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: may or may not be the beginning of a more
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: sensible outlook, as far as my erratic, artistic temperament will permit.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: In any case, this strain, self imposed, for the most part,
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: must stop, even if I have to throw over a
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: few pet theories. I must be human, even at the
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: expense of virtue. I almost congratulate my life myself that
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: I can at least laugh at my own foibles and
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: enjoy the joke, just as I cannot help cynically to
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: a certain extent, pointing out others foolish earnestness over nothing.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: My sense of humor is indeed my saving grace. Havana, Friday,
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: April twenty sixth, nineteen twelve. Hope dispelled, but I am
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: making progress. Since my awakening the last few months of
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: last year and the first of this year. The reactions
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: have been short and sharp for the most part. Probably
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: the worst one began a little over a week ago
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: and culminated yesterday. During this week, while I have not
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: had more than one very bad night, there was a
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: perceptible diminution of my spirit of fight, and I temporarily
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: slipped back into the old mood of indifference. However, I
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: have recovered stronger, I hope, from the temporary weakness. Havana, Wednesday,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: May one, nineteen twelve, four twenty AM slowly but surely
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: the net is tightening. The past few months have been
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: such a hell, as I hope few young men in
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: their bare majority have passed through. Day by day, the
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: work at the office becomes more of a burden, a yoke.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: Come eleven fifteen or time for lunch al muezzo or
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: breakfast here, and I feel as if I were leaving prison.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: Strive as I may to concentrate my mind on routine work.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: I look forward to getting away soon after arrival. Breakfast
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: and an hour's more or less reading revive me temporarily,
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: and I generally manage to get in an hour or
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: two hours in the afternoon before the utter weariness, brain fog,
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: and nervous fatigue take possession of me, and the previous
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: day's ordeal is repeated. The strain of this and the
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: necessity of showing a semblance of interest in the work,
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: which lately, however, I have not done to any great extent,
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: repeated day after day in monotoniness. Regularity is only part
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: of the hell, but a part of such deadliness that
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: I doubt if I am able to complete my allotted
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: time of contract, which I had made up my mind
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: to force myself to do for the sake of the money.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: This has been another potent cause of general decline. Having
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: made up my mind to return home to work out
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: my future, I began to retrench more and more, eliminating
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: amusement for the most part, almost the sole one now
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: in moving pictures, which takes my mind away from myself
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: for two or three nights a week. I enjoy them
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: here for one reason. That is, they present long pictures
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: in a number of parts, which present good dramas of life.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: These pictures are French for the most part, and now
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: I hardly understand how I ever took any interest or
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: received pleasure from the prevailing American pictures, as I always
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: loved drama and continued story vaudeville never appealing to me.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: But for them this one little thing present conditions would
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: be unbearable, which is why I touch upon it at
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: greater length than the story of these days would seem
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: to warrant. One of the principal pleasures of my life
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: has been the theater. I always had an abiding and
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: ever present liking for dramatic action and situation, as well
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: as good comedy, burlesque, vaudeville, moving pictures, farce and the like.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: Only had a limited appeal, although I must say that
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: seven Days was a farce which I greatly enjoyed. Coming
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: to Havana, I had to drop the theater entirely, not
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: that I was such an inveterate theatergoer before, owing to
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: financial circumstances, because of lack of understanding and lately lack
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: of energy to exert myself to attempt to understand, my
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: hearing not being any too good at best. A greater
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: reason was the absence of good plays and the outrageous
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: prices I ignore entirely the numerous small theaters devoted to
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: pandering to the lowest instincts of the ignorant, black, mulatto,
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: and even white. Under these circumstances, I turned to the
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: moving picture theater, and by only attending when there is
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: at least one longer picture which promises dramatic action, I
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: managed to derive considerable pleasure from this class of entertainment,
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: no doubt to a great extent due to the fact
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: that that was the only thing which took me out
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: of myself, so that I lived in the play. Except
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: my reading. These two have kept me going during these
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: months when I tire of reading, or by reason of
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: a peculiar nervousness, do not feel like reading. If there
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: is a good picture, I go Otherwise, I make myself
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: read and am soon reconciled for the evening. Sometimes a
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: walk by the sea during the evening helps me much
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: even with this. However, through it all lingers that sense
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: of utter weariness, almost to the point of exhaustion. During
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: the day I managed to escape the worst consequences by
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: keeping my mind busy when absent from the office, and
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: the early evening or night generally also is passed without
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: too much worry. This leaves the periods of dull care
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: at the office, hoping and waiting for the hour of
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: getting away in bedtime and later night. A proof of
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: how much I have retrogressed physically is that from October
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: to December nineteen o eight, during my first few months
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: in New York, I was able to work from eight
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: in the morning until six at night, and three or
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: four nights a week with only an hour's break for lunch.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: And now working less than seven hours a day the
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: day every week is longer more tiresome. The weakening of
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: my powers has been gradual and to a certain extent unnoticeable,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: but it has been steady, inexorable, and now I am
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: face to face with a condition which means the end
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: of everything if continued for too long. During these years,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: in my heart, I have protested against it all. Taken
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: away from school when I was leading the class without
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: any great effort, either by circumstances, I began a business
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: career of hope and with boundless ambition and half formed
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: boyish ideals. The fact that I left school of my
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: own accord outwardly does not detract from the fact that
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: circumstances were gradually making it more imperative, and I only
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: took the bull by the horns, as I have done
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: many times since. I remember with great vividness an incident
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: of my early business career when with Blank Store, I
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: used to keep a credit book of returned goods and
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: had considerable dealings in this way with the girls of
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: the various departments. I was then rather indifferent to feminine charms,
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: although awakening sexual passion was entering into my emotional and
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: mental states, and had been for a year or so.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: I was then fifteen or sixteen. I do not know
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: whether this happened before or after my birthday. One of
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: the girls, a rather flippant, but as I looked back,
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: a shrewd observer came to my window in the office,
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: which was on a similar plan to a bank. I
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: have one window in the cashier another with something or
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: about something returned. I scowled for some reason or other,
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: probably because I had a pressure of work. She then
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: made an observation, the prophecy of which has been amply demonstrated.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: You are a boy now, but you will never be
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: a youth, and something about my jumping into manhood. She
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: was only a department store girl, but she hit the
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: nail on the head exactly that time, as subsequent events
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: have proven. In those days after my little stories for Blank,
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: I liked reading and probably looked forward to college at
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: some time in the future. In an indefinite way, I
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: was very earnest and ambitious about my work, which continued
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: more or less until some time last year, when the
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: increasing tired feeling, nervousness, changing ideas, ideals, and different outlook
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: combined to bring on rapidly my present state, when I
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: positively loathe my daily work. The principal reason for this,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: no doubt, is that I have neglected exercise almost entirely,
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: and now have reached the state where exhausted nature will
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: not be denied. I have already, at frequent intervals, commented
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: on the disturbances which haunted my bedside and to night,
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: or rather to day and last night, for it is
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: now a quarter of six than the candle before me
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: is rapidly losing its efficacy. Is only an example of
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: the recurring frequency of my nervousness at bedtime. Off all
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: temptation to indulge in sexual pleasures from the first of
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: this year, and although I have not succeeded entirely up
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: to the present, having only five days of absolute abstention
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: from excitement of any kind sexually, and possibly several months
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: from direct intercourse behind me, still I have radically changed
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: from my excesses of the first few months in Havana,
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: although even these were not excesses compared to the average
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: of a vast number here and elsewhere. This holding off
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: naturally leaves out a vital source of relief for the
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: all compelling necessity of getting away from myself. Sometimes from
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: my twentieth year on, when the prospect of a nervous,
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: sleepless night presented itself, sexual intercourse brought the much needed
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: relief and sleep followed. And yet such was the strength
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: of the conventional atmosphere that I had been reared in
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: and lived in. Despite my radical views and supposed freedom
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: of mind, I thought it was somehow or rather wrong
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: and underhand to seek relief in this way. I cussed
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: myself for a weakling thought, staved it off for weeks,
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: and then succumbed again. It is only lately that I
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: have seen a different light on the subject. My views
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: now are that our present system of sexual relations is
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: absolutely false. This conclusion is more due to my own
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: reasoning than to any radical literature I have read. First,
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: there should be freedom. Any man should be allowed to
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: have intercourse with a woman who was willing, as long
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: as they did it for love. There should be no
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: such thing as an illegitimate child. If a mother was
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: not in a position to or willing to bring up
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: her child, the state should do it. Of course, when
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: I say there should be freedom, I do not say
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: that if one man was living with a woman legally,
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: of course, as all such relations would be legal without
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: any question, I should be at perfect liberty to fool around.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: But if at any time their relations became such that
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: they could not harmoniously keep it up any longer. Divorce
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: should be automatic. Marriage might be for a minimum period
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: and as much longer as the parties concerned cared to
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: keep it up. There should be no coercion on either side.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: The woman should have the care of her children if
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: she so desired, but if unable to take care of them,
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: the state should do so. Even without a socialist state,
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: this could partly be put into effect. The white slave
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: trade should be abolished as a trade. If a woman
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: was herself willing to become the tool of every man
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: who came along, she could not perhaps be restrained, but
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: those who profit from it other than herself should be
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: vigorously prosecuted. All diseased should be prohibited from sexual intercourse.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: Even under the present state of society. There is a
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: solution to one problem. Many young men, like myself have
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: strong sexual passions, but we do not like to consort
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: with those who, starting out with a debased idea of
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: sexual relations, have debauched it. Now we meet girls who
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: are also passionate, and who, were it not for the
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: knowledge that their life would be ruined, would be only
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: too glad to have intercourse with us on the basis
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: of mutual sexual attraction and passion. This would bring to
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: both of us for much of the deadly monotony of
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: sordid every day affairs. If the girl could go on
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: just the same as the man, she being allowed to
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: have a child legally, which she could either take care
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: of herself or delegate to the state's care. This would
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: take care of that large body of men who are
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: not in a position to marry for various reasons, and
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: that equally large body of women who are unable to
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: find suitable husbands but who feel the emptiness of their lives,
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: and those women who want children and consider or would
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: consider if society would permit that it is nobody's business
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: who the father is. It should be a crime to
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: have intercourse when one is diseased, and the knowledge that
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: one can, with impunity have intercourse with a woman for
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: love would deter a large number of men from having
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: it with those who only give themselves for money and
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: are liable to transmit disease. This would leave those men
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: who are morbidly fond of baser forms of sexual perversion
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: to the p professional prostitutes, and women few comparatively who
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: naturally are attracted by or are willing to put up
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: with the drunkenness and attendant beastliness of a certain kind
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: of man, who we may hope will be as smaller
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: and smaller factor as radicalism grows. Thus, now with radical views,
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: I am endeavoring to attain my old state as before
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: my twentieth year for a year at least, so as
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: to work this out with other problems, because in my
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: present state of physical weakness, I cannot afford to risk
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: added weakness, and so fight this off every night, and
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: hope soon my nature will have become resigned to this
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: until my twenty third birthday, when I hope to have
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: a clearer plan of action. Starting this with a nervous sleeplessness,
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: I end at six thirty a m over two hours
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: later with a clear head, but of course the tired
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: feeling lies there A dormant end of section three Section
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: four of Diary of a Suicide by Wallace E. Baker.
