Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 5 (1925-05).djvu/68

You wish me to tell you the story of the Lip? You have heard it before, perhaps? You found it amusing—a huge joke? No? You will not say? You will not commit yourself? Perhaps it is just as well you did not; for I believe if you did but mock me, in spite of these iron bars between us I would slay you where you stand—would strangle you with these two bare hands, you with that ingratiating smile on your lips and that contemptuously pitying light in your eyes!

But I will tell you the story of the Lip, merely because I like to talk. Perhaps you will be more enlightened, if not more sympathetic. No; you will not be more sympathetic. And I am glad of that, for may I not construe your Jack of understanding as evidence of my own originality? Yet, admitting my superiority, I recognize the fact that it is well everyone is not so. Rare logic, eh? Well, take the occurrence of which I am speaking: Did everyone think as I do, humanity would soon be lipless, would it not? Ha, ha!

But you think me light, frivolous? Ah, no. Though I take due pride in my originality, it pains me ofttimes to think on the difference between other folk and me—pains me for their sake. Ha, ha! Perhaps you think me mad? Some folks do. But I am not. Observe, sir: here I sit, natural, gay, unrepressed as a child, while there you stand, austere, artificial, afraid to be natural. Since insanity is a breaking down of repression, are you not, being more repressed, the madder? Therefore, is not what men call the maddest person the sanest—and what they call the most normal person the maddest? . . . No matter; you do not understand. Anyhow, you can understand why, if I have not the comfort of your sympathy, I can take a sort of bland satisfaction in your adverse views. What makes me think your views are adverse? Perhaps it is the way you look at me—I feel your mental attitude is hostile. Most people have this mental attitude toward me. They despise intellect and artistic imagination because it makes them seem, by comparison, cheap and vulgar. They like flattery; and to be around a superior person is far from flattering them. So they have recourse to persecution. Ah, yes. I have been persecuted, bitterly, ceaselessly. There is scarcely a moment in my life when I have not felt the penalty of my rare mind. Perhaps I should have been happier had I not understood so well, for as you have