 OK. Thank you, Barbara. You're welcome, Linda. Turn of the century views, Mary McLean was deliciously notorious in her rejection of the norms of female identity at the time. Well, you'll hear again, you'll see again, part of the role of the family in limiting female possibilities of what McLean, in the way she writes, I think right in front of her, really becomes a means of overcoming that obstacle, trying to claim some sort of original enthusiastic, exuberant offer. So Jan Zupoff, professor and reference librarian at Reading Library of the MSU, will read a selection from Mary McLean's story of my life. Thank you, Linda. This has black in it, because I can't hear. No, the smoke. I feel as if I have a two pack a day habit now. So I'm going to have this open and hope not to spill it. And I'm sure Mary McLean would approve of the two pack a day habit, so. This is from her book, The Story of Mary McLean. Can you hear me back here? We're working on it. That's super loud. OK. Use the mic. I'm worried about the mic. I would rather you use the mic. Use the mic. Sorry. That's all right. So she's writing this in 1901 in beauty. I, a womankind, and of 19 years, will now begin to set down as full and frank a portrayal as I am able of myself, Mary McLean, for whom the world contains not a parallel. My reaction is that, who wasn't like this at 19? I am convinced of this, for I am odd. I am distinctly original, and angry, and in development. I have in me quite unusual intensity of life. I can feel. I have a marvelous capacity for misery and for happiness. I am broad-minded. I am a genius. I care neither for right nor for wrong. My conscience is nil. My brain is a conglomeration of aggressive versatility. I have reached a truly wonderful state of miserable, morbid happiness. I have gone into the deep shadows. All this constitutes oddity. I find, therefore, that I am quite, quite odd. I have hunted for even the suggestion of a parallel among the several hundred persons that I call acquaintances, but in vain. There are people and people of varying depths and intricacies of character, but there is none to compare with me. The young ones of my own age, if I chance to give them but a glimpse of the real workings of my mind, can only stare at me in days of stupidity and comprehending. And the old ones, of 40 and 50, can, but either stare also in stupidity or else, their own narrowness asserting itself, smile their little devilish smile of superiority, which they reserve indiscriminately for all foolish young things. The utter idiocy of 40 and 50 at times needs, to be sure, our extreme instances. There are, among my young acquaintances, some who do not stare in stupidity. And yes, even at 40 and 50, there are some who understand some phases of my complicated character, though none to comprehend it in its entirety. But as I said, even the suggestion of a parallel is not to be found among them. Before proceeding further with the portraying of Mary and the Plain, I will write out some of her uninteresting history. I was born in 1881 at Winnipeg in Canada. Whether Winnipeg will yet live to be proud of this fact is a matter for some conjecture and excitement on my part. When I was four years old, I was taken with my family to a little town in Western Minnesota, where I lived a more or less vapid and lonely life until I was 10. We came then to Montana. My father died when I was eight. Apart from feeding, clothing, and comfortably and sending me to school, which is no more than what's due to me, and transmitting to me the MacLean blood and character, I cannot see that he ever gave me a single thought. Certainly he did not love me, for he was quite incapable of loving anyone but himself. And since nothing is of any moment in this world without the love of human beings for each other, it is a matter of supreme indifference to me, whether my father, Jim MacLean, of selfish memory, lived or died. He is nothing to me. There are with me still a mother, a sister, and two brothers. They are also nothing to me. Come on, we all thought this was a good one. They do not understand me any more than if I were some strange, live curiosity, as which I dare say they regard me. There is absolutely no sympathy between my media family and me. There can never be. My mother, having been with me during the whole of my 19 years, has an utterly distorted idea of my nature and its desires, if indeed she has any idea of it. And so, as I've said, I carried my uninteresting existence into Montana. The existence became less uninteresting, however, as my versatile mind began to develop and grow and know the glittering things that are. But I realized, as the years were passing, that my own life was, at best, a vapid, negative thing. I have no particular thing to occupy me. I write every day, writing is a necessity, life's eating. I do a little housework, and on the whole, I write a fond of it, some parts of it. I dislike just investing shares. But I have no aversion to scrubbing floors. Indeed, I have gained much of my strength and gracefulness of body from scrubbing the kitchen floor, to say nothing of some fine points of philosophy. It brings a certain energy to one's body and to one's brain. But mostly, I take walks far away in the open country. Butte and its immediate vicinity present as ugly and outlook as one could wish to see. There is no redemption here, I have to say. It is so ugly, indeed, that it is near the perfection of ugliness. And anything perfect or nearly subtle is not to be despised. I have reached some astonishing subtleties of conception, as I have walked over miles, for miles, over the sand and bareness, among little hills and gulches. Their utter desolation is an inspiration to the long, long thoughts and to the nameless wanting. So then, yes, as I have said, I find that I am quite, quite odd. My various acquaintances say that I am funny. They say, oh, that's that name, a claim. Dolly's younger sister, she's funny. But I call it oddity. I bear the hallmark of oddity. There was a time, a year or two since, when I was exceedingly sensitive to a fool, sensitive in that it used to strike very deep when my younger acquaintances would call me funny and find in me a vent for their distinctly unfriendly ridicule. My years in the high school were not years of joy. Two years ago, I had not yet risen about these things. I was a sensitive little fool. But that sensitiveness, I rejoice to say, has gone from me. The opinion of these young people or of these old people is now a thing that is quite unable to affect me. The more I see a conventionality, it seems, the more I am odd. Though I am young and feminine, very feminine, yet I am not that quaint conceit of girl, the sort of person that Laura E. Richards writes about and Nora Perry and Louisa M. Alcott, girls with bright eyes and with charming faces, they all have charming faces, standing with reluctant feet or the brook and the river meet and all that sort of thing. I missed all that. I have read some girl books. And a few years ago, Hildegard Graham and What Katie Did and All. But I read them from afar. I looked at those creatures from behind a high board fence. I felt as if I had more taste in common with the Jews wandering through the wilderness or with a band of fighting Amazons. I am not a girl. I am a woman of a kind. I began to be a woman at 12 or more properly, a genius. And then, usually, if one is not a girl, one is a heroine of a kind to read about. But I'm not a heroine either. A heroine is beautiful. Eyes like the sea shoot opaque glances from under drooping lives. She walks with undulating mode movements. Her bright smile haunts one still. Falls methodically in love with a man, always with a man. Each phase, they are called vines. They are always called vines. With a delicate appetite and on special occasions, her voice is full of tears. I do none of these things. I'm not beautiful. I do not walk with undulating movements. Indeed, I have never seen anyone walk so, except, perhaps, a cow that has been overfed. No, I am not a heroine. I am making the world my confessor with this portrayal. And I wish to let you know that there is in existence a genus, an unhappy genus, a genus starving in Montana and the barrenness, but still a genus. I am a creature the life of which you have never before happened upon. You have never suspected there is such a person. I know that there is not such a person. I know that I am a genus more than any genus that has lived. I have a feeling that the world will never know this. And as I think of it, I wonder if angels are not weeping somewhere because of it.