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Section four Havana, Friday,
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: May tenth, nineteen twelve, another birthday, my twenty second, and
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: I intend this year to be the best. Yet the
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: past has been the worst and the best. The worst
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: because of my acute nervousness and self consciousness, and my
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: foolish actions during the early months in Havana, best because
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: I woke up from a lethargy and blind groping in
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: the dark to a conscious effort to find myself and
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: be myself, and to this end I have dedicated my
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: twenty second year. I do not expect to work out
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: things to a fine point during this time, but hope
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: to decide on a broad general scheme of life, policy
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: of procedure and philosophy of necessity. The major part of
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: the detail tales will take years to work out. Hope
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: and ambition, tempered by my experience, are dominant, and my
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: calm periods are becoming of longer duration and more frequent occurrence.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: In fact, predominate to a gratifying extent lately, as compared
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: with what has gone before. I start afresh on a
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: year's freedom from sexual excitement or such is my plan
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: for not the least of the problems to work out
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: is that of sex. It will be held to hold
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: myself in check entirely in every respect, but I feel
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: I must in order to collect my thoughts and feelings,
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: which were becoming rather confused on this, as on other subjects.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: Owing to my changeable moods, passions, and feelings, I have
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: the advantage of starting out on the broadest basis possible
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: the agnostic position as I understand it. I have not
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: studied Spencer, nor reduced my agnosticism to any dogmatic position
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: of knowable or unknowable. But always it has been I
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: neither believe nor deny. My mind is open. I am
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: willing to learn to give all who have a serious
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: message a hearing. True. Up to the present, I have
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: not given much serious study to the problem, having read
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: considerably more about philosophy than of it. But I have
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: had that tendency, and being young, yet it is perhaps
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: best that I did not attempt to go too deeply
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: into the problem. Ere this and even now I shall
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: go slow. The question has unconsciously, however, narrowed itself down.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: I have given enough thought to the matter to reject
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: the Christian theory of Christ being the son of God,
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: and leaving out most of the minor religions or philosophies
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: which are obviously full of error, except as there may
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: be a grain of truth here and there among the chaff.
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: There is left such religions or philosophies as theosophy, monism, spiritualism,
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: and those which may be classed under the general head
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: of materialism, rationalism, free thought, positivism, et cetera, et cetera.
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: But as I do not see that any have as
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: their basis absolute truth, that much abused word, I suspect
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: I shall end where I began, as a pragmatic agnostic,
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: denying that we have any absolute truth in our world,
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: whatever may be beyond which we do not know. I
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: have not read James, but will do so. And I
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: think that I shall not give much attention to spiritualism,
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: as no satisfactory evidence seems to support it, and there
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: is too much Charlatanism to offer a fair field for
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: a truth seeker. Havna, Wednesday, May twenty two, nineteen twelve,
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: twelve twelve A. M. It is no use I have
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: to acknowledge defeat. Born with such a jeccoll and high disposition,
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: that I am never normal, either so filled with ideals
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: that everything good and noble seems possible, or so black
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: that I shrink from myself in horror, even though it
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: has been in thought rather than deed, that I have
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: transgressed or been an idealist. It is not that I
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: have contemplated deeds of violence, but one thing, sex is
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: the cause of the perfect hell my life has been.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: During the past year. I have foolishly thought I could
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: make myself what I willed, could be consistent and normal,
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: vain hope. And it needed tonight to show me this.
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: After all my noble aspirations, hopes, love of literature and
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: the beautiful things in life, I could not keep my
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: resolve of my birthday. Torture is the only word for it.
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: My sexual passions, from their first awakening have given me
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: no rest and never will. I have not had at
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: any time a girl who loved me, have never even
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: kissed with almost uncontrollable passion, and yet the ability to
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: be satisfied with embrace and touch rather than final consummation.
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: Yet have I not had that chance with any but
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: the lowest, who filled me with disgusted or else attract
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: me in a mad passion which for the moment is insatiable.
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: Much of this is due to my wretched physical health,
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: wrecked nervous force, and absolute lack of any kind of
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: love for so long that I am too selfish and
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: self centered ever to amount to anything. Who is to
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: blame my father dead? How can I blame him for
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: his share? My mother is the only hope left in
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: the world. Without her, suicide would seem to be the
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: only alternative. And I have blank. What is this, after
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: all but the imagined courage of a weakling, my egoism,
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: the conceit of a degenerate. A month ago, I would
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: not have dared to write this. But unless this summer
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: serves to recuperate me, I must go down rapidly. Having
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: started sinking all round, I dare not go in for
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: anything without a sleepless night. I only write this record
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: now for what use it may be as a human document.
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: It may serve as a warning to those who ignorantly
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: bring children into the world to suffer. I shall be
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: repaid in case I collapse suddenly. It is my express
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: wish that such of my letters, papers, including this and
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: my other diary, as may bear on my struggles against
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: an inevitable fate, may be sent to blank, so that,
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: without using my name in such a way that the
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: family may be involved, he may use such parts of
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: this record and the papers as may help to show
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: the life story of a youth who was prematurely tired
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: if I do not succeed in writing this in fiction
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: form or otherwise myself before the end. Slowly but surely,
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: I am coming to the point where nothing matters. Something
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: always pulls me back before I go too far. But
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: will it always once let me go beyond a certain
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: point in my dark moods, and shame will keep me
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: from attempting to get up again. Deep down in my heart, however,
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: I have had and stilled you have, in my most
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: despairing moment, the conviction that I have in me the
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: ability to do great things, my love of the finer things,
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: keen appreciation of character, so that I see right through
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: many people I meet. Wherefore much of my continuing unpopularity,
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: great care in small details, love of neatness, order, strong passions, enthusiasm,
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: many other things in my good moods which I cannot
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: quite grasp. But my physical weakness annuls everything and leaves
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: me a hopeless weakling, vacillating and desperately unhappy. Havana, Wednesday,
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: June five, nineteen twelve, Feeling very much chastened following the
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: deepest disgust with myself and everyone and everything else for
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: that matter, I must state most emphatically that for the
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: most part, all that has gone before during the past
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: six months at least, is due to disease, not specific
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: but generally run down, nervous, overtired condition of body and mind. Therefore,
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: although to day again I start with hope to fight on,
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: I do so with less wild enthusiasm, less tenseness. After all,
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: the world does not revolve around me. I have sometimes
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: thought it did, or at least acted as if I
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: thought so. Being calmer on my determination, the reactions I
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: trust will be less violent. I have the feeling that
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: I only have to get over this tired, nervous condition
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: to be once and for all on the road to
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: victory over myself. One thing I will do, throw overboard,
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: as it were, my preconceived, half formed ideas and start
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: as a child. Too much have I stuck to convention
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: and prejudice while congratulating myself on my radicalism. Of course,
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: everything is dependent on my recovery of health. Without this,
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: life will indeed be not worth living, because the very
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: things my heart and mind are set on accomplishing will
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: be impossible. And a conventional plotting life devoted to the
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: accumulation of money is impossible for me. Death is much
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: preferable art philosophy. Love of life in its nakedness without
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: false convention, must be my keyword, not for happiness, for
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: that were impossible, but for sufficient interest to carry me
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: through Havana. Saturday, June eighth, nineteen twelve, I am gradually
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: but inevitably coming to the conclusion that the only way
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: to get along is to throw over all that I
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: do believe in and pay the price. If I had
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: done this before, I might have been saved much of
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: this petty personal struggle and put my divine energy into
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: bigger things. I have let false conventions battle with the
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: natural love of freedom and radicalism of an artistic nature,
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: frittered away life forces in unholy passions, where I might
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: have put it into the big struggle. Now I will
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: conquer or die. Victory or death. Death, even by my
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: own hand, is preferable to frittering the tremendous passion and
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: nervous and mental energy I have a way in a
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: life of conventional ease, despising myself and hating others and
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: being hated. Oh if I had only conserved instead of wasted.
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: But even now, at the eleventh hour, it is not
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: too late. Now today I will go forward to my
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: fate Havana Wednesday, June twelfth, nineteen twelve. In further thought
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: over my decision of last Saturday, or rather that which
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: has been growing on me for a long time, I
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: must add that as I am not any too sure
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: as to what I don't believe in, time must be
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: a large factor in the matter. Then again, due to
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: that tired feeling and nervousness I have during the past
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: six months put too much emphasis on the dark side,
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: I have never, for more than the briefest space of time,
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: contemplated self destruction. As I have hinted at several times,
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: the thought has crossed my mind in my darkest moods.
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: But I am not a coward, and to day must
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: go a step further and say that I will fight
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: to the finish against all outside difficulties, as well as
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: ill health and natural defects of temperament and heredity. From
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: now on, any departures from a certain standard until I
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: have changed that standard by thought and experience, I will
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: consider in their proper light of weaknesses to be overcome,
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: all of which may be what I have been reiterating
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: over and over again, but my awakening of to day
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: is a little broader. I leave the standard fairly flexible,
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: but strong enough to be a rock in a stormy
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: sea until the waters are calmer, and then my mind
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: should be clearer so that I can readjust the various
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: uncertainties to a certain point. At least life and a
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: full life rather than mere reason, I think will be
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: the outcome. But reason and philosophy presiding over all. As
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: a but ignant judge, I trust who knows Havana Saturday,
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: June fifteenth, nineteen twelve. My contract is up to day,
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: and for several days earlier in the week I thought
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: of leaving suddenly and getting away from it all for
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: a rest, despite any notice to take effect. On the
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: twenty ninth, I thought it over, however, and from standpoint
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: of unpreparedness, doubt and honor, perhaps did not, or rather
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: will not. As boat leaves tomorrow. In thinking over problem
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: of society, it has occurred to me, or the thought
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: has come to my mind, of what little use the
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: benefactions of rich men are to really help anyone in
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: need in a personal way. I remember how I used
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: to have such a passion for education. I did so
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: want to know. I wrote Carnegie, Patten, Pearson's and E. H. R. Green,
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: not begging for money, but telling of my great desire
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: for an education, and putting it in such a way
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: that I asked the secretary to refer me to any
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: board which they might have had for helping those desirous
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: of obtaining an education. My physical weakness precluded the idea
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: of working my way and studying at the same time.
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: Of course, I received no replies, and I then realized
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: that the most ambitious or deserving might be on their
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: last legs, and all this charity would count for naught.
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: The personal aspect of the question has long been forgotten.
