Part 6

I claim that any man who commits suicide of necessity suffers more than any who continues to live. I don’t want to die. I cannot make any outsider realize by anything I can write how I have tried to avoid this step. I have tried every subterfuge to fool myself, to kid myself along that life wasn’t so bad after all. This record does not show up my humorous side, but I laugh as much as I feel like crying. I enjoy a comedy as well as a tragedy, am tickled by the very things that amuse the average American, and at a baseball game I actually feel like one of the boys, but where I differ is in my tragic and morbid side, and my keen sensitiveness.

Things which pass over most men afflict me with terrible force. My pride has stood in the way of my hope of success under conditions which exist in this country at present. I cannot indefinitely pretend as I apply for work that I am just like the rest. I cannot always conceal the resentment and scorn I feel as I interview business men and stand or sit before them as a mere stenographer. I, a fellow in spirit with men of genius, must show my references, call and beg and implore, for a miserable salary which I despise, must haggle for a few dollars more, the price of a meal.

The indignity of it all. I, an aristocrat at heart, of the aristocracy of brains and sentiment, must elbow with the ignorant vulgar bourgeois who could not for an instant understand if they would.

What is the use? Death only holds forth relief. I cannot look back on a really happy day. Light-hearted and merry have I been on occasions, but seldom a day without morbid thoughts sometime or other, generally at night. If I could have had a mistress things might have been different. When I have gone out and had sexual intercourse with a woman who pleased my imagination I have slept well--seldom otherwise.

Sex has been my Nemesis, and to-day if I had money I would continue to live. Without it, the whole dreary past and prospective future is too much for me. With it I could dispense with the grind and do work after my own heart.

Of course, others have the grind, also; but the fact that they continue to live shows that they can stand it much better, and were born to it. I wasn’t. My whole nature is outraged by the life I have had to lead. Empty, cold, dismal, hellish.

Let the cynical hirelings of the newspaper whom Bernard Shaw well shows his contempt for, laugh and write editorials. The day will come when men will be allowed to live, not rot, the New York _Times_ notwithstanding.

If a thousand men could be persuaded to commit suicide in protest, the powers that be would sit up and take notice.

Arise you Americans who have some blood in you and get rid of your Comstocks, Bryans, religious hypocrites and grafters, and let the so-called degenerates and insane men have a say, and if you do not live bigger and better, then you deserve what you get.

The majority is always wrong, and the minority of supermen and degenerates--Zolas, Ibsens, etc.--must band together and overthrow the whole damn system which drives the best, the most sincere and honest to suicide or starvation.

The December issue of THE GLEBE will present “The Azure Adder,” a one-act comedy by Charles Demuth.

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