Diary Without Dates

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918 edition. Excerpt: ...the bunk to-night beside the youngest Sister, and she looked up suddenly with her absent stare and said, " You're not so nice as you used to be! " I was dumbfounded. Had I been " nice "? And now different.... What a maddening sentence, for I felt she was going to refuse me any spoken explanation. But one should not listen to what people say, only to what they mean, and she was one of those persons whose minds one must read for oneself, since her words so often deformed her thoughts. The familiarity and equality of her tone seemed to come from some mood removed from the hospital, where her mistrustful mind was hovering about a trouble personal to herself. She did not mean " You are not so nice..." but " You don't like me so much...." She was so young, it was all so new to her, she wanted so to be " liked "! But there was this question of her authority.... How was she to live among her fellows? Can one afford to disdain them? Can one steer happily with indifference? Must one, to be " liked," bend one's spirit to theirs? And, most disturbing question of all, is to be " liked " the final standard? Whether to wear, or not to wear, a mask towards one's world? For there is so much that is not ripe to show--change and uncertainty.... As she sat there, unfolding to me the fogs of her situation, her fresh pink face clouded, her grand cap and red cape adding burdens of authority to the toil of growth, I could readily have looked into the glass to see if my hair was grey! " Then there is nothing you condemn? " said the youngest Sister finally, at the close of a conversation. I have to-day come up against the bedrock of her integrity; it is terrible. She has eternal youth, eternal fair hair, cold and ignorant judgments. On things relating to the world I can't...