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: My ideas as to the value of a college education
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: in its relation to the larger education of life have changed.
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: Whatever rancor I may have had against these men has gone.
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: My outlook on life is different. The things that count
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: now are few and far between. If my health permits,
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: the necessity of making a living will cause me to
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: write for money to a certain extent, but with a
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: bare living income. I think I should write from my
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: heart because of the great desire, because I look on
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: it as an eye, not a business. However, if my
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: health continues as it is or gets worse. I will
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: not sacrifice what little life I have left on the
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: altar of the modern god money. I shall write in
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: blood the agony that has been eating into my heart
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: and brain, and give it to the world if it
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: will take it for what it is worth. For myself
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: I expect little, but it may help towards a better
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: understanding of natures like mine, and in the future may
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: help towards a little more forbearance attempt to understand on
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: the part of good people. But whether or not I
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: will write it. Before doing so, however, I intend to
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: see that I do not, out of self pity, fall
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: into the error outlined in the December nineteen eleven issue
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: of the International. Upton Sinclair's Delusion, Havana, Tuesday, June twenty five,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: nineteen twelve, seven ten p m. It is getting tiresome
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: these moral reformations and backslidings. But even now I can
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: lay down a preliminary philosophy which I must subscribe to,
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: whether I will or not. Blank gives a general line
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: of conduct which leads to progress in a wide sense,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: and taking account of human nature, its strength and weakness, life,
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: of course comes first unless a man is going to
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: deliberately plan suicide, he must live. All account of death
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: from outside sources must be left out of account because
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: they are outside of his sphere. To influence by living,
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: I mean to touch the depths and the heights, each
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: one according to the strength of his passions his temperament.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: He should not be an ascetic except under certain conditions,
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: and asceticism as a deliberate plan of life is absolutely
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: wrong for a young man. Whether for one who is older,
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: time will tell. For instance, if a man is of
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: a strongly passionate sex nature, he should gratify itself efficiently
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: to save him from tremendous nervous disturbances due to holding
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: himself back all conventional morality or standards. To the contrary,
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: gratification is not only justifiable, but not to gratify is
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: a crime against human nature. If a man is of cool,
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: phlegmatic disposition, a limited asceticism in this as well as
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: other things, may be good rather than otherwise. The above
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: is limited by conditions and circumstances. Disease, of course, should
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: be rigidly guarded against. This is a matter that calls
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: for action by the combined societies of the world. Assuming
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: that the man of artistic temperament takes these precautions and
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: gratifies his passions, he must restrain himself as soon as
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: his gratification becomes a source of weakness rather than of strength.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: In other words, as long as gratification of the senses
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: does not weaken one appreciably that gratification is good and
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: moral and conduces to life. But when it becomes a
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: weakness and threatens the physical and mental strength of a man,
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: he must restrain himself. Life comes first, But by life
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: I mean life with power. Thus anything that makes for
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: power and for a full life and healthy gratification of
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: the senses is good. This is my first definite outlining
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: of the philosophy I have been endeavoring to attain. I
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: have come thus far without reading any philosophy except bare
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: outlines and reviews. Now I shall read and study life
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: and build from these grounds. My philosophy is rather more
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: individualistic than socialistic, but of course it is open to
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: a reconciliation between socialism and anarchism. Conventional views are left
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: entirely out of consideration. It rests with the individual how
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: far he will be guided by precedent and prevailing opinion,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: in a given situation. As far as I am personally concerned,
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: I have reached a state where any sexual gratification is
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: a weakness, and a strict asceticism for a time is
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: a matter of self preservation. Anything else is a deliberate
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: throwing down of my philosophy, and is a weakness of
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: the worst type. And I write this after having constantly
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: violated my decision to hold off, made on my birthday
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: and even before then, and which has just culminated in
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: this outlining of a general course to follow. Holding in
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: view the two objects a full life and a healthy
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: one power and life without power, life is death with
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: means of gratification lacking, one must hold off from baser
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: forms at least until absolutely necessary, and then only on
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: the most infrequent occasions. Keeping these in view, life and power,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: I have something to anchor to while I am struggling
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: towards the light. And I submit this in all seriousness
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: as a good, workable philosophy for a man who is
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: not found himself and has hitherto been groping around blindly
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: in the dark with very little prospect of light. Starting
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: with this, the years must bring more light and the
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: conservation of a love of life and at the same
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: time of power, will keep one in a state to
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: take advantage of any new light on this terrible problem
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: of existence of how to get through life in the
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: best way, for in the final analysis, that is what
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: all philosophy teaches. Thus, in the future gratification may be
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: quite consistent with my philosophy. In my present weakened state,
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: I must hold off if I am to survive. Otherwise
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: it is a case of deliberate suicide, and the only
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: thing to do would be to go ahead and gratify
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: until disease and weakness make it evident that death would
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: be the only relief. Thus I go ahead for the
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: present blank My manifest destiny that of doing something worth
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: while in the world, so that the world will be
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: better for my having lived in it since May tenth,
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: my own birthday. Although on several occasions down to the depths,
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: I have strengthened my purpose, and the lapses are becoming
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: less and less, and the increasing disgust after each is
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: cementing my determination. One only has occurred since Tuesday last,
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: when I outlined my philosophy and I blank. Thus the
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: fight has resolved itself into this. If I can control myself.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: When tired, nervous, and depressed, the victory is won. On
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: all other occasions. I have myself pretty well in hand,
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: and in normal moods, with good health, the outcome seldom
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: seems doubtful. But I must watch the abnormal moods. End
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: of section four Section five of Diary of a Suicide
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: by Wallace E. Baker. This LibriVox recar according is in
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: the public domain. Section five. Havana, Tuesday, July two, nineteen twelve,
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: twelve forty five A M. I don't know whether it
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: was a premonition which caused me to put mourning at
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: the head of my previous entry, because now the same
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: night or the next morning very early, I am obliged
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: to repudiate at all. It is no use. My philosophy
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: as outlined last week would be all right but for
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: two things. That is, my absolute lack of opportunity of
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: touching life and my absolute lack of strength, physical, mental,
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: or moral to cultivate power. Determinism is forced on me
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: against my will. As far as possible, in my good moods,
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: I suppose I shall follow my first philosophy of Tuesday,
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: June twenty five, but nevertheless I am fast being forced
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: to a thorough determinism because I simply cannot control myself
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: what I might have done had I not been forced
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: to become a victim of our commercial system, so that
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: at twenty two I am exhausted, my enthusiasm and hope
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: almost killed by deadly routine and no prospect of relief.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: I do not know, but I think I would have
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: accomplished much under a careful training, or even a fair
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: opportunity to express my individuality. Tonight everything seems hopeless. Whether
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: insanity is creeping on me, I do not know. I
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: simply must have sexual intercourse to relieve the strain, and
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: it is the lack of it which brings on these moods,
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: if for nothing else, woman is a necessity for me
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: to relieve the great strain when routine becomes so deadly
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: as to tempt me to throw everything to the winds.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: If I could come home and have a woman, I
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: am sure that I could be saved much, if not all,
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: this the worst of it at least. But our damnable
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: conventions keep me from them, and keep them from me,
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: even though many women are enduring tortures of unrelieved emotion
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: for lack of what I could give them. Oh, life
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: is indeed hell. Why or wherefore I don't know, and
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: I am fast reaching the point where I care less.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: In an evil moment, I consented to stay on here
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: for a few weeks, longer for a consideration of my
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: return fair to New York. This means three more weeks
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: before I can get away from this damnable place, which
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: has been getting on my nerves more and more so
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: that I never hated anything as I hate this island
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: and everything and everyone on it. Havana, July three, nineteen twelve. Well,
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: despite my little outburst of early yesterday morning, I am
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: still in the fight. After every defeat, I arise, chastened, perhaps,
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: but with a growing feeling that I will win. I
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: must confirm and add to my philosophy as outlined on
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: June twenty fifth. As I wrote yesterday, determinism seems to
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: be true as things are at present. But even accepting
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: this does not make me any the less of a fighter,
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: for it is quite consistent with that philosophy that my
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: determinism is to be something, and the weak periods are
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: only to strengthen me as to the life part of it.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: That is still a little doubtful. I have not touched
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: it enough. My experiences have not been broad enough with
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: the other sex for me to throw over all conventions.
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: For I know from experience and the experiences of others,
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: that when a woman plays fast and loose, she loses
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: so much that even conventionalism sometimes seems preferable to a
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: loosening of the bonds. My idea was to idealize the
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: relations have all children legitimate. While I think my part
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: would be done all right, I doubt other men and women. Besides,
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: I have always had an unconscious and sometimes conscious feeling
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: of superiority to women. This has been so indefinite, however,
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: that I do not lay too much stress on it
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: at present. I must reiterate power as the keynote every week,
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: yielding impossibly to me at least of what I will
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: call the impulsive philosophy, That is, philosophy of being guided
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: by emotion and sentiment to the exclusion of reason. Reason
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: must co ordinate, if not dominate, and at least impulse
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: must not dominate. This is my second outline, But I
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: am going to disregard the foolish system of dates. Time
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: is to attain anything. I realize the folly of saying
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: at a certain date I will stop this, or that
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: I will reform in this, or that All I can
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: do is to attempt to live up to a certain
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: standard as fast as I have decided it to be best,
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: and to endeavor to drop off everything that pulls me
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: down as soon as possible. Havana, July twenty, nineteen twelve,
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: last day in Havana. At last, my counting of each
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: day as bringing nearer to my goal is about to end.
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: Whether my return is productive of results immensurate with my
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: expectations or not. My relief at the suspension of the
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: agony of the struggle down here is so deep and
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: heartfelt that I could shout for joy. I at least
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: have several good weeks behind me, and every day in
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: which I make the slightest progress in any direction whatever
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: is bound to react favorably. For the present. I reiterate
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: my outline of philosophy of June twenty fifth and July third.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: I intend to blank control, pending a readjustment at any rate,
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: for a year. Intend to have nothing to do with
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: fast women. I do not say anything about intercourse without
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: monetary consideration, but am unlikely to have much chance, as
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: I will not be looking for it until I am
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: settled in relaxation. Will be the rule with the least
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: worry and the line of least resistance. For a month
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: or so, I should be in a much better frame
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: of mind to accomplish anything than by keeping up this
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: constant nervous strain. Hope and confidence mark the last day,
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: and I count the year as a leaf in my
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: book of experience, and looking back, do not regret my
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: year in the Tropics. August oneh nineteen twelve. Blank has
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: a cottage for the summer. The month of July was
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: the best one for some time. I have at last
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: realized the futility of expecting to make great changes in
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: my habits of life in a day, and therefore attach
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: less importance to a certain date for this or that,
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: as I have done previously. Suffice it that after a
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: month I can look back and notice a slight improvement,
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: more self control, and a stronger determination. This I find
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: is the case now, and with the prospect of a
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: month of healthy activity and absence of nervous and morbid thoughts,
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: the present month should be one of the best of
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: the year. And if a quiet determination without the passion
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: of heretofore will help me. This seems assured system will
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: be the keynote as far as it does not interfere
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: with the rights of others. For here I cannot be
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: too selfish in my attempt to reach a certain standard.
