Chapter VI: Part II: Seeking a Publisher (2)

He had no business to send me that answer! He had no business to send it! I care not how many such requests he gets! Pain throbbed in that letter, hunger and agony were in it; and if he were a man he would have known it! He had no business to send me that answer! I shall never forgive him for it.

* * * * *

The last publisher said it would take a month; they had many manuscripts on hand, and could not do any better. So I have only to set my teeth together and wait.

* * * * *

I count the days before my escape from that hideous place down-town. The thought of it drives me wild--it gets more and more a torture. Can I stay out the week? I ask.

* * * * *

September 8th.

All day--all day--I have but one thought in my mind--but one thought in my life! I am beset by it, I can not escape it. That horrible shame to which I am subjected!

It turns all my life to gall! It beats down my enthusiasm, it jeers at my faith, it spits into the face of my unselfishness! I come home every night weak and worn and filled with despair, or else with a choking in my throat, and helpless, cruel rage in my soul. Never mind that I am going to be free--the wrong is that it should ever have been--it will stay with me all my days and turn all my life to gall! It will wreck all my visions, all my aspirations, my faith, my eagerness; the memory of it will sound like a mocking voice in my ears, a sneer!

Day by day I strive and struggle and tear my-self to pieces, and sink back worn out; and don't you suppose that has any effect upon me? I can feel it. I see it plain as day, and shudder at it--I am being cowed! I am being tamed, subdued, overpowered; the thing is like a great cold hand that is laid upon me, pressing me down, smothering me! I know it--and I cry out and struggle as if in a nightmare; but it only presses the harder. Why, I was like a lion--restless--savage--all-devouring! Never-ceasing, eager, untamable--hungry for life, for experience, for power! I rushed through in days what others took months at--I watched every instant--I crowded hours into it.

* * * * *

--And now look at me! I crouch and whine--there is an endless moan in my soul. Can you break a man's spirit so that he never rises again? So that all his attempts to be what he was mock at him? So that he never _tries_ any more? Look at those poor wretches you pass on the street--those peasants from Europe, from Russia! See the restless, shifting eyes, the cringing gait--_that_ is what it is to be tamed!

* * * * *

Hateful tyrant of the commonplace--so you will lay your cold hand over me and crush out all the fire from my heart. All this that was to build new empires--new hopes, new virtues, new power; all that I was, and all that I sought to be! Ah, but you will not crush me--understand it well, you may beat me and kick me, you may starve me to death, but you will never overcome me, you will never tame me into one of the pack-horses of society! I will fight while I have a breath in me, while my heart has left one beat.

The time may come when I shall have to drag myself away like a sick beast to die in the mountains; but if it does, I shall go defying you!

* * * * *

Bah!

--How I wish I could find a rich man who could spare it, and from whom I could steal a thousand dollars. I would turn it into a thousand songs that diamonds could not buy--that would build new empires--and then I would pay the poor rich man back.

* * * * *

--I read a poem of Matthew Arnold's last night:

From the world's temptations,
From tribulations;
From that fierce anguish
Wherein we languish;
From that torpor deep
Wherein we lie asleep,
Heavy as death, cold as the grave,
Save, oh save!

* * * * *

September 10th.

A man was talking to me to-day about what I am doing. “I should think you would try to get some work more congenial,” he said, “some literary work.” Yes!--I sell wholesale-paper, and that is bad enough; but at least I do not sell my character.

I to enter into the literary business world! I to forsake my ideals and my standards--to learn to please the public and the men who make money out of the public! Ah, no--let me go on selling paper, and “keep my love as a thing apart--no heathen shall look therein!”

* * * * *

What could I do, besides? And who would give me a chance? I could not review books--I know nothing about modern books, and still less about modern book standards. Neither do I know anything to write that any magazines would want.

* * * * *

--And besides, in four days more, shall I not have fifty or sixty dollars? And what shall I want then?

* * * * *

Ah, how I count the days! And when I am out of this place, how I will run away from it! The very books I read while I was there will always be painful to me.

--They will be glad to get rid of me, too. Poor me--I have given up trying to be understood. All these things pass. My business is with God.

* * * * *

Cicero thinks that the remembering of past sorrows is a pleasure. Yes, when the sorrows are beautiful, noble. But I have sorrows in my life, the thoughts of which send through my whole frame--literally and physically--a _spasm_.

* * * * *

September 11th.

I told the bald-headed, grim-visaged senior-partner to-day that I was going to leave. He seemed surprised--offered me a “raise.” I told him I was going out of New York.

* * * * *

--I am a liar. Sometimes I philosophize about that. I am an unprincipled idealist. I have not the least respect for fact; I am doing my work. If I could help my work, I would lie serenely in all the six languages I know. And if I were caught, I would say, “Why, yes, of course!”

