Read Miss Lonelyhearts for Free Online

day. Mother slays five
with ax, slays seven, slays nine...Babe slams two, slams three...Inside the
fence Desperate, Broken-hearted, Disillusioned-with-tubercular-husband and the
rest were gravely forming the letters MISS LONELYHEARTS out of white-washed
clam shells, as if decorating the lawn of a rural depot.
    He failed to notice Goldsmith's
waddling approach until a heavy arm dropped on his neck like the arm of a
deadfall. He freed himself with a grunt. His anger amused Goldsmith, who
smiled, bunching his fat cheeks like twin rolls of smooth pink toilet paper.
    "Well, how's the
drunkard?" Goldsmith asked, imitating Shrike.
    Miss Lonelyhearts knew that Goldsmith had written the column for him yesterday, so he hid his
annoyance to be grateful.
    "No trouble at all,"
Goldsmith said. "It was a pleasure to read your mail." He took a pink
envelope out of his pocket and threw it on the desk "From an
admirer." He winked, letting a thick gray lid down slowly and luxuriously
over a moist, rolling eye.
    Miss Lonelyhearts picked up the letter.
     
    Dear
Miss Lonelyhearts --
    I
am not very good at writing so I wonder if I could have a talk with you. I am
only 32 years old but have had a lot of trouble in my life and am unhappily
married to a cripple. I need some good advice bad but cant state my case in a letter as I am not good at letters and it would take an
expert to state my case. I know your a man and am glad as I dont trust women. You were pointed out to me in Delehantys as a man who does the advice in the paper and the minute I saw you I said you
can help me. You had on a blue suit and a gray hat when I came in with my
husband who is a cripple. I don't feel so bad about asking to see you personal
because I feel almost like I knew you. So please call me up at Bugess 7-7323 which is my number as I need your advice bad
about my married life.
    An
admirer,
    Fay
Doyle
     
    He threw the letter into the
waste-paper basket with a great show of distaste.
    Goldsmith laughed at him. "How
now, Dostoievski ?" he said. "That's no way
to act. Instead of pulling the Russian by recommending suicide, you ought to
get the lady with child and increase the potential circulation of the
paper."
    To drive him away, Miss Lonelyhearts made believe that he was busy. He went over to
his typewriter and started pounding out his column.
    "Life, for most of us, seems a
terrible struggle of pain and heartbreak, without hope or joy. Oh, my dear
readers, it only seems so. Every man, no matter how poor or humble, can teach
himself to use his senses. See the cloud-flecked sky, the foam-decked
sea...Smell the sweet pine and heady privet...Feel of velvet and of satin...As
the popular song goes, 'The best things in life are free.' Life is..."
    He could not go on with it and
turned again to the imagined desert where Desperate, Broken-hearted and the
others were still building his name. They had run out of sea shells and were
using faded photographs, soiled fans, time-tables, playing cards, broken toys,
imitation jewelry--junk that memory had made precious, far more precious than
anything the sea might yield.
    He killed his great understanding
heart by laughing, then reached into the waste-paper
basket for Mrs. Doyle's letter. Like a pink tent, he set it over the desert.
Against the dark mahogany desk top, the cheap paper took on rich flesh tones.
He thought of Mrs. Doyle as a tent, hair-covered and veined, and of himself as
the skeleton in a water closet, the skull and cross-bones on a scholar's
bookplate. When he made the skeleton enter the flesh tent, it flowered at every
joint.
    But despite these thoughts, he
remained as dry and cold as a polished bone and sat trying to discover a moral
reason for not calling Mrs. Doyle. If he could only believe in Christ, then
adultery would be a sin, then everything would be simple and the letters
extremely easy to answer.
    The completeness of his failure
drove him to the telephone. He left the city room and went into the hall to