tendency. So I try. 

 I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me. 

 But I find I get pretty tired when I try. 

 It is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about my work. When I get really well John says we will ask Cousin Henry and Julia down for a long visit; but he says he would as soon put fire-works in my pillow-case as to let me have those stimulating people about now. 

 I wish I could get well faster. 

 But I must not think about that. This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had! 

 There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside-down. 

 I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the everlastingness. Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere. There is one place where two breadths didn’t match, and the eyes go all up and down the line, one a little higher than the other. 

 I never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before, and we all know how much expression they have! I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy-store. 

 I remember what a kindly wink the knobs of our big old bureau used to have, and there was one chair that always seemed like a strong friend. 

 I used to feel that if any of the other things looked too fierce I could always hop into that chair and be safe. 

 The furniture in this room is no worse than inharmonious, however, for we had to bring it all from downstairs. I suppose when this was used as a playroom they had to take the nursery things out, and no wonder! I never saw such ravages as the children have made here. 

 The wallpaper, as I said before, is torn off in spots, and it sticketh closer than a brother—they must have had perseverance as well as hatred. 

 Then the floor is scratched and gouged and splintered, the plaster itself is dug out here and there, and this great heavy bed, which is all we found in the room, looks as if it had been through the wars. 

 But I 

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