I think I would rather have a finger cut off than say to a New York business man, “I am a poet!”

* * * * *

September 12th.

I have been forcing myself to read Gibbon, but half of him was all I could stand. I think with astonishment of the reputation of this history, a bare recital of facts, without the least interest or importance, and a recital by the shallowest of men!

The vulgarity of his character is more evident than ever since the repressed parts of his biography have appeared. It is comical. And this man, who has no more understanding of spirituality than a cow, to tell the story of the greatest movement of the soul of man in history!

There is not one gleam of the Christian superstition left in me. I have nothing to fear from the sneers of Gibbon any more than I have from those of Voltaire; but I do not care to hear lectures on the steam-engine by a man who does not believe in steam.

* * * * *

--Some of these days--the last thing that I can see on the horizon of my future--I am going to write a tragedy called Jesus. The time is past, it seems to me, when an artist must leave alone the greatest art-theme of the ages.

Is it not the greatest? Is there any story in history more sublime than the story of this man? A humble, ignorant peasant he was, and out of the faith of his soul he made the future of the world for centuries! It is a thing that makes your brain reel.

I write it casually, but I have shuddered over it far into the deep, deep night. I have dreamed of two acts--one of them Gethsemane, and the other Calvary.--Poor fool, perhaps I shall never write them!

* * * * *

I have burrowed into that soul, seeking out the truths of it; the truths, as distinguished from the ten thousand fancies of men. When I write that drama I shall deal with those truths.

The climax of the scene in the garden of Gethsemane will be a vision in which looms up before him the whole history of Christianity; and that will be the last agony. It will be then that he sweats blood.

That will be something, I think.

* * * * *

September 13th.

To-morrow is the last time I shall ever go into that hellish place! To-morrow is the last time in all my life that I shall ever have to say, “We have this same quality in ninety-pound paper at four sixty-nine!”

Throughout all this thing it seemed to me that when I came out I should no longer have a soul. But it is not so; I shall still keep at it grimly.

* * * * *

September 14th.

And now to-day I make my plans. I must keep near a library; but I shall hunt out a room uptown. There I can be near the Park, and I shall suffer a little less from these hideous noises. I shall go over there and spend every day--find out some place where there are not too many nurse-girls!

I can not begin any other book; I must stand or fall by The Captive. I shall be a “homo unius libri”!

But I can not attempt to write again--ever--in these circumstances. It is not that my force is spent--I am only at the beginning of my life, I see everything in the future. But I could not wrestle with these outside things again--it took all my courage and all my strength to do it once.

* * * * *

There is no reason why I should worry about that. I have fifty-six dollars, and I am free for four months, barring accidents. And surely I shall have found some one to love my book by that time!

* * * * *

And so I set to work reading.

* * * * *

September 15th.

A slight preliminary, of course. I spent a ghastly day hunting for a room. I found one in a sufficiently dirty and cheap place, and then I spent another hour finding a man who would take my trunk for a quarter. Having succeeded in that, I walked up there to save five cents; and when the trunk came the driver tried to charge me fifty cents!

* * * * *

Picture me haggling and arguing on the steps--“Didn't know it was so far--Man didn't understand”--God knows what else! And then he tries to carry off the trunk--and I rushing behind, looking for a policeman! Again more arguing, and a crowd, of course. At last it appears that I have to pay him what he asks and go down to the City Hall and make my complaint--hadn't told him how many steps there were, etc. So finally I agree to carry it up the steps myself, if he'll only leave it for a quarter!

Next you must picture me breaking my back and tearing my fingers and the damned wall paper--while the damned frowsy-headed landlady yells and the damned frowsy-headed boarders stick out their heads! And so in the end I get into my steaming hot room and shut the door and fall down on the bed and burst into tears.

* * * * *

O God, the stings of this bitter, haunting, horrible poverty! The ghastly weight that has hung about my neck since ever I can remember! Oh, shall I ever be free from it? Shall I ever know what it is to have what I ought to have, to think of my work without the intrusion of these degrading pettinesses?

They are so infinite, so endless, so hideous! The thing gets to be a habit of my thoughts; my whole nature is steeped and soaked in it--in filthy sordidness! I plot and I plan all the day--I can not buy a newspaper without hesitating and debating--I am like a ragpicker going about the streets!

Sometimes the thing goads me so that I think I must go mad--when I think of the time that I lose, of the power, of the courage! I walk miles when I am exhausted, to save a car-fare! I wear ragged collars and chafe my neck! I stand waiting in foul-smelling grocery shops with crowds of nasty people! I cook what I eat in a half-dirty frying-pan because I can not afford to pay the servant to wash it! So it is that I drag myself about--chafing and goaded--crouching and cringing like a whipped cur!