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: And besides, I have no intention of becoming a slave
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: to system, as I heartily dislike red tape. But I
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: can start preparing myself for the big fight when I
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: return home next month by making each day count. August twelveth,
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: nineteen twelve. Since the first I have been through an
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: intense struggle, the worst yet, being greatly disappointed at the
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: unfriendly attitude of the family to my ideas. Disgusted and tired,
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: day by day, I became more worried. Heated argument resulted
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: in open charges of immorality on their part, that is,
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: they considered my views immoral. Last night was the culmination
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: of all this. For the first time, I actually threw
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: over all my plans and ambition and contemplated suicide. Many
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: times the had crossed my mind before, but it was
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: always as a possibility in the dim future. But yesterday
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: the thought materialized. I carried on a terrific mental struggle
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: in bed and the will to live triumphed. I will
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: fight on, but I will be more and more egotistical.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: I realize the vast gulf between me and the rest
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: of my family. It is insurmountable, and my last hope
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: now centers on my return to blank My mother is pliable,
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: and I may be able to sufficiently dominate my brother
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: and my sister to fight it out there without too
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: much interruption, which is the bone of my present situation. Friday,
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: August twenty three, nineteen twelve, Gradually throwing off that almost
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: inborn habit we have of acting as opposed for others,
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: I must sometimes act in a way which must appear immoral,
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: when such is far from the actual truth In the
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: endeavor weak, it is true as yet to rob above
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: good and evil. The only criterion is sometimes whether such
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: and such an act makes for weakness. If it does,
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: it transgresses against nature. And I make the definition that
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: anything which does not go against nature is neither good
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: nor evil. From this point of view, moral issues do
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: not enter into the question to the same extent I
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: am going to put into writing the distinction I make
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: between conceit and egoism Conceit is exemplified by the young
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: man who, shallow of heart and brain, dresses in fancy
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: clothes and parades around so that the girls can admire him.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: This is one instance I take to contrast it with
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: blank with the desire to express myself, to be an artist,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: to live the fullest life possible, or whatever my precise
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: object may be. It is absolutely necessary to be damn independent.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: I have found the family very impatient and out of
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: accord with my views, and rejecting theirs of a man
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: very conventional. I must, of necessity make a break, because
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: the petty bickering engendered is bound to dissipate my energy
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: without anything being accomplished. Having attained more positive views, later
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: I may see fit to resume the old status, being
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: safeguarded by grim determination and absolute sincerity as far as possible,
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: believing as I do, the truth is only relative. The
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: conflict is not only between reason and passion, but also
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: between naturalism and if I may put it, unnaturalism, that is,
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: I want to act natural according to my nature, rather
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: than to set up an ideal opposed to my nature
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: and endeavor to live up to it. The only trouble
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: is that I have various moods, and at the time
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: I really believe that each one is the right one. However,
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: by gradually dropping on natural habits caused by trying to conform,
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: I hope to reach an impressionable position in so far
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: that I am willing to lose everything for freedom to
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: live my own life, believing that this seeming selfishness makes
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: for the best for myself, family, and all others, Because
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: even though wrong in many things, if my nature is wrong,
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: it is better to be wrong and be myself than
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: to be what I honestly believe to be wrong and
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: please others. Sunday, September oneh nineteen twelve, beginning a new month.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: Although full of hope as usual at the beginning of anything,
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: I also feel rather humble after my previous egoism. Thus
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: I go from mood to mood. But the turning point
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: is at hand. I cannot be tossed around like a
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: bark without rudder or sail much longer, and with my
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: tendency to extremes. Feeling that I have much power for
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: good or evil in this world, one course I must
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: enter on with the greatest determination, having willed to live
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: at the moment of despair. I must needs live with
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: sincerity and without conforming a little more, forbearance will do
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: me good. And certainly the events of the past few
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: weeks have been a sore trial. I have undoubtedly made
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: a fool of myself, but still acknowledging my ideal feel
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: determined as ever, if chastened, I candidly must say or
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: write that blank questions are still open, but I intend
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: to get right down to action towards a literary career,
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: meanwhile gradually attaining the thing which I have been struggling for.
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: Not peace of mind exactly, but the feeling that I
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: am doing my best in a sincere manner under the circumstances,
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: namely that I must go through life with health impaired
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: to a greater or less extent, that I am inclined
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: to extremes pessimistic or very cheerful, even childish by turns,
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: that life appeals to me when I think is terribly inevitable,
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: That I have a tendency to degeneracy at times which
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: I feel I can overcome to a certain an extent
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: by heroic measures. That the happiness of a home and
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: children of my own may be denied me with these
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: prospects before me. My fighting blood is up, and I
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: simply have got to go on and up or disintegrate altogether.
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: There is no half way measure for me, and I
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: would have it, So I write with absolute sincerity. Now
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: October two, nineteen twelve, another month rolls on. Despite my
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: having written that I do not count by dates. Now
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: I find it convenient to note whether or not I
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: have made any progress In this way. I have the
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: same old struggle between passion and intellect was continued at
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: one time intellectual and philosophical calmness animating me, and then
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: low passion. But the net is surely but slowly faster
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: now closing. I came home, loafed around the house, read, dreamed,
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: did nothing. Then, in a birth list of energy, purchased
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: a typewriter and unabridged dictionary supplies, taking some seventy dollars
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: from my scanty savings. Later I repented of this, Why
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: all this preliminary to a conventional routine existence. Why not
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: go away, gamble, attempt to gain all by a single throw?
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: Why struggle to no end? But deep down something always says,
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: go on, you have it in you. Well, I recovered
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: myself again calling on Nietzsche as my guide, not that
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: I had read his works, but I had read about
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: him and his philosophy of the superman. Will to live
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: because it is painful, and I will take a fierce
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: joy in life. It is hard to drop those passionate
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: dreams born of romance. But I know that happiness is
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: not for me, not the happiness of convention or even
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: sex unconventionally, but perhaps a certain amount of intellectual satisfaction,
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: and the thrill that comes from reading the masterminds which
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: respond in me. The thrill as I feel willing to
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: make any sacrifice for my ideals, reaffirmed by a perusal
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: of several of Ibsen's plays within the last few days,
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: Schopenhauer's Studies in Pessimism, and a part read perusal of
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: Haldane mac Fall's book about Ibsen. As I read Schopenhauer
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: to day, I realized suddenly that there are more than
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: one varieties of dolls houses, and it is indeed one
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: that those who go on living in their dreams away
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: from life, live in, hoping some day to have happiness
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: or pleasure from the realization of their dreams. No too
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: long have I postponed facing the situation. No longer must
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: I dream, I must act. I cannot fail. Worldly honor
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: is not success. If I be true to myself, I
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: succeed the world. Notwithstanding I have a few more studies
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: to make. Rather, I mean, I am just beginning before
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: I have a definite philosophy, subject of course, always to
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: change as new experience or observation serves to confirm or reject. Schopenhauer, Ibsen, Tolstoy,
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: Nietzsche and others must still give me their message in
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: full before I can glean from them sufficient to test
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: my own observations. But in the final analysis, my own individuality,
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: my own judgment, must be supreme. I yield to none.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: Schopenhauer is right when he says we should not fill
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: up on other men's learning before we have experiences ourselves.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: Blank has been one of my great mistakes, and the
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: resulting confusion has paralyzed me. But now I read, but
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: to learn, not to adopt without searching criticism. And meanwhile,
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: I may begin working so long as I keep unsullied
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: by any more very bad outbursts. Forward, I must go.
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: And if I am carried off at any time, I
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: have not failed. The ideal Still being nursed with that
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: tender passionate regret than Emerson speaks of a new era
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: is dawning for me. In spite of misunderstanding, seeming selfishness
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: on my part, sacrifice of my best nature, the spark
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: still lives a few more months of renunciation, and I
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: have myself in hand, and then whatever the difficulties ever,
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: onward and upward. End of section five, Section six of
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: Diary of a Suicide by Wallace E. Baker. This LibriVox
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. Section six December thirty,
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: nineteen twelve, six thirty pm. A hurried writing previous to
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: departure for Chicago. The past three months ones of disillusionment
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: and blasted hopes, future uncertain, but atmosphere cleared for anything
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: that turns up suddenly decides, adding last night Sunday to
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: leave for Chicago, slept on more or less irregularly, and
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: had trunk packed early this morning, previously ready for quick departure, tickets,
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: et cetera by noon, theater this afternoon, and everything nearly
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: ready now turning point in so far as leaving future
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: to chance instead of carefully planned out course blank for
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: my temperament to settle down to any such dull routine
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: as seems necessary to get on, as others have. Besides,
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: I have lost a certain grip I had before the
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: early part of this year, brought on acute nervousness, and
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: it needs quick action to put me into touch with life.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: Slow and sure is not my forte, but fast and intermittent,
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: and I have to face it whether I will or not. Chicago,
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: January twenty ninth, nineteen thirteen. If I wrote that the
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: last month was the worst I had ever experienced, I
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: would probably repeat myself, as I have had some very
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: bad and frequent way worsts during the past year and
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: a half. But nevertheless, I never hoped to feel so
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: utterly despairing this side of eternity. I arrived in Chicago
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: on December thirty one, an hour before the new year.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: I was met by my uncle and proceeded to his
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: house with him. He is a vegetarian, a raw food one,
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: an ardent and unmerciful propagandist, his wife a chronic invalid,
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: cold and lifeless. There was really no room for me,
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: and I slept in an unheeded room where they kept
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: fruit and vegetables. It was cold, too cold, to dress
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: in without great discomfort. But Uncle said the air was
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: good for me and the fruit had to be taken
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: care of any way. Now I am generally open to
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: reason and persuasion, even if I do act on my
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: own impulses and ideas eventually, but I will not be forced.
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: I have fled from one refuge to another in the
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: hope of being free, of being able to be myself,
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: and Uncle's insistence on my not doing this and that
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: resulted in argument but no open break. The result was
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: that everything seemed to fall from under my feet, and
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: on January tenth I made up my mind to commit
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: suicide on my twenty third birthday May tenth next. Of course,
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: this was not the result entirely or even principally of
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: my trouble with Uncle. That was only important in so
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: far as it added the last straw to my blank misunderstood,
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: and if not persecuted, at least worried beyond endurance by
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: my relatives. My reasons, in a few words, for deciding
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: on suicide were one disillusionment what had sustained me through
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: the mental and nervous shocks, sleepless nights, ecstasies, and despair
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: of the years since my sixteenth, although it began before
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: That was the thought which I dare not acknowledge to myself,
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: much less expressed to others, that I was, if not
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: a genius, at least a talented man with the ability
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: to do big things. Sometimes business success appealed to me,
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: at others, science or philosophy, mental and intellectual pre eminence,
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: then artistic effort, vaguely the idea of being an author, dramatist,
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: or literary and social reform leader. Up to the day
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: I left Cuba, despite reactions and pitiful weakness, I kept
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: my faith in myself in my mission. Reading Ibsen only
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: served to confirm it. In blank, I still had it.
