absorb all the time.” So we took the nursery, at the top of the house. 

 It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then playground and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls. 

 The paint and paper look as if a boys’ school had used it. It is stripped off—the paper—in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life. 

 One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin. 

 It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate, and provoke study, and when you follow the lame, uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide—plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard-of contradictions. 

 The color is repellant, almost revolting; a smouldering, unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. 

 It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others. 

 No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long. 

 There comes John, and I must put this away,—he hates to have me write a word. 

 We have been here two weeks, and I haven’t felt like writing before, since that first day. 

 I am sitting by the window now, up in this atrocious nursery, and there is nothing to hinder my writing as much as I please, save lack of strength. 

 John is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious. 

 I am glad my case is not serious! 

 But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing. 

 John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him. 

 Of course it is only nervousness. It does weigh on me so not to do my duty in any way! 

 Prev. P 3/17 next