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New York World "I LOVE DEVILS," SAYS GENIUS MARY. Montana's Self-Avowed Wonder Tells Her Life Story for The World. FOUND HARD AT WORK IN HER MOTHER'S KITCHEN. She's 21, Was Born in Canada - Educated at a High school - Admits She's a Liar.
(Special to The World) She was at work in her mother's kitchen when the correspondent of The World called on her to-day and asked her to talk about her book and the fame it promised her. Miss MacLane is a most erratic young woman. For several years she has amused her friends in the neighborhood in which she lived by performances that have made some people call her "queer." "Are you a gentleman?" she asked the correspondent. "I hate a gentleman," she added without waiting for a reply. "I once knew a newspaper man who was very nice externally, but back of his eyes was the devil. "I love devils." Hates Real Things. To a lady present she said, "Are the tails of your boa real?" Being assured that they were not the real thing she said that she was so glad, because she hated real things as she hated "perfect ladies." "I am a genius," she said, "and besides I am delightfully origlnal, charmingly refreshing and astonishingly vain." Miss MacLane said she was a liar, a plunger, a philosopher and the most unhappy and contemptuous person living because she was a genius and people could not understand her. "What does your mother say about you?" the young authoress was asked during the conversation. "Oh, she says, 'Mary, it is time to get the potatoes.'" "As I have said, I want fame. I want to write such things as compel the admiring acclamation of the world at large, such things as are written but once in years, things subtle but distinctly different from the books written every day. "I can do this. Let me but make a beginning, let me but strike the world in a vulnerable spot, and I can take it by storm. Let me but win my spurs then, good people, you will see me, of womankind and young, valiantly astride a charger, riding down the world, with fame following at the charger's heels and the multitudes agape. "But oh! more than this, I want to be happy. Fame is indeed beautiful and benign and gentle and satisfying, but happiness is something at once tender and brilliant beyond all things. I want fame more than I can tell. But more than I want fame I want happiness." "How like a woman!" the listener exclaims. "What do I care for your opinion? You don't interest me in the least," says the genius, looking up, immovable as a sphinx, while the cool, decisive voice reiterates, "You don't Interest me in the least. I don't like you either. You don't understand me at all. How can you, for I am a genius." A Genius Valued at Six Cents. Miss MacLane said she had always valued herself at three cents, but now she ought to be worth at least six cents. Her favorite authors have been Marie Louise Pool, Victor Hugo, J.T. Trowbridge, Albert Ross and Carlyle. "I value Ross at two cents and Hugo at $2.65." she said. Eugene Field and Edgar Allan Poe are her favorite poets. "Tell me something about your work. Do you sit up in the twilight and then think, or do you rise in the cold gloom of the early morning and write, or is the glare of day your favorite time? Perhaps it is in the calm afternoon?" "I have no favorite time," was the reply. "I write any time." "When inspired?" queried the visitor. "I have no inspiration," was the cold, dispassionate reply. "Do you use large white sheets of paper?" was asked of the genius. "Oh, no," replied Miss MacLane, smiling. "I use scraps. I find that I cannot write as well upon large, clean sheets as I can upon slips." "Can you be talked to when writing?" was asked. "Oh, no: I must not be bothered," replied Miss MacLane. "My family and friends thoroughly undemstand that. I must be let severely alone." Her Own Life Story This is her own brief story of her life. This genius of Butte is Mary Elizabeth MacLane, and she lives on North Excelsior. As she has set down in the portrayal - "I was born in 1881 at Winnipeg, Manitoba, and whether Winnipeg will yet live to be proud of that fact is a matter of some conjecture. When I was three years old I was taken with my family to a little town in Western Minnesota, where I lived a more or less vapid and ordinary life until I was ten. "We came then to Montana, where the aforesaid life was continued. I am purely of the MacLane blood, which is highland Scotch. These particular MacLanes whose blood is Highland Scotch are just a little bit different from every family in Canada. "The family contains and has contained fanatics of many minds, religious, social, what not, and I am a true MacLane." MacLanes and MacLanes. "There are a great many MacLanes, but there usually is only one real MacLane in each generation. There is but one again who feels again the passionate spirit of the clan - those barbaric dwellers of the bleak and well-beloved highlands of Scotland. I am the real MacLane of my generation. The real MacLane of these later centuries is always a woman. "I graduated from the Butte High School with these things - very good Latin, good French and Greek, some little geometry and other mathematics, a broad conception of history and literature, peripatetic philosophy that I acquired without any aid from the High School. "Genius of a kind has always been with me; an empty heart that has taken on a certain wooden quality; an excellent, strong woman's body and a pitiably starved soul."
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