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: I lost it in blank to a great extent. After
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: I had purchased a typewriter and sat down to work.
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: My courage failed. I could do nothing. Reading Bernard Shaw
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: showed me that much that I had thought to be
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: artistic temperament, ideals, sentiment was plain romantic illusion. And I
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: did not feel that I was called upon then to
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: sacrifice myself for humanity without the esthetic pleasure my illusions
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: had given me. Before this, I had unwittingly cloaked my
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: own desires and passions under the guise of doing something
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: worth while, of uplifting and what not. Curiously enough, all
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: my ambition ideas, et cetera returned on further reading of
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: Shaw in Chicago. After I had started going on the
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: assumption of suicide. On May tenth, I took them back
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: with the idea that now I was through with romantic
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: illusion and prepared to face reality. Before recurring to this,
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: I shall go on to the other suicide reasons two,
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: the continual moving about trying to find a resting place
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: and consequent disgust and quarrels with relatives, and the feeling
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: that I was indeed alone and without a home. Leaving
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: Cuba in Hope, I left Blank, swearing they would never
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: hear from me again. I left Blank with very much
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: the same idea, but before leaving wrote a very short
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: letter to Nellie informing her that I had nothing against
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: her and thought as much of her as ever. Uncle
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: was the last straw, although I could not have the
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: least doubt of his sincere desire to benefit me, and
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: when I realized this, I tried to take advantage of
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: his advice and follow it to a great extent, But
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: his wife chilled me, and she really didn't want me.
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: Of course, she wasn't well, and Uncle told me that
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: but for that he would have had me stay with
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: them and take a good room in which they had
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: a rumor Aunt had advised against my coming. She did
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: not want to be bothered. However, all this only added
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: to my feeling of loneliness, of homelessness, and I took
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: a small room after sundry hints from my aunt. Three
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: related to the above was the deeper feeling that I
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: had not place in the world, forced to work myself
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: into a nervous wreck when I wanted to shine in intellect,
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: laughed at by my acquaintances, for I had no friends
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: because of my theories, impracticality, temperament, inability to get on
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: with people socially due to a peculiar inherent shyness, not
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: lost by contact with people in business, where I had
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: a reputation even for nerve or perhaps sometimes impertinence. Although
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: I meant no harm, I was rather sharp in repartee,
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: and suppose I showed a feeling of superiority, whereas said
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: acquaintances openly at least made me feel inferior, unsocial, a crank,
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: always in the wrong what was the use, I said,
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: time and again of my brilliance, of my love of study,
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: of esthetics, of my careful life, if it was turned
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: on me and made into a fault a crime. Four
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: fearful of gradual approach of insanity brought on by above
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: causes and degenerate stock on my father's side. I have
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: no proof of this except that my father was small, nervous,
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: and vacillating, and I am sure it is only my
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: mother's blood that has saved me thus far. Five The
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: thought that my ideas et cetera, instead of being due
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: to higher qualities, due to this degenerate tendency or strain,
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: in short, that I was a degenerate weakling, doomed to
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: drift on until insanity or death ended at all. The
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: above caused my resolution to commit suicide. Taken on January tenth.
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: My hand is tired now, but I have much to
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: write of subsequent days. I leave tomorrow morning for San
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: Francisco and shall fill in details to date, either on
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: train or there, Denver, Colorado, February two, nineteen thirteen. To
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: continue where I left off. The sixth reason, the last,
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: but not the least, to use a hackney term is
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: six sex. I have previously gone into this at some length,
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: so little remains to be written. To use a medical term,
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: I presume my affliction may be called erratomnia. My passion
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: ungratified except with mercenary women, has been a terrible thing.
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: If I could have had a little satisfaction even without
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: actual intercourse in my youth, as other fellows have, I
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: might have been spared the suffering mental and physical caused
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: by my random attempts to feed my insatiable hunger. Not
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: having anything pleasant to look back upon in an emotional
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: way has probably contributed more than any one thing to
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: my despair of the future. When in desperation, just after
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: my twentieth birthday I first had intercourse with a prostitute,
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: I made little distinction between moral and immoral women. That is,
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: some women I felt naturally attracted to. Others repulsed me,
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: and this attraction, physical or mental, I was generally unable
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: to follow up more and practically every case, with one
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: or two exceptions, every prostitute I had intercourse with was
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: a source of bitter disappointment and constant recriminations by my bitter,
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: outraged nature. I worried and worried over these downfalls, as
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: I invariably considered them after the one or two exceptions, however,
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: left me with no feelings of disgust or disappointment. I
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: enjoyed them thoroughly. They were with women who had a
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: strong attraction to me, and I would not have changed
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: them from many a virtuous woman except for the experience
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: of being the first. Altogether, I have not had intercourse
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: with more than twenty women, and most of them of
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: the shortest being generally driven by strong passion without a
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: worthy object. Many a time I cursed myself, however, for ever,
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: beginning at about the same time as my first fall,
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: I first touched liquor. I often feel that if I
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: had been told by my parents, I might not have
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: taken the first downward step and waited until I could
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: give my emotion a healthy outlet. On honorable terms. As
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: it is, I have lost something which is the cause
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: of my condition of despair, and it will take a long,
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: slow process of upbuilding to give me back my enthusiasm
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: and grip on life. But events of today and yesterday
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: give me hope and encouragement. Denver, Colorado, February five, nineteen
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: thirteen to go back to my story. After deciding on
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: January tenth to commit suicide. On May tenth, my troubles
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: became worse instead of better. The will to live rebelled
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: against this decision, and I endeavored to drown the still
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: small voice, and succeeded in doing so, only to have
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: it come up again. Only one reaction in Chicago, however,
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: amounted to anything in my usual impulsive emotional manner. After
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: reading Shaw's Quintessence of Ibsimism, my old feelings about art
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: and literature returned with force, augmented by the depth of
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: the preceding condition of pessimism and hopelessness. For a week,
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: I felt like a genius. Went about full of esthetic
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: feelings courage. I exercised twice a day, thus conquering an
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: habitual physical laziness, walked with a springy step inhaling the
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: cold air enthusiastically. In short, it was the same old story.
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: I fed my esthetic feelings at the art gallery, library,
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: and theater. I attended several performances at the Fine Arts
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: theater of the Irish Players and enjoyed their simple, honest humor.
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: By Friday, it began to peter out. Depression unaccountable as
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: usual began to come over me. I shook it off,
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: but it could not be gainsaid, And on Saturday night,
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: January twenty fifth, I attended a performance of Strindberg's Creditors
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: and the Stronger at the Chicago Little Theater, with ill
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: suppressed feelings of impending disaster, which, however, I realized as
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: of old, were temporary and unfounded, perhaps, but nevertheless enough
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: to give me hours of hell. Hell. Hell. The circumstance
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: agreed with my mood, and in a way awakened my
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: ambition to have my own work performed and read. But
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: the realization after of the work utter lack of appreciation
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: of such work of genius by the general English and
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: American reading public, and moreover, the ever present dislike and
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: fear of going back to office work and working on
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: from year to year to no purpose until insanity or
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: death ended at all, brought on all past forebodings, and
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: I went down in the closed district, found a woman
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: more too, and disgusted myself with life to the limit,
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: went home and cursed, raved, and what not, until exhaustion
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: brought on fitful wild slumber, and I awoke with a
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: headache weak, repentant, defiant, and I know not what I
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: might write here give the immediate supplementary cause of my
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: suicide decision, over and above those enumerated. As long as
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: I was at work, I still had hope. In Havana,
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: I was weaker, felt more poisoned physical and mentally than
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: before or since, but the thought of artistic success sustained me.
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: I looked forward to dropping the intolerable burden on finishing
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: my work there and going ahead and becoming a writer.
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: This kept me on through it all. When I worked
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: on Sheer Nerve and every day was an agony in Blank,
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: I still cherished the delusion I was a genius, a superman,
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: and would show them all. When I settled down in
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: Blank and bought a typewriter, I started typewriting my shorthand
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: notes put down in Havana, describing my moods, passions, in
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: various mental conditions, having in mind writing a book the
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: youth who was prematurely tired mental struggles and states. On
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: getting down to it, however, the thought that if I
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: was to do anything, it must be done. While the
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: money I had saved by scrimping, scraping, sacrificing, social life, amusement,
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: almost everything lasted, which would not be any too long,
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: and then the old agony of uncongenial, hellish work. This
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: thought took away everything. The bottom fell out, and from
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: that time on last September and October, I have steadily
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: lost all confidence and hope in myself and my grip
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: on life. The thought of going back to work, the
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: mental state of which it had been the product, haunted
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: me unceasingly. I dared not face the situation. I quarreled
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: at home with reason, however, fled to Arthur's house in
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: blank the wild idea I had conceived in of disappearing,
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: going away secretly and suddenly returned. No matter where I turned,
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: there seemed no refuge from my own diseased mind. Wild
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: anarchical schemes entered my head. Now I understood why men
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: killed went insane. Before I had experienced passion good and bad,
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: honest and dishonest, clean and sane and unclean and insane,
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: poetic frenzy, glowing emotional enthusiasm. And now new ranges of
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: wildness came to me. I cursed myself, my parents, Heaven
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: and Earth. Then the reaction brought sorrow and spasmodic attempts
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: at reparation, I destroyed my books and objects of fond remembrance.
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: The next day repented and endeavored to undo the damage.
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: This began in Havana, continued in blank, and became worse
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: in Blank. Then, in a sudden impulse, I decided to
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: go away from it all, used the excuse of going
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: to California with my aunt, then to Chicago, which I
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: really intended to do. In Chicago, I at first felt
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: like making a new start, but after accepting a position
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: I had a foreboding I should fall down on it,
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: and I cursed the social system and employing class for
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: not offering me a living salary for just as much
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: work as I could stand and have leisure for writing, study,
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: et cetera. Death seemed preferable to working and dreading to
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: go back to what it had represented in Havana and
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: New York previous to that, I made the suicide decision.
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: The reasons enumerated all came to me night after night
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: as I lay awake and I called for death. It
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: was this dread of work that finally took the ground
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: away from under my feet. I felt in my heart
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: that with the weekly income of twenty dollars to twenty
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: five dollars. I would persist, then fight my mental disabilities,
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: finding consolation and reading, studying, especially philosophy, and writing. My
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: idea would be not to write with the idea of
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: making money, but of making literature. I got cold feet
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: whenever I thought of the sordid commercialism of present American authorship.