My God, when will I be free? My God! My God!

* * * * *

--The boarding-houses that I have been in! The choice collection of memories that I have stored away in my mind, memories of boarding-houses! The landladies' faces--the assorted stenches--the dark hallways--the gabbling, quarreling, filthy, beer-carrying tenants! Oh, I wring my hands and something clutches me in my heart! Let me go! Let me go!

Six times in the course of my life, when I have been starved sick on my own feeding, I have become a “table-boarder”; and out of those six experiences I could make myself another Zola. The infinite variety of animality in those six vile stables--the champing jaws and the slobbering mouths and the rank odor of food! The men who shoveled with their knives or plastered things on their forks as hod-carriers do mortar! The women who sucked in their soup, and the children who smeared their faces and licked their lips and slopped upon the table-cloth! The fat Dutchman who grunted when he ate, and then leaned back and panted! The yellow woman with the false teeth who gathered everything about her on the table! The flashy gentleman with the diamond scarf-pin and the dirty cuffs, who made a tower out of his dirty dishes and then sucked his teeth! O God!

And the loathsome food!--For seven years I have had my nose stamped into this mud, and all in vain; I can still starve, but I can not eat what is not clean.

--Some day I shall put into a book all the rage and all the hate and all the infamy of these things, and it will be a book that will make your flesh sizzle. And you will wonder why I did it!

It will be better than Troilus and Cressida, better than the end of Gulliver's Travels--better than Swellfoot the Tyrant!

* * * * *

I wonder why nobody else ever reads or mentions Swellfoot the Tyrant? I call it the most whole-hearted, thorough-going, soul-satisfying piece of writing in any language that I know.

* * * * *

--When you think of my work you must think of these things! I do not mention them often, but they are never out of my mind. If you should read anything beautiful of mine, you must bear in mind that it is about half a chance that there was a dirty child screaming out in the hall while I wrote it.

* * * * *

September 20th.

It took me a couple of days to realize that I have still not to go down-town. But I have a fine facility in making myself new habits! Just now I am on a four months' studying campaign. It is monotonous--to read about. I get up at six, and when I have had my breakfast and fixed a lunch, I go over into the Park. There are only birds and squirrels and a few tramps about then, and it is glorious. Sometimes I am so happy that I do not want to read; later come the squalling children and the hot sun; but I flit about from place to place. I wonder what they think of me!--

Wer bist du, und was fehlt dir!

* * * * *

I read all day, right straight along, and all night, now that it is not too hot. I have always done my reading by periods--I read our nineteenth-century poets that way, sixteen hours a day; I read Shakespeare in three weeks that way, and finished the month with Milton. So when I got German, I read Goethe and Schiller, and Molière and Hugo again.

Now I am reading history; it gives me the nightmare, but one has to read it.

Every night when I put down my book, I flee in thought to my own land as to a city of refuge. A history where everything counts! A history that is not a mad, blind chaos of blood and horror! A history that has other meaning than the drunken lust and the demon pride of a Napoleon or a Louis le Grand!

--Some day the ages will discern two movements in history: the first, the Christian dispensation, and the second the American.

There is a great deal in knowing how to read, especially with such books as history. I try to read as I write; to lash my author, to make him fill my mind. If he gets sluggish I am soon through with him--I read whole paragraphs in a sentence, and whole volumes in an hour.

* * * * *

September 25th.

The third week of the publisher's month has gone by. God, how cruel is waiting! I wonder if their readers knew how hungry I am if they would not hurry a little!

I say to myself--“There has been enough of this nonsense! Oh, surely there will not be any more, surely these men must take it!”

* * * * *

September 28th.

I still read the literary journals and tingle with excitement thinking of the time when The Captive is discussed in them. Can I believe that this book will not stir the world? If I did not believe it, I could not believe anything!

I feel a new interest now in the authors that people talk about. I want to know who they are and what they do. And all the time I find myself thinking: “Have I more than this man?--More than that man?” That always throws me into despair, because I am a great admirer; and because I am always hypnotized by the last thing that I read.

But I find very little that is great in modern books. Books are better made now than they ever were before--I mean in the way of literary craftsmanship. As far as form goes, there is no author living who would put together such a hodge-podge as Wilhelm Meister, or La Nouvelle Heloïse. But they all imitate each other; they are all mild and tame; there is no real power, no genius among them. They have even forgotten it exists.

* * * * *

I came across this, for instance, the other day in a book of Mr. Howells's:

“In fact, the whole belief in genius seems to me rather a mischievous superstition, and if not mischievous, always, still always, a superstition. From the account of those who talk about it, genius appears to be the attribute of a very potent and admirable prodigy which God has created out of the common for the astonishment and confusion of the rest of us poor human beings. Do they mean anything more or less than the mastery which comes to any man in accordance with his powers and diligence in any direction? If not, why not have an end to the superstition which has caused our race to go on for so long writing and reading of the difference between talent and genius?”

