Think about it, I cry, think about it!—Can I not find any word, is there nothing I can do or say now or at any time, to make men see it? Why, you take it for granted—I have taken it for granted all my days—that money should belong to the brutal rich to squander in whatever inanity may please them! But it never dawns upon you that this money is the toil of the human race! Money is the representation of all that human toil creates—of all value; it is houses that laborers build, it is grain that farmers raise, it is books that poets write! And see what becomes of it—see! see! Or are you blind or mad, that you will not see? Have you no more faith in man, no more care about the soul?

* * * * *

You think that I have been made sick by my work in that one haunt of vice. But it is not only that, it is not only that fever district where all the diseases of a city gather. I have been all over the city, and it is everywhere the same. Go to the opera-house any night and you may see blasphemous vanity enough to feed the starving of this city for a year. Walk up Fifth Avenue and see them driving; or go to Newport and see them there. Why, I read in the papers once of a woman who gave a ball—and the little fact has stuck in my mind ever since that she wore a dress trimmed with lace that cost a thousand dollars a meter! I do not speak of the infinite vulgarity of the thing—it is the monstrous crime of it that cries to me. These people—why, they have society by the throat!

* * * * *

I bury my face in my pillow and sob; but then I look up and pray for faith. I say we are only at the beginning of civilization, we can see but the first gleams of a social conscience; but it will come—it must come! Am I to believe that mankind will always submit to toil and pant to make lace at a thousand dollars a meter to cover the pride-swollen carcase of a society dame?

* * * * *

How is it to be managed? I do not know. I am not a political economist—I am a seeker after righteousness. But as a poet, and as a clear-eyed soul, I stand upon the heights and I cry out for it, I demand it. I demand that society shall come to its own, I demand that there shall be intelligence in the world! I demand that the toil of the millions shall not be for the pride of the few! I demand that it shall not be to buy diamonds and dresses and banquets, horses and carriages, palaces and yachts! I demand that it shall be for the making of knowledge and power, of beauty and light and love!

* * * * *

Oh, thou black jungle of a world!—What know you of knowledge and power, of beauty and light and love? What do you dream of these things? The end of man as you know it is to fight and struggle like a maniac, and grab for his own all that he can lay his claws upon. And what is your social ideal—but to lavish, each man upon himself, all that he can lavish before he dies? And whom do you honor save him who succeeds in that? And whom do you scorn save him who fails?

* * * * *

Oh thou black jungle of a world!—I cry it once again—

Where savage beasts through forest midnight roam, Seeking in sorrow for each other's joy!

I sit alone and think of these things, until my breath comes hard with rage. I say: "It is these that I serve—it is these who own the fruits of my toil—it is these for whom I am starved and crushed—it is these by whom my God-given power is trampled into annihilation!"

* * * * *

March 4th.

I gave the place up this morning. I have thirty-one dollars. I think such a sum of money never made me less happy.

I have nothing to do but drag myself back to my room and wait there until the eighth, to take back my manuscript. It will be five weeks that he has kept me—I suppose that is not his fault.

And then I say: "Fool, to torment yourself with such hopes! Don't you know that he will say what all the rest have said? He is a clever man, and he knows everything; but what use is he going to have for your poetry?"

* * * * *

I wandered about almost all of to-day, or sat stupid in my room. I have lost all my habits of effort—I have forgotten all that I ever knew, all my hopes, all my plans. I said: "I will study!" But then I added: "Why should I? Shall I not only make myself miserable, get myself full of emotion, and to no purpose but the carrying of dishes?"

* * * * *

It is terrible to me to have to acknowledge any change in my way of living—I never did that before. Compromises! Concessions! Surrenders!—words such as those set me mad. But what am I to do? What can I do? I writhe and twist, but there is no escape. I struggle upward, but I am only beaten back and back? How should I not stop striving?

* * * * *

Circumstances made no difference to a man. So I used to prate!

No difference! Why, I was a giant in my soul, swift and terrible as the lion. I leaped upon my task, I seized upon everything that came my way. I passed whole classes of men at a bound, I saw, I felt—I bore the world in my soul. I would dare everything, learn everything, live everything—take it all into myself. And every day I was stronger, every day I was more!—

And now see me! You have penned me here, you have starved me, stunted me, crushed me—I sit shivering and staring at my own piteousness! Why, I can not even be angry any more—I am too shrunken, too impotent for that! And was it my fault? Have I not fought till I was ill?

—But never did I put forth a hope that it was not withered in the bud! My every enthusiasm you stamped into the ground; every advance that I made—why you smote me in the face! And all my ardor, my confidence, my trust—has it ever met with anything but jeers?

* * * * *

—Yes, and now you turn away—this revolts you! This is bare, painful egotism—this is whining—this is querulous misery. It offends you like the sight of raw flesh!

—It is my raw soul. My poor little naked, pitiful, beaten soul!—groveling, and begging, too!

* * * * *

—But whose fault is it—merciful Heaven, whose fault is it? It is my nature to live in myself—to live from myself. And this that is unbearable egotism, why, it would have been exulting power! Joy in a vision! Mastery of a life and an art!