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: My ideas and ideals, delusions, illusions, call them what you will,
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: were too strong to face the facts. I had wild
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: ideas of laying my case before some rich man, or
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: at least some institution endowed by one, seeing if they,
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: out of pity, sympathy, or some other feeling, could be
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: induced to allow me an income of twenty to twenty
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: five dollars per week and not require of me definite results.
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: I thought of going to sociologists, insanity experts, those whom
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: we read so much about in the papers, who are
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: always talking of reform, eugenics, social service. But the realization
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: that these glittering generalities meant nothing to one poor, weak,
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: degenerate individual like me deterred me. Two other reasons kept
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: me back. The first self respect, for despite my weaknesses
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: and downfalls, I still had an inordinate pride and repulsed pity, sympathy,
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: and felt how humiliating it would be to depend on
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: someone else like that, even were such a wild idea possible,
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: wild idea. Indeed, I remember the letters I wrote in
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: the heyday of my ambition and enthusiasm to Carnegie, Patten, E. H. R.
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: Green and several others asking for a hearing before some
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: board to further a education, and the fact of hearing nothing.
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: Time and again I had bitterly reflected, what good is
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: all this charity social work? It is all general. Where
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: does my personal case come in. Who is there to
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: give me a little human consideration, a helping hand, encouragement, sociability, love, Reformers,
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: women reformers, and social workers spend their efforts in closing
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: up districts, scattering prostitutes, making it difficult to gamble, and
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: generally taking away the means for such as me to
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: forget our troubles now and again, but not a hand
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: is lifted to save me from insanity or death by
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: my own hand. Outside of this feeling of death being
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: preferable to the humiliation and shuddering at the shocks to
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: my sensitive nature which would be engendered by making public
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: this record, there was the additional feeling that, instead of
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: freedom from the bondage of poverty resulting from such an appeal,
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: confinement would be the result. I dread this about as
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: much as going back to work, because the sanctity, jealous regard,
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: and fear about my personality. My individuality is such that
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: if I thought that the result of an appeal would
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: be confinement, I would welcome death as a gift from heaven.
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: I am an agnostic, and philosophically at least an anarchist.
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: I want to be free, to glory in liberty, to
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: have no boss, to be able to develop my intellect.
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: To do this, I am willing to pay the price
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: of keeping within the law, to refrain from indulging sexually
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: more than seems absolutely necessary. But I cannot look forward
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: to being fed and given a place to rest in
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: and otherwise allowed to develop in my own way, but
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: not being allowed freedom of action and residence. I am
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: not insane now, but any attempt at coercion or confinement
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: would drive me violently insane. I should beat at the
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: doors of my cell, curse everything, and die raving. And
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: it is the fear of confinement that it keeps me
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: from submitting this to those who could probably save me
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: if they would. Before the day when my last dollar
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: is gone comes, I may, in desperation, decide to risk
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: this in the hope of being allowed to live in
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: my own way rather than commit suicide. But I don't know.
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: End of section six, Section seven of Diary of a
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: Suicide by Walter E. Baker. This LibriVox recording is in
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: the public domain. Section seven, Denver, Colorado, February sixth, nineteen thirteen.
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: After that fall in Chicago, after Strindberg Saturday, January twenty fifth,
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: Hope left me until the thirtieth, leaving that day for Frisco.
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: A certain old time grim resolution to make another big
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: effort took possession of me, but to no purpose. As usual,
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: At noon of the thirty first, I changed trains at
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: La Junta for a side trip to Denver. While on
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: the way to Denver, I became acquainted with the man
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: who put me back in fighting mood for several days.
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: Our conversation started when he asked permission to sit beside me,
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: which was unnecessary but polite. He casually asked if I
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: was going to stay in Denver. I said no, that
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: I was merely on a visit. I asked to be
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: referred to a hotel. He told me of the blank
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: kept by his brother. We talked along and he painted
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: Colorado in glowing colors. Said he had left New York
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: twenty two years ago and with the exception of one
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: year in Texas, had lived in Denver ever since. To
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: his mind, there was no place like it. He told
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: me business was quiet, but that I could undoubtedly get
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: something within a short time. He invited me to call
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: at his house on Sunday. We arrived Friday night, the
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: thirty first, and he pointed out the hotel tell from
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: the station and hurried off. Saturday. I took sightseeing car
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: through city and Sunday foothills trip. The air was fine,
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: as he had enthusiastically said, and the bright appearance of
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: things despite a snow storm on Saturday, argued well for
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: this as a healthy, bright, beautiful city and all he
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: said it was. I called on him Sunday and found
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: he had a beautiful house, a pleasant wife, and two
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: fine children. The little girl of three took to me
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: right away, which surprised them, but not me, as children
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: do take to me. The boy of thirteen was also
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: very enthusiastic, bright and friendly, and after supper we three
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: grown ups had a pleasant talk on various subjects. I
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: left with a delightful feeling of having had a glimpse
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: of a nice home, which brought back all my thoughts
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: of times past of a home with a lovely wife
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: and children on my knee, dreams which in my bad
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: periods I had rejected as hopeless for me. Thus to
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: taking away a great spur to work and ambition impulsively.
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: The next day I put in my ticket for refund,
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: being willing in my enthusiasm to lose eleven dollars or
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: so for baggage which had gone on to Frisco, to
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: say nothing of freight charges of over seven dollars including
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: boxing for return to Denver. Thus I expect to pull
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: out ten dollars of my forty nine dollars seventy five
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: cents for ticket from Chicago Fair to Denver, being twenty
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: two sixty tourists. I give these figures to show how
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: great was my ecstasy on Monday morning, February third, perhaps
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: the last time I shall feel so optimistic and in
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: love with everything great enough to make me without work
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: and less than one hundred dollars in cash. Drop eighteen
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: dollars carelessly and without worry me who had skimped and
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: scraped ever since starting working, although only to lose recklessly
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: on impulses. Then I went after work in the same spirit,
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: called on the Chamber of Commerce, was referred to two
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 1: reliable employment agencies, went to the typewriter companies and visited
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: one prospective employer. On Tuesday, I visited three and could
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 1: probably have landed one, but my old bugaboo. The reaction
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: had begun to set in, and at five o'clock Tuesday,
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: after lying down in my room at the hotel, I
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: got up, hurriedly dressed, rushed to the railroad ticket office
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 1: and asked to have my baggage stopped. My ticket had
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: gone in for refund, and the freight agent promised to
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 1: telegraph immediately to hold baggage if not already sent. Yesterday
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: I found it had been sent, and now await returns
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 1: on that and my ticket. When I got these, I
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 1: thought of going on to Frisco and ending it all there.
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: Last night I wrote a despairing letter home, offering to
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 1: return if they would send me fifty dollars but did
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: not mail it, and this morning tore it up, merely
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: writing saying I would be here until the latter part
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: of this month in case the family had any proposition
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 1: to make to me or money to send. If they
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: ask me to return and send some money, I probably will.
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: Otherwise I shall probably go to Frisco with a week
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: or two weeks expenses in my pocket, after paying fare
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: and finishing this story. I say probably in both cases
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: because I now realize my hopeless lack of will power,
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: my whole life practically being impulse with a delusive current
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 1: of purpose running through it. February six, nineteen thirteen, ten
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: thirty seven p m. This morning I cast out hope. Tonight.
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 1: I feel that beneath all my degeneracy and weakness, I
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: am a genius, and I feel that I cannot die
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: without leaving something behind. No, I will fight. It is
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: harder for my yielding, but I cannot give up without
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: a struggle somewhere, and at some time I must prove
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: that I am something besides a weakling. Good and evil
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: predominate by turns, love and hate, weakness and strength. Reconciliation
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 1: is the solution. I have just read an article in
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: the International for November nineteen eleven. J. William Lloyd, Philosopher
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 1: of the Paradox, and it gives me new faith in myself, Denver, Colorado,
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 1: February eighth, nineteen thirteen. Yesterday was a good day. I
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: went to bed feeling the same way as when I
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: wrote the above, and even felt I had made a discovery,
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: or rather discovered or realized an old truth in its
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: application to my case, namely moderation. Instead of going to
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: the extreme in one direction, as I have done, I said,
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: go as far as the conditions permit, but cease before
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: the pleasure does. Applying this to intellect, it would mean
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 1: study philosophy, but don't overwork it. Dream with the poets,
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: but not too much. In this plan, Strindbergh, Shaw, Ibsen
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: and others all have their place. Women well the same here,
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: quit before becoming weary, and a mental reservation to endeavor
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: to hold off more and more, but not to take
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: it to heart. If not able to this is a
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: natural weakness and is good if not too much. Can
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: I do it? That is the question. If I can
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: tide over that terrible reaction that comes several times a week,
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: and sometimes night after night, I think I can endure
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: life or hell as I am coming to regard it.
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 1: Reversing the conventional view, I might say life is hell
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: and we have nothing to look forward to, which is worse. Therefore,
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 1: if there is any future life, it must be better.
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 1: Whether this is logical or not, I don't know, but
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: it looks good to me, even if not altogether original.
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: I have been reading Strindberg at the Denver Library the
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: last few days. I have read Countess Julia, The Dream Play,
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: The Link, and The Dance of Death. I enjoyed them,
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: which is a matter of course, as I always understand
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: and enjoy deeply the work of genius, especially so called
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: degenerate genius. Last night, some time or other, I dropped Hope,
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 1: only to pick her up again, for she must be
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: a woman. She tantalizes me so much, Denver, Colorado, Monday,
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: February tenth, nineteen thirteen. Yesterday, as the day wore on,
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 1: gloom prevailed increasing until last night. But I clenched my
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: fists and grit my teeth this morning, and will go
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: on three months to a day to my birthday. I
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: notice who I am always looking for auspicious dates for
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 1: a new start. The principal issue is clear. I must
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 1: crucify my perverted, hereditary sexual appetites absolute continents, accept under
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: favorable conditions. As these conditions are unlikely to her as
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: I am not going looking for them, namely that a
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 1: woman yield from pure love or passion, and the only
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: other alternative is marriage. I have a big fight on
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: but as the issue is life with honor or death
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: with or without honor, I feel I shall make this
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 1: stand at last, after which the fight will be easier
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 1: if without the prospect of happiness. For after all, I
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: must not expect happiness. I must learn to live without it,
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 1: to make my life represented by my work, and finally
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: I may attain a degree of peace and rest, if
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: not happiness. Yes, crucified the Devil, New York, Sunday, February
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: twenty three, nineteen thirteen. Arrived here last Tuesday night, the
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: eighteenth Thursday, on bad attack of grip. Misery, of course
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 1: induced exceeding pessimism. But although physically miserable, my mental condition
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 1: is hopeful. Shall endeavor to remain in New York on
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 1: whether I get well quick and get work quick. As
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: I have just twenty four dollars in cash left from
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: the four hundred I saved in Havana, with ten dollars
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: from railway refund coming some time. If health and work
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 1: come out, then it is only a matter of being
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 1: able to keep it up. If not, pride humbled back
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 1: to Blank apropos of this, I am not so sure
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 1: but that I made a bigger fool of myself than
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: others whom I consigned to that class. Have been with
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 1: old friend Blank first time in five years, with exception
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 1: of one brief day, he has changed considerably. Now is
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 1: all for experience and practicality theories merely a sideline, and
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 1: of course for both of us to live it must
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: be so. New York, February twenty eighth, nineteen thirteen. I
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: leave tomorrow for Blank, my last trip on the eve
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: of a new month. I feel indifferent. Hopelessness took possess
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 1: of me several days ago, and I pretty well decided
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: to end it all as planned. However, as my money
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 1: is gone, I must work if I am to live
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: even until May tenth. And of course if I work
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: again for ever so short a time in view, I
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 1: cannot say how long I may keep it up, So
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 1: I say nothing. I make no grand resolutions for beginning
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: of month, but the usual sexual one having fallen again.