Is not that simply blasphemous?

* * * * *

--Have I genius? Ah, save the word!

How can I know? It is none of my affair--I do my work.

Genius is next to the last and most sacred word we know, next to God; and next to the most abused word. Every man will possess it, in degree proportionate to his vanity. I think if they knew the work and the terror that goes with even a grasp at it, they would not make so free with it.

* * * * *

September 30th.

I wait--I wait for The Captive. I do all these other things--I read, I think, I study--but all the while I am merely passing the time. I am waiting for The Captive to win me the way. All my life hangs on that, I can do nothing else but pray for that--pray for it and yearn for it!

--Yes--and do you know it?--I am sinking down every day! Down, down! The Captive is my high-water mark; where I was when I wrote that I shall never come again in my life--until I am given my freedom and new courage, and can set to work to toil as I did then!

Tell me not about future books, foolish publishers! I have told you I put all that I had and all that I was into that book! And by that book I stand or I fall.

* * * * *

October 3d.

Their month is up. I walked down there to-day and saw them. “The manuscript is now being read--we are awaiting a second report.”

A second! That made my heart go like mad. “Does that mean that the first is favorable?” I asked.

“It means that we are interested in it,” the man answered; “we will let you know shortly.”

Oh this waiting, this waiting!

* * * * *

October 8th.

Ah, God! I came home from the Park tonight, and I saw something that made my heart go down like lead. It hurt me so that I cried out!

My manuscript! It was back again!

O Christ! How the sight of it hurt me! There was a letter with it, and my hand shook as I opened it:

* * * * *

“We are returning you the manuscript of The Captive by messenger herewith, regretting exceedingly that we can not make you a publishing offer upon it.”

* * * * *

Is not this awful? Oh, it is terrible! It is beyond belief! A whole month gone, and only a note like that to show for it! Four weeks of yearning and hoping--of watching the mail in agony--of struggling and toiling to forget! And then a note like this!

Oh, it drives me wild! I sat to-night in a chair motionless, forgetting that I was hungry, forgetting everything. I looked to the future; I had a feeling that I do not think I ever had in my life before--a horrible, black, yawning despair--a thing so fearful that it took my breath away. Suppose you were standing on a bridge over an abyss, and that suddenly it gave way, and in one dreadful instant you realized that you were going down--down like a flash--and that nothing could save you!

* * * * *

So it is to be this, so this is to be my life! I am to send this book to publisher after publisher, and have it come back like this! And meanwhile to spend my time alternating between this room--and the wholesale-paper business!

* * * * *

Yes, I am getting to see the truth! I am a helpless atom, struggling to survive--a glimmering light in the darkness--and I am going out! I am losing--and what shall I do! Who will save me--who will help me?

* * * * *

I was talking to a friend yesterday; he predicted just what happened. “Make one rule,” he said, “expect nothing of the world. When you send out a manuscript, _know_ that it is coming back!--Otherwise you go mad.”

But I should go mad _that_ way. Why, what am I to do? How am I to work unless I can get free? I can not live a single day unless I have that hope. And if these blind creatures that make money out of books keep on sending my poem back--why, it will kill me--it will turn me into a fool!

* * * * *

October 9th.

I did not go to bed last night until nearly daylight. I was desperate--I was crazy with perplexity. This thing had never occurred to me as the wildest possibility.

I would pace the floor for hours; and then again sink into a stupor. “They send it back! They don't want it!”--I kept on muttering.--And, poor fool that I am, I had pictured to myself how they would read it. I saw the publisher himself glancing at a line of it by chance, and then rushing on. I saw him declaiming it with excited eyes--as I used to declaim it! Poor fool!

* * * * *

--Well, I made another desperate attempt. I wrote last night to another poet that I respect--(the list is not very long). I wrote in the heat of my despair--I told him the whole story. I said that I was crying for the judgment of some one who had love and enthusiasm; some one who had another idea than making money out of it. I told him that I knew he had many such requests, but that he never had one from a man who had worked as I had. I pleaded that he need only read a few lines--I begged him to let me hear from him at once.

--And now I shall wait. I can't do anything else but wait!

* * * * *

October 10th.

I tried to read a novel to-day, but I could not fix my attention--I could not do anything.

* * * * *

October 11th.

“I answer your letter at once as you ask me to. In the first place let me assure you of my sympathy. You are at a stage at which all poets--or nearly all--have to pass. Do not let yourself be disheartened--keep at it--and if you work as you write you will come out the victor in the end.

