written in 1911, she writes:

St. Petersburg 1911.

"I do not love humanity in the mass. I don't admire it. I feel sorry
for the unenlightened and suffering but I think there are only a few
in the world who 'vindicate,' as Uncle Herbert says, their right to
exist. If there was for one moment in my heart what I feel for dogs,
cats, horses and animals in general, I would be a real sister of
charity. It is a perfectly distinct expansion and impulse and a real
longing to help and joy in it that I do not feel in the face of
suffering humanity. You can explain it any way. If all these crippled
numberless that I have seen all these days had been maimed dogs, I
don't know what I would have done. There is something in human nature
that is so contemptible and poor that I can't feel the same way."

St. Petersburg 1911.

"How can you keep your faith in humanity? I think it is all so weak
and not beautiful, and life as it goes somehow such an outrageous
fizzle. Why are there such beautiful things, conceptions,
possibilities only to be ruined by fatal microbes this human
nature puts into it? Life only in yearning; Death to crown
realization; peace only in oblivion. What for? And even the power of
renounciation has to be fought for."

She was working at that time in the Kaufman community but was to go
to Montenegro for a hospital reorganization. This did not come about.
She wrote:

St. Petersburg 1911.

"I am undergoing the greatest disappointment at this moment. I was to
be sent to Montenegro to establish a Red Cross sisterhood and
overhaul the hospital, and to be given five sisters to take with me I
as the head--so interesting--and in the part of the world which has
always attracted me to the utmost, ever since I was in Sofia. And
after it was all arranged and I was simply reveling in every detail,
Baroness Ixkull decided that it was simply impossible to take Tibi."

St. Petersburg 1911.

"One doesn't love anything any more, religion, country, art. The only
thing is to have one's interest outside of oneself--and to be very
busy. I can hardly believe, at least I wonder, at myself being able
to do so many things I dislike--getting up every day so early, no
walks with Tibi, sleeping between five and six hours, often only
four, and yet I enjoy everything--ice cream is a festival, a moment
to sew a treat, and bed heaven."

"But oh, all these sick people--so depressing and gives one such an
impression of superfluity of the h