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 1: Even if I must die because of my weakness physically,
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 1: I would like a blank. Sunday, March twenty three, nineteen thirteen.
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: I had not intended writing in my diary to day,
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: but at the end of the month, this evening alone
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: in the house, everything quiet, the fire gently singing, even
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 1: the cat asleep. I was reading in the kitchen, dickens
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 1: great expectations. I just heard a sound and find my
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: brother Percy asleep on the sofa in the next room.
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: The feeling of peace came over me as I laid
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 1: down my book that I was prompted to write in
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 1: my diary, for moments of peace have been so infrequent
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 1: of late that it was a remarkable contrast to my
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: wild vagaries and desperately suppressed emotions. For I am working again.
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: I arrived here night of Saturday, March first, and on
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 1: Tuesday the fourth commenced work with Blank at the fine
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: salary of fifty five dollars a month. With prospects. They
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: offered fifty dollars. I suggested it Blank, and we compromised
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: on fifty five dollars. Of course, there have been openings
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: in my line at higher salaries, but I took the
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: first thing and will not change as it seems good
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: as business goes unless the prospects do not materialize. Though
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 1: I hated to acknowledge it to myself, I needed to
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: get back to work more than anything else to save me.
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 1: I had my opportunity, or rather, I saved up four
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 1: hundred dollars by sacrifices in Havana and then sat down
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 1: and did nothing until half was gone, afterwards wasting the
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 1: rest in a wild goose chase. After my destiny, however,
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: I entered into my work with a spirit of hopeful
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 1: resignation being inevitable, and for the first time in my
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: work acknowledging it. I will not say I attend to
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 1: it more conscientiously, but I grip myself when a wave
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 1: of the old dissatisfaction passes over me and work work
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 1: at night, I sleep, but at intervals during day and
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 1: evening and in the morning, I find it a great
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: effort not to fly off the handle in protest of
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: it all, but keep on just the same. I have
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 1: had several passionate week out bursts during the month. Several
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 1: times I have made a fool of myself by venting
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 1: my temper on those around me. But generally I hold
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 1: myself in better and am more conscious of having command
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 1: of myself. As for my ideas and ambition, it is
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 1: still alive. The will to live is stronger than any
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: misery as a force for life as against death. Taking
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 1: this as a mere basis, I must, of necessity have
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 1: some larger view than the mere cramping effect of a clerkship.
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 1: I work because I must, and under protest, but I
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 1: try to do my best, and I work honestly and
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 1: earn my salary and more as much as I can
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 1: under the circumstances. I am just getting settled and am
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 1: getting my books together. I am now going in for drama,
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 1: and I still have a soft spot in my heart
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 1: for philosophy. Although I am still at the beginning of
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 1: Kant's critique, I read a little of it today. I
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 1: still feel the call of a larger mission, but I
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 1: feel more like going about it in a practical, business
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 1: like way, because I realize I must. I acknowledge that
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 1: experience has had to push facts down my throat before
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: I would face them. With the aid of Bernard Shaw,
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 1: I feel more sincere now a tendency I have noted
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 1: in theatricalism. I will sternly suppress. I sometimes act cruelly
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 1: after a mental struggle, and I just hold myself by
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 1: calling on Nietzsche and the philosophy of the superman. And
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: then woe betide the one who crosses me. While I
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: will not force it and avoid self pity, I cannot
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 1: help feeling at bottom the tragedy of life. To me,
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 1: it is such an effort to live. There is so
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 1: little to look back on. No youth, no sweetheart, no
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 1: love except that of the children, and the mistaken love
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 1: of a weak mother. The short peace to night stands out.
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 1: But as soon as I became conscious of it, I
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 1: said to myself that I must cultivate that frame of
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 1: mind to do the best work and find out the
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 1: truth quickest. Sunday, June one, nineteen thirteen, this morning, the
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 1: beginning of week and month, in the first real spring
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: Sunday of the season, I once more start on a
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 1: process of rehabilitation. For three years I have been fighting
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: my sexual passions. Previous to May twenty one, nineteen ten.
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 1: As I note from that date in my diary, I
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 1: was clean absolutely. As I have said before three years
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 1: of the fiercest action and reaction, despair to the verge
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: of suicide, exultation, to such heights of ecstasy, that Heaven
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 1: opened its gates almost and in between indifference or simple
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 1: dull care, daily monotonous, hopeless toil, restless, tired nights, I
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 1: lived over the date set for my suicide, May tenth,
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 1: this year. Every month, I determined to start in anew
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 1: practically every month for these three years, at the first
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: of the years nineteen eleven, nineteen twelve, and nineteen thirteen,
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 1: at birth days May tenth, nineteen eleven, nineteen twelve, and
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 1: nineteen thirteen, leap ear February twenty ninth, nineteen twelve, and
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 1: after every despair, I started in a news with the
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: determination to not only conquer that weakness, but to restrain
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 1: myself in speech and act sufficiently ahead and accomplish something.
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 1: Failure has been the result. Every time I ask myself why,
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 1: and the answers are many and various. According to the
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 1: last disappointment, in a large measure, it has been due
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 1: to that emptiness of my life, to the lack of
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 1: affection and a definite ambition, and to my not being
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 1: more positive instead of attempting to be merely negatively virtuous
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 1: or self controlled, as I don't like the word virtuous
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 1: combined with nervousness, strong passions, and emotional qualities with no
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 1: proper outlet for them when they became so put up
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 1: as to threaten to overflow. Today I begin on a
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 1: new ground, that of being positive and rigidly self controlled
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 1: until I feel I can relax with impunity. I have
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 1: tried relaxing before after a week two weeks, but one
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 1: relaxation in word or act has been followed by others
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 1: until the circle has been completed by a blind, unreasoning
• 2:03:06
  Speaker 1: yield to the sexual impulse under conditions of mental chaos
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 1: and physical exhaustion, and then new resolutions and reactions set in.
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 1: I would go far to state that it is different now,
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 1: But so repeatedly and in such a series of shocks
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 1: has the lesson been driven home that I have simply,
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 1: in desperation, put suicide on one side and restraint on
• 2:03:29
  Speaker 1: the other, and realizing that it is impossible to go
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 1: on as I have been doing, I have with all
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 1: the remaining strength, passion, love, honor, or whatever is left
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 1: in me, ambition and enthusiasm, and the like, determined once
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 1: and for all, and for one year at least, to
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 1: be absolutely ascetic, as the first step to restrain myself
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 1: all around is of course the next, and I will
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 1: succeed fairly well. The big question of sex I leave open.
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 1: I must get an impersonal view away from the conflict
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 1: first philosophy. I also leave open, tentatively adopting the simple
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 1: formula from that of the superman, the will to live
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 1: because life is painful, and the will to power endeavoring
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 1: to thrust out everything that makes for weakness. Friday, June thirteenth,
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 1: nineteen thirteen, just writing to day because it happens to
• 2:04:25
  Speaker 1: be Friday, the thirteenth, thirteenth, more because I have nothing
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 1: but contempt for the silly superstition. Having maintained my resolution
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 1: as far as sex is concerned easily enough to date,
• 2:04:37
  Speaker 1: but otherwise I am not satisfied with self control attained,
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 1: that is in speech and temper. But time will tell.
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 1: I'll pull through a full year on the one thing.
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 1: In any case, and I am still fighting for all
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 1: around control and a settled scheme of work towards becoming
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 1: a successful playwright. End of Sections Section eight of Diary
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 1: of a suicide by Wallace E. Baker. This LibriVox recording
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 1: is in the public domain Section eight Saturday, July twenty sixth,
• 2:05:18
  Speaker 1: nineteen thirteen. Nearly two months passed since June first, and
• 2:05:24
  Speaker 1: I have failed to keep my good resolutions and also
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 1: to commit suicide. After several failures, it seems a silly
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 1: business all around, these writings included. But I must keep
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 1: on for a while. In this strain, the only thing
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 1: is to try again. I only realize the more keenly,
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 1: the utter hopelessness of the easiest way self control, and
• 2:05:46
  Speaker 1: the thought as I look ahead, of giving up things
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 1: is harder, but the other is impossible. I hesitate to
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 1: express myself so confidently as to my ability to be
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 1: a superman and a genius. But I can still fight
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 1: on for time at least. The end is not yet
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 1: what it will be. I don't know. The depths have
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 1: been deep and the heights might have been higher. But
• 2:06:09
  Speaker 1: there is a fair middle course possible, and I'll try
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 1: to do my best. At twenty three, I have to
• 2:06:15
  Speaker 1: go back to the self consciousness of youth before I
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 1: can cast it all off and face life as it is.