“As to my reading the book, you must believe what I tell you--that I am simply crowded. I have no time to explain, but I could not possibly do it now, nor can I tell you when I could. Go ahead and try the publishers--there are enough of them. And take my advice--do not go on clinging to that book--do not pin all your hope to that--go on--go on! Maybe it _is_ young and exaggerated--what of it? Go on!--Meanwhile your circumstances seem to you hard--but in future years when you look back at them you will see, as all men see, that it was in that struggle that you got your strength.”

* * * * *

It is a lie! It is a lie! It is silly cant--it is brutal stupidity! What, you try to tell me that it is in contest with these degradations--these horrors--that I am to find my enthusiasm and my hope! Am I a dog that you must kick me to my task?--It is a lie, I say--it is a lie!

* * * * *

If you could not find time to read my work, very well; but you did not have to sugar the pill with silly platitudes such as those. “Go on, go on!” My God, what a mockery! Is it not to go on that I am panting day and night--is it not with the hunger to go on that I am mad?--You fool--do you think I wrote to you because I wanted some one to admire me--because I had the need of praise and encouragement in my work? Give me a year's freedom--give me two hundred dollars--and I'll show you how much I care for your praise.

But then you chain me here to your torture stake, and bid me “Go on! Go on!”

--And it is in that struggle that I am to get my strength! That sentence burns in my blood, it stings me! What is this struggle that you prate about, anyway? And what do you mean by “getting my strength?” Did I get my strength to write The Captive that day when those fishwives moved in next door to me? Did I get my strength to dream of my new work that day when I was chasing after an express-driver to save a quarter? Do I get it now when I am sitting here panting and ill with a headache, and with despair, and with lack of food? Damn such asininity, I say!

What do you mean, I cry--what do you mean? Would it have helped Kant to solve the problems of the universe to have had a swarm of mosquitoes buzzing about his face? Would it have helped Beethoven to compose his symphonies to have had a dance hall over his head? What ghastly farce it is! That a poet is helped to realize his dreams and his joys in this hellish, reeking, market-place of a city! Why, I tell you, sir, that every hour that I have lived in it I have known that I have paid out unmeasured powers of my soul! And I know now, as every other poet knows, that when I am out of it I come with what pittance of strength I have been able to save from the horrible ordeal. Do you think that I am a fool that I do not know what inspires me and what degrades me? Why, sir, I sit here and watch my spirit wither like a frost-bitten plant!

Such things bring tears of indignation into my eyes.

* * * * *

--As a matter of simple reference, if any one wants to know what I imagine helps a poet--it is to live in the woods, to think and to dream, to read books and hear music, to eat wholesome food--and, above all, to escape from hot asphalt streets, cable-car gongs, and flaring advertisements of soaps and cigars.

* * * * *

October 12th.

I had an adventure to-day. I woke up with a headache, dull, sick, discouraged. I cared no more about anything. I got out The Captive and made ready to take it to the publishers.

And then I thought I would read a little of it.

I sat down in the corner--I forgot the publishers--I sat reading--reading--and my heart beat fast, and my hands shook, and all my soul rose in one hymn of joy!

Oh world, do your worst, I do not care! You may turn me off--but the gates of heaven are open! I will go on--I will bear anything--bear all things! I will wait and live and learn meanwhile, knowing with all my soul what this book is and what it must bring. So long as I can read it, I can wake my soul again.

* * * * *

It is at the publishers'. I will read books meantime and be happy.

I saw a manuscript clerk this time. She was very airy. I fear I am a sad-looking poet--my buttonholes are beginning to wear out. “We never read manuscripts out of turn,” she said. “It will take them three or four weeks.”

* * * * *

--Yes, good poet, that is my answer to you. I can not take your advice--I will cling to my book--I will pin all my hopes to it! I will toil and strive for it, I will haunt men with it, I will shout it from the housetops. No other book--no future book--_this_ book! It is a great book--a great book--it is--it _is_!

* * * * *

I am not ignorant of the price it costs to do that; it is my fate that I have to pay it. I can see, for instance, how Wordsworth paid it--Wordsworth, our greatest, our noblest poet since Milton. He had his sacred inspiration, and the world laughed at it; and so, grimly, systematically, he set to work to teach them--to say to all men--to say to himself--to say day and night--“It _is_ poetry! It is _great_ poetry! It is--_it is_!”

And of course at last he made them believe him; and when they believed him, he--Wordsworth--was a matter-of-fact, self-centered, dull and poor old man.

* * * * *

--It all rests with you, good world! How long must I stand here and knock at the door?

* * * * *

October 18th.

