I don't sleep much at night, for it is so interesting to watch developments but I sleep a good deal in the daytime.
In the daytime it is tiresome and perplexing. There are always new shoots on the fungus, and new shades of yellow all
over it. I cannot keep count of them, though I have tried conscientiously. It is the strangest yellow, that wallpaper!
It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw— not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things.
But there is something else about that paper— the smell! I noticed it the moment we came into the room, but with so much
air and sun it was not bad. Now we have had a week of fog and rain, and whether the windows are open or not, the smell is
here. It creeps all over the house. I find it hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the parlor, hiding in the hall,
lying in wait for me on the stairs.
It gets into my hair. Even when I go to ride, if I turn my bed suddenly and surprise
it— there is that smell! Such a peculiar odor, too! I have spent hours in trying to analyze it, to find what it smelled like.
It is not bad— at first, and very gentle, but quite the subtlest, most enduring odor I ever met. In this damp weather it is awful,
I wake up in the night and find it hanging over me. It used to disturb me at first. I thought seriously of burning the house to reach
the smell. But now I am used to it. The only thing I can think of that it is like is the color of the paper! A yellow smell. There is
a very funny mark on this wall, low down, near the mopboard. A streak that runs round the room. It goes behind every piece of furniture,
except the bed, a long, straight, even smooth, as if it had been rubbed over and over. I wonder how it was done and who did it, and what
they did it for. Round and round and round— round and round and round— it makes me dizzy!