• 2:06:21
  Speaker 1: I often realize the apparent prigiousness and silliness of this diary,
• 2:06:26
  Speaker 1: but I at least try to be sincere sometimes, and
• 2:06:29
  Speaker 1: after the shocks of the realization of life, I may
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 1: write as a man. Things cannot go on as they
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 1: have been doing. Circumstances will force me to sink or swim,
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 1: either derise from this slough and weakness, or collapse utterly,
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 1: and this knowledge will help me. I may be silent
• 2:06:48
  Speaker 1: for a long time now because I am about to
• 2:06:51
  Speaker 1: cast off my romantic youth and be a man, and
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 1: the break will appear more sudden than it is up
• 2:06:57
  Speaker 1: to now. This diary does not show the vast progress
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 1: toward disillusioned manhood I have taken. In reality, they are
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 1: so big that I have at times bridged the gulf
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 1: and said all is illusion. I have felt the utter
• 2:07:11
  Speaker 1: pettiness of this struggle and seen things from the impersonal
• 2:07:15
  Speaker 1: and even transcendental viewpoint. The difficulty is after making the
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 1: jump to come back to where I left off and
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 1: take up the daily struggle. It is hard after realizing
• 2:07:26
  Speaker 1: that finally one will say all is illusion, whether it
• 2:07:30
  Speaker 1: be worldly success, money and honor, or artistic success and
• 2:07:34
  Speaker 1: the personal satisfaction of work well done. However, I must
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 1: come back in order to live at all. And if
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 1: I find it too much, and after repeated attempts, some
• 2:07:45
  Speaker 1: day give it up as hopeless, then it will be
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 1: necessary to take the jump at once from youth to
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 1: death and leave out what comes in between. New York,
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 1: September twenty seventh, nineteen thirteen. Suicide, again presenting itself as
• 2:08:03
  Speaker 1: the only way out. I was prompted to read over
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 1: my diaries. As a result, my sense of humor caused
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 1: me to destroy the first one, dating from nineteen o five,
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 1: my fifteenth year full of childish struggles and events, at
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 1: least until my eighteenth year, I could not let it
• 2:08:22
  Speaker 1: live after my death. After my eighteenth year in New York,
• 2:08:26
  Speaker 1: I began to face reality, But yet I could not
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 1: allow even that part of the record to survive. True,
• 2:08:33
  Speaker 1: from my fifteenth year I have been in a bad way,
• 2:08:37
  Speaker 1: but until several years ago a solution seemed bound to come.
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 1: Suicide never entered my thoughts in those days. Sex worried me, however,
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 1: from fourteenth or fifteenth year, mentally only until my twentieth.
• 2:08:51
  Speaker 1: But thinking without acting didn't strengthen me. However, as this
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 1: is a sort of last Testament, I must not waste
• 2:08:59
  Speaker 1: time on those days. I hardly know how to begin
• 2:09:02
  Speaker 1: and what to say, but something seems necessary. I could
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 1: not write the greater part of this even now, because
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 1: I have realized since that it is altogether foreign to
• 2:09:13
  Speaker 1: the spirit prevailing among the Anglo Saxon so called at least,
• 2:09:17
  Speaker 1: and I myself am sufficiently contaminated with their spirit to
• 2:09:21
  Speaker 1: feel cynical about it. If these writings do come to print,
• 2:09:25
  Speaker 1: I can imagine cynical and damned foolish newspapermen writing about
• 2:09:30
  Speaker 1: weaklings and degenerates, in line with silly editorial in New
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 1: York Times recently about suicide, and another in the World
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 1: on occasion of suicide of a girl who was tired
• 2:09:41
  Speaker 1: of twenty cent dinners to say nothing about those arch
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 1: idiots and hypocrites, the hearst hirelings, with their talks about
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 1: the idle rich and the good thing it is most
• 2:09:51
  Speaker 1: of us have to work for little. Of course, I
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 1: do not compare myself to the average man. If I
• 2:09:57
  Speaker 1: had no sense of humor, I would have persisted and
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 1: made myself a genius in spite of the hell life
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 1: has been. Nietzsche could never have been if he was
• 2:10:06
  Speaker 1: born in England or the States. But I only feel
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 1: at home when I read men of genius, always without
• 2:10:13
  Speaker 1: a friend. The average man is a stranger to me.
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 1: Women have killed me because with all my temperament and passion,
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 1: I have been too shy to ever have any love
• 2:10:22
  Speaker 1: or outlet to my passion. It is hard to say
• 2:10:26
  Speaker 1: that if things had been different, that such and such
• 2:10:29
  Speaker 1: would be the case. Sometimes I have thought, absolutely sincerely
• 2:10:33
  Speaker 1: that if I had had enough money to be able
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 1: to dispense with the daily grind, which, with its necessity
• 2:10:39
  Speaker 1: of strong excitement as a reaction, has so impaired my
• 2:10:43
  Speaker 1: will power as to bring me from supreme egoism of
• 2:10:46
  Speaker 1: imagining and believing myself to be a genius to a
• 2:10:50
  Speaker 1: miserable death alone and away from home by my own hand.
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 1: At other times I have said that if I question
• 2:10:57
  Speaker 1: myself honestly, that with money I would have simply degenerated
• 2:11:01
  Speaker 1: into a good for nothing, vicious idler of the thaw class. Now,
• 2:11:07
  Speaker 1: when about to die, I will be honest and say
• 2:11:10
  Speaker 1: that the latter would have probably been the outcome. But
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 1: it is by no means certain. After all, I have
• 2:11:16
  Speaker 1: been outraged and disgusted in the past after every fall
• 2:11:20
  Speaker 1: from a certain standard, and my love of books does
• 2:11:23
  Speaker 1: die while I live. Who knows but that I might
• 2:11:26
  Speaker 1: have got down to study and work and done something.
• 2:11:30
  Speaker 1: Undoubtedly I would have had affairs with women, had time
• 2:11:33
  Speaker 1: and money permitted, under any circumstances. But drink and drug
• 2:11:38
  Speaker 1: has never appealed to me, even in imagination. I have
• 2:11:42
  Speaker 1: been honest and sincere, particularly to the fine point on
• 2:11:46
  Speaker 1: matters of honor, at least until I began to lose
• 2:11:49
  Speaker 1: my grip on life. While I never got down and
• 2:11:52
  Speaker 1: faced things, it was because I was incurably romantic, and
• 2:11:56
  Speaker 1: when I finally began to realize life, it came to
• 2:11:59
  Speaker 1: me in such a series of shocks that independence would
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 1: have probably made me a Baudelaire without his creative work
• 2:12:06
  Speaker 1: to balance the scale. With such an impractical, childish mother
• 2:12:11
  Speaker 1: and failure of a father, uncongenial brothers and sisters almost
• 2:12:16
  Speaker 1: hating each other, with bad heredity on both sides, and
• 2:12:19
  Speaker 1: a hellish environment, a shy, nervous, suspicious disposition, extremes of
• 2:12:25
  Speaker 1: ecstasy and despair, ungratified passions, alone and friendless. How could
• 2:12:30
  Speaker 1: I end otherwise than a suicide? I claim that any
• 2:12:34
  Speaker 1: man who commits suicide of necessity suffers more than any
• 2:12:38
  Speaker 1: who continues to live. I don't want to die. I
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 1: cannot make any outsider realize by anything I can write,
• 2:12:47
  Speaker 1: how I have tried to avoid this step. I have
• 2:12:50
  Speaker 1: tried every subterfuge to fool myself, to kid myself along
• 2:12:55
  Speaker 1: that life wasn't so bad after all. This record does
• 2:12:58
  Speaker 1: not show up my humor. But I laugh as much
• 2:13:02
  Speaker 1: as I feel like crying. I enjoy a comedy as
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 1: well as a tragedy. AM tickled by the very things
• 2:13:08
  Speaker 1: that amuse the average American, and at a baseball game,
• 2:13:11
  Speaker 1: I actually feel like one of the boys. But where
• 2:13:14
  Speaker 1: I differ is in my tragic and morbid side and
• 2:13:17
  Speaker 1: my keen sensitiveness. Things which pass over most men afflict
• 2:13:23
  Speaker 1: me with terrible force. My pride has stood in the
• 2:13:26
  Speaker 1: way of my hope of success under conditions which exist
• 2:13:30
  Speaker 1: in this country at present. I cannot indefinitely pretend, as
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 1: I apply for work that I am just like the rest.
• 2:13:38
  Speaker 1: I cannot always conceal the resentment and scorn I feel
• 2:13:41
  Speaker 1: as I interview business men and stand or sit before
• 2:13:44
  Speaker 1: them as a mere stenographer. I a fellow in spirit
• 2:13:49
  Speaker 1: with men of genius, must show my references, call and
• 2:13:52
  Speaker 1: beg and implore for a miserable salary which I despise,
• 2:13:56
  Speaker 1: must taggle for a few dollars more the price of
• 2:13:59
  Speaker 1: a men, the indignity of it all, I, an aristocratic
• 2:14:04
  Speaker 1: heart of the aristocracy of brains and sentiment, must elbow
• 2:14:09
  Speaker 1: with the ignorant, vulgar bourgeois, who could not for an
• 2:14:12
  Speaker 1: instant understand if they would, what is the use death
• 2:14:16
  Speaker 1: only holds forth relief. I cannot look back on a
• 2:14:19
  Speaker 1: really happy day. Light hearted and merry have I been
• 2:14:23
  Speaker 1: on occasions, but seldom a day without morbid thoughts some
• 2:14:27
  Speaker 1: time or other, generally at night. If I could have
• 2:14:31
  Speaker 1: had a mistress, things might have been different. When I
• 2:14:34
  Speaker 1: have gone out and had sexual intercourse with a woman
• 2:14:37
  Speaker 1: who pleased my imagination, I have slept well seldom. Otherwise,
• 2:14:42
  Speaker 1: sex has been my nemesis, and to day, if I
• 2:14:45
  Speaker 1: had money, I would continue to live without it. The
• 2:14:49
  Speaker 1: whole dreary past and prospective future is too much for me.
• 2:14:54
  Speaker 1: With it, I could dispense with the grind and do
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 1: work after my own heart. Of course, others have the
• 2:15:00
  Speaker 1: grind also, but the fact that they continue to live
• 2:15:04
  Speaker 1: shows that they can stand it much better and were
• 2:15:06
  Speaker 1: born to it. I wasn't. My whole nature is outraged
• 2:15:11
  Speaker 1: by the life I have had to lead, empty, cold, dismal, hellish.
• 2:15:17
  Speaker 1: Let the cynical hirelings of the newspaper whom Bernard shaw
• 2:15:21
  Speaker 1: Well shows his contempt for laugh and write editorials. The
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 1: day will come when men will be allowed to live,
• 2:15:28
  Speaker 1: not rot the New York Times. Notwithstanding, if a thousand
• 2:15:32
  Speaker 1: men could be persuaded to commit suicide in protest, the
• 2:15:36
  Speaker 1: powers that be would sit up and take notice. Arise,
• 2:15:40
  Speaker 1: you Americans who have some blood in you, and get
• 2:15:43
  Speaker 1: rid of your comstocks, Brian's religious hypocrites and grafters, and
• 2:15:48
  Speaker 1: let the so called degenerates and insane men have a say.
• 2:15:52
  Speaker 1: And if you do not live bigger and better, then
• 2:15:54
  Speaker 1: you deserve what you get. The majority is always wrong,
• 2:15:59
  Speaker 1: and the minority of superman and degenerates Zola's ibsens et cetera,
• 2:16:04
  Speaker 1: must bend together and overthrow the whole damn system which
• 2:16:08
  Speaker 1: drives the best, the most sincere and honest to suicide
• 2:16:12
  Speaker 1: or starvation. End of section eight. End of Diary of
• 2:16:19
  Speaker 1: a Suicide by Wallace E. Baker. Recording by Lee Smalley