I am reading, reading--and trying to forget meanwhile! When I get through my long list of histories I shall go back to my Greek dramatists again. My Greek is getting better now--I expect to have a happy time with Aristophanes.--He is the funniest man that ever lived, Aristophanes.

Then I am coming back to read the French novelists. There are many of them I do not know. (I do not expect to like them--I do not like Frenchmen.)

* * * * *

October 22d.

I was glancing to-day over a volume of Shelley's, and the memory of old glories thrilled in me. Ah, let me not forget what Shelley was to me in my young struggling days! Let me not forget while I am wrestling with a dull world--let me not forget what a poet is to young men hungering for beauty! Let me not forget!

Yes, it is to such that my appeal is, it is by such that I will be judged! It is for such that I toil! For hearts upon whom the cold world has not laid its hand! For the poets and the seekers of all ages! Oh come to me, poets and seekers of all ages--dwell in my memory and strengthen my soul! That I go not down altogether--that I be not overcome by the dull things about me!

* * * * *

These thoughts are not becoming to a reader of history. But I am not a good reader of history--the old beasts are still growling within me. Something starts a longing in me--I cry out that I am getting dull, that I am going down, that I am putting off--I, who never put off before! And so the old storms rise and the great waves come rolling again!

* * * * *

October 25th.

I read that over just now. Yes, it is this that I dread. I dread the habit of not striving! When that becomes my habit it is my death! And here I sit, day by day--doing just the thing I dread! “Let me go _now_!” something shouts in me. “_Now_--or I shall never go at all!”

Oh, if I could find some word to tell men the terror of that thought!

--It is my life--that is what it is! To obey this thing within me, to save this thing within me, to _find_ this thing within me--that is my life!

* * * * *

It is a demon thing--it is a thing that has lifted me up by the hair of my head and shaken me--that has glared at me with the wild eyes of a beast--that has beaten me like a storm of wind and struck me down upon the ground! It shakes me now--it shakes me all the time--it makes me scream with pain--incoherently, frantically. “Oh save me!--Spare me!--Let me go!”

* * * * *

I rave, you say--yes, I know. That is because I can not say what I feel. But what matters it?

* * * * *

Sometimes I say to myself, “I put all that in The Captive, and men have not heard it! And now, what can I do that they _will_ hear--shall I have to go out in the streets and scream? Or what other desperate thing is there?”

* * * * *

--Mark this, oh you world that I can not make hear me! Some desperate thing I shall do--I will not sit here and be respectable always!

--I wonder what locusts taste like, and just where one could find wild honey.

* * * * *

October 29th.

I sang a song to-day--a mad, mad song! I wish I could bring it back. It came to me unexpectedly, while I was kneeling by the bed, thinking.

I have forgotten it all now--one always forgets his best songs. I have not a line of this one, except the chorus:

For I am lord of a thousand dollars!

So it is that my best songs go. I can count them on my fingers. But I have not yet learned how precious they are--that is why I lose them.

--Do you remember that time on the great cliffs by the ocean? There was nothing left but the ending again--

Oh bear me away in thy bosom,
Thou wind of the mountain high!

* * * * *

November 2d.

I am not always as I write here--I am not always angry. I have my tender moments, when I see my woe as the world's woe--above all the poverty. Oh let me always have a tender heart for the poor!

* * * * *

November 6th.

I have a distant relative in this city, an old gentleman who belongs to clubs and is what is known as a “man of the world.” He has quite a sense of humor--is famous for good stories. He told me that he was interested in me--that he would be glad to find a place for me in life, if I would only get over my youthful follies. It has been years since I saw him, but I can still hear him.

The last words he ever said to me were these--said with his quiet, amused smile: “Never mind, my boy, leave it to time. You needn't argue with me--just leave it to time, and it'll come out all right.”

Never have I sunk into a fit of despair that I have not thought of that; and the quiet smile has become the sneer of an imp. It has become all the world watching me, and knowing full well the issue; wise world!

That memory has never yet lost its power to make me grip my hands suddenly. “So! And my life has no other purpose, then, than to point a moral for a rich clubman!”

* * * * *

Leave it to time! Leave it to time! O God, what a sentence that is--so savage--and so true! Leave it to the long weary days that come one after another--that never tire--that never are beaten--that never are less--never faster--never slower--that wear you out as water wears a stone! Leave it to time! Say nothing, fear nothing; leave it to time! Leave it to the hours of dulness, the hours of sickness, the hours of despair! Leave it to failure piled upon failure, to insult piled upon insult, to rebuff upon rebuff, to sneer upon sneer! Leave it to the endless, never-ceasing sight of ugliness; the endless, never-ceasing sight of selfishness; of pettiness, emptiness, heartlessness, hatefulness! Leave it to heat and to cold, to dust and to dirt, to hunger and penury, to headache and heartache, and bitter, bitter loneliness! Leave it to time! Leave it to time!--_Oh my Father in heaven!_

* * * * *

November 8th.

