… About “doing operations on yourself.” I know just what you mean. It is as though one were the sport of circumstance—one is, indeed. Now happy, now unhappy, now fearful, now confident, just as the pendulum swings. You see one can control nothing if one isn't conscious of a purpose: it's like a journey without a goal. There is nothing that makes you ignore some things, accept others, order others, submit to others. For there is no reason why A. should be more important than B. So there one is—involved beyond words, feeling the next minute I may be bowled over or struck all of a heap. I know nothing.

This is to me a very terrible state of affairs. Because it's the cause of all the unhappiness (the secret, profound, unhappiness) in my life. But I mean to escape and to try to live differently. It isn't easy. But is the other state easy? And I do believe with all my being that if one can break through the circle, one finds “my burden is light.”

I've had such a queer birthday. L. M. brought me a brin of mimosa. And I had my poem and the telegrams. Wasn't it awfully nice of L. E. and W. J. to send one? It's been sunny, too. But all the same I'd rather not think about my birthday.

Oh, the little Tchehov book has come. Do you think I might have the Lit. Sup. with your article in it? I see no papers here at all. That's not a complaint, though. For Paris flaps with papers, as you know. I haven't seen a single newspaper since leaving London. There! Does that shock you?