--What am I doing? I am reading books full of facts--I am reading books that do not make me wretched. I am _not_ reading poetry.

I am leaving it to time!

* * * * *

November 10th.

It has been four weeks yesterday! I have been expecting to hear from the last publishers every day for a week. I have been trembling while I watched each mail. I have more than a hope that these publishers will take it--they publish a deal of poetry.

But I have been practising my friend's plan, I have been saying to myself all day: “You might as well know that it is coming back. What is the use of trying to deceive yourself?”

It has been four months since I finished The Captive! If I had known then what I know now, I do not believe I could ever have written a line of it.

What do I know _now_?

--I know more than I care to own to myself. There is a deadly growth taking root in the depths of my soul.

* * * * *

November 13th

It is two months to-day since I gave up my last place. I have gotten along on just three dollars a week, including everything. I find it is not possible to do better than that, there are so many odds and ends one needs. I have spent twenty-seven dollars. I have twenty-nine dollars. That means I can try two, or possibly three, publishers--after this one.

* * * * *

November 16th.

My method did make it easier after all. The letter came this morning.

* * * * *

“We have read with care the manuscript of The Captive which you have offered us. We are pleased to be able to tell you that we have found it a very fine piece of work, but we are sorry to say that our previous experience with publications of this character does not lead us to believe that we could make a success of it.

“We are holding MS. subject to your order.”

* * * * *

I did a desperate thing to-day--two of them. First I had to go and get the manuscript, so I asked to see the publisher. I sat down and looked straight into his face and said: “How is a man who is trying to write what is fine to keep alive if the publishers won't publish what he writes?”

He was very kind--he seemed to be interested. He explained that a publisher who published books that the public did not want would be driven out of business in a year. Then he said he knew many who were facing the same problem as I; that there was nothing to do but write for the magazines and the papers, and that it was a bitter shame that society made no provision for such men. “Your work is as noble and sincere as work can be,” he said, “but I do not believe that you will find a publisher in this country to undertake it, unless there be one who feels wealthy enough to do it as a service to literature and a labor of love.”

* * * * *

That made me turn white. I got my manuscript and I went out on the street, and the houses reeled about me. “So,” I said, “and that settles it!”

As I walked along I stared into the future. It seemed very clear all of a sudden.

I thought it all out. “No one will publish The Captive,” I said, “and no one would heed it if it were published. Therefore I have but one question to face, Have I the strength to go on, living as I have lived, distracted and tormented as I have been--and still piling up new emotions in my soul, daring new efforts, reaching new heights, producing new books? I can have no idea that my second work will be any more available than my first; on the contrary, I know that it would be just what The Captive is, only more so. Therefore, perhaps it will be ten years--perhaps it will be twenty years--before men begin to pay any heed to what I have written! And so there is the question, Have I the strength to go on in that way--have I the strength to face that future?”

Then I grew faint and had to lean against a railing. _I knew that I could not do that!_

* * * * *

It is no question of what I will do! It is a question of what I _can_ do! I am weakened and sick with the yearning that I have in me already. My last “business” experience drove me mad. And I am to go on, I am to rouse new hunger, new passion, new agony in my soul! Why, the work that I have dreamed of next is so hard and so far-away that I hardly dared even whisper it! It would take years and years of toiling! And I am to do it here in this seething city--to do it while I sell wholesale-paper--to do it while I am sick for lack of food! I can not do it! I _can_ not!

I went home, and I was crazy; so it was that I did my second desperate thing.

I sat down and wrote a letter to Mr. ----. I wrote a letter--I can not see how it could fail to stir the soul of any man. I told him how I had toiled--I told him how for four long months I had waited in agony--I told him what the publishers had said to me. I begged him--I implored him--for the sake of the unuttered message that cried out day and night in my soul--not to throw the letter aside--to read it--to give me a chance to talk to him. I said: “I will live in a hut, I will cook my own food, I will wear the clothes of a day laborer! If I can only be free--if I can only be free to be an artist! I could do it, all of it, for two hundred dollars a year; and I could win the battle, I know, if I had but three years. I am desperate as I write to you--I look ahead and I can see only ruin; and not ruin for myself--I do not mind that--but ruin for my art! I can tell you what that means to me in but one way--I ask you to read my book. I have put all my soul into that book--I will stake my all upon it. If you will only read it, you will see what I mean--you will see why I have written you this letter. You will see that it is not a beggar's letter, but a high challenge from an artist's soul.”

* * * * *

So there is one chance more. I do not see how he can refuse, and if he will only read the manuscript, I will be safe, I think.

* * * * *

November 20th.

I have done nothing but wait for four days, but I have not heard from him yet. To-day I made up my mind that I would take the manuscript to another publisher's meanwhile. He is probably busy, and may not answer for a long while; and I can get the manuscript from a publisher at any time.

* * * * *

November 24th.

Still I have not heard anything from Mr. ----. My soul was full of hope again, but it is sinking down as before. Is he not going to answer me at all?--Can it be that he has not even read my letter?

* * * * *

November 26th.

I wrote to him again to-day, inquiring. If he does not answer that, I shall suppose his secretary threw it away.

There is nothing weakens my soul like this endless waiting. I wander around desolate, helpless, I can not fix my mind on anything. Oh, the shame of it!

* * * * *

November 30th.

I could not give up that hope yet. It seemed to me so terrible that of all the men of wealth in this city there should not be one willing to help me save my message.--I wrote to-day the same letter to a clergyman who I know is wealthy, and who I believe would be interested in my work.

* * * * *

December 2d.

“I have received your letter, and I regret very much that I can not grant the request you make. The pressure upon my time is such that I can not possibly undertake to read your book. There would be no use in my doing so, anyhow, for I tell you frankly it seems to me the situation you are in is just what you need. My advice to you is to be a man and face it. I do not see any reason why one person should be set free from the labor which all of us have to share; and I assure you that you are entirely mistaken if you think that an artist has nothing to expect but ruin from contact with the world, and with suffering and toiling humanity.”

Isn't that a slap in the face for you?

Great God, I think that is the most insulting thing that has ever happened to me in all my days. “Set free from the labor which all of us have to share!”--What do you think I am--a tramp, or a loafer, you hound!

“A high challenge from an artist's soul!”

I think I never had so much hatred in my heart in all my life as I have to-day. Oh, my God, what a thing this world is! What stupid, blind brutality, what hideous vulgarity! This man a _clergyman_! And this is his faith, his nobility, his understanding!

Why, I came out of the forest with my naked heart in my hands! I came out quivering with emotion, melting with love and with trust for all men! I came all sensitive and raw--hungering for sympathy and kindness! And oh, my soul!--my God!--you have beaten me and kicked me as if I were a filthy cur!

Had I not offered up my heart for a sacrifice? Had I not burned it with fire? Had I not made all my being one consecration? And all for men, for men! For men I had torn myself--lashed myself--killed myself--for men I had forgotten what self was--yes, literally that--forgotten what self was! So little self had I left that I was willing to ask favors! So much consecration had I, so much trust, that I would beg! I had wept--I had suffered--I had starved! I had dreamed and sung, toiled until I set fire to my very brain! And you have beaten me and kicked me as if I were a filthy cur!

Those thoughts turn my whole soul into one wild curse! Have done with laying bare your heart to men, have done with telling your life to men! Why should you go on trying to be a poet, go on putting your secret soul into books, to be spurned at by the rabble? Your soul is your own--it is your God's--and what have the rabble to do with it! And all its tenderness! all its shrinking ecstasy! all its holiest consecration!--You will take them out to sell them to the rabble!

When will you get back into yourself, you fool? When will you have learned your lesson, and let this hellish world boot you out of its way no more? Let ever any man know a gleam of your heart again!--see one trace of your joy!

* * * * *

--And I came to it on my knees--to this world--crouching, cringing, begging! Oh, oh!--I scream it--Oh!

--And after that I sank down by the bed and hid my face and sobbed: “Oh, Shelley! Oh, my Shelley!”

* * * * *

December 3d.

--I saw myself a business man to-day, clearing a path for myself! But it does not last--I am not that kind of a man. My folly is my being--rest assured that I shall climb back to the heights again where I am willing to bear any insult.

* * * * *

But it will be a long time before I write any more letters. I have come to understand the world's point of view.

I suppose busy men get thousands of letters from cranks; they will get no more from me.

* * * * *

December 5th.

I was reading an essay on Balzac to-day. I read about Balzac's fondness for _things_; and I put the book down and spent an hour of perplexity. I fear I am a very narrow person in my sympathies and understandings. Why should a man care about _things_! About all sorts of houses and furniture, and pictures, and clothes, and jewels!

I can understand a man's caring about love and joy and aspiration. But _things_! I can understand a child's caring about things, or a fool's caring; I see millions of such; but an artist? A thinker? A _man_?

* * * * *

I am reading novels nowadays--reading all sorts of things that _entertain_. I have not read a poem for a long time, I have no interest in reading unless I can _go_ with it.

I have been studying some of the French novelists--some of Maupassant yesterday. What a strange creature is a Frenchman! A nervous, hysterical, vain, diseased creature!

* * * * *

“The Gallic disease!” Let that be a phrase.

* * * * *