But here you shut me up! You crush me down! I try to escape—I cry out: "I am not an egotist—I am a worshiper! I want nothing in the world so much as to forget myself—my rights, my claims, my powers, my talents! I want to think of God! Only give me a chance—only give me a chance to do that, and I care not what you do with me! Here I stand with my poor little work, begging, pleading for some one to heed it! Thinking of it only, living for it only, insisting upon it day and night! But do you think that I do that of choice? My God, no—you are mad—I only want to go on! Give me but the chance to go on—and do you think that I would care whether any man admired my work?"

—Why, I would not even know it—I would be out in the mountains alone!

* * * * *

"But for what had you your pride in the morning, and in the evening your submission?"

Can you guess how that jeer rings in my ears, how it goads me?

* * * * *

March 5th.

Sinking down! Sinking down! To see yourself one of the losing creatures, to know that there is no help for you in this world—that no one will heed you, no one will stretch out a hand! To see yourself with every weakness, to see yourself as everything that you hate—to be mad with rage against yourself, and still to be able to do nothing!

* * * * *

—Understand what I mean—poor fools, do not think it is for myself that I fear. If I wanted to fight a way for myself—I could do it yet—never fear. But ah, you will save the mother and not her child! What I weep for, what I die for, is my ART!

My vision, my life, my joy, my fire! These are the things that are dying! And when the soul is dead do you think that I shall care about the body? Do you think that I will stay in this world a shell, a mockery, a corpse? Stay either to putrefy with pleasure or to be embalmed in dulness? Nay, you do not know me!

* * * * *

—I said to myself to-night, "If I perish in this world it will be because I was too far ahead of my environment—that and that only. It will be because I was pure, single-hearted, consecrated, and because of such you neither know nor care." Do I fear to say that? I am done with shame—I think that I am dying—let me speak the truth.

* * * * *

—And I have really said the word then—the word that can not be recalled—that my hope is dead, that I give up—that I can not live my life? Nay—I do not have to say the word, the word says itself.

* * * * *

March 6th.

To-day I shook myself together. I could not stand such wretchedness. I said, I will get a novel, and I will put myself into it—grimly—I will read in spite of everything.

* * * * *

And such a book as I lighted on by chance!—Once I had whole yawning vistas of books toward which I stretched out my arms; but somehow I had forgotten them all to-day. I could do no better than pick up a book by chance.—

I picked up Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and I found myself in the midst of the same misery that haunts me here. I read it, but it did not help me.

* * * * *

—It is strange what poverty has ground into my soul. I find myself reading such a book with but one feeling, one idea crying out in me. I discover that my whole being is reduced to the great elemental, primitive instinct of self-preservation. Love is dead in me, generosity, humanity, imagination is dead,—everything but one wild-beast passion; and I find myself panting as I read: "Get some money! Get some money! Hold on to it!"

* * * * *

—After a while I think suddenly: "And I am a poet!" That brings a moan from me and I sit shuddering.

* * * * *

March 7th.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles is one of the most unconvincing books I ever read. I neither believed in it nor cared about it in the slightest.

I am shown a "pure woman," and by and by I learn, to my perplexity, that she has been seduced; after which she continues the "pure woman" again, and I am asked to agonize over her troubles! But all the time I keep saying, "This is not a woman that you are showing me at all—a woman with a soul; it is a puppet figure that you suppose 'seduced' for the sake of the story."

It is our absurd English ideas of "propriety" that make possible such things. If the author had had to show the seduction of "Tess" the weakness of the thing would have been plain in an instant. That he did not show it was his lack of conscience. There is no propriety in art but truth.

* * * * *

March 8th.

I took the manuscript to the editor again to-day. He told me to come in on Monday.

Deep in my soul I can have no more disappointments about it. I take it about from habit. I sat and looked it over last night, but one can not read emotional things in cold blood. I said, Is this true? Is it natural? Is there any use in it?

I was tempted to cut out one or two things; but I decided to let it stay as it was.

* * * * *

March 10th.

I have been sitting to-night in my room, half-dazed, or pacing about the streets talking to myself in a frenzy. I can hardly believe that it is true, I can hardly realize it! I laugh with excitement, and then I cry.

* * * * *

I went to-day to get back my manuscript. And the editor said: "Mr. Stirling, it is a most extraordinary piece of work. It is a most interesting thing, I like it very much."

I stared at him gasping. Then I waited to hear him say—"But I regret"—But he didn't!

"I can't tell you anything definite about it," he said. "I want to submit it to the firm. I wouldn't undertake to accept any such unusual thing for the magazine without consulting them, and especially seeing if they will bring it out afterward—"

"You are thinking of using it in the magazine!" I cried.

"As I tell you, I can't say positively. I can only tell you what I think of it. I will have them read it at once—"

"I will take it to them to-day!" I put in.

"No," he said, "you need not, for I am going there this afternoon, and I will take it, and ask them to read it immediately."

I can't remember what else he said. I was deaf, crazy! I rushed home, talking to myself incoherently. I remember sitting here in a chair and saying aloud, "Oh, it can't be! It is impossible! That it should be good enough to publish in a magazine like that! It is some mistake—it will all come to nothing. It's absurd!"

* * * * *

So I sat, and I thought what such a thing would mean to me—it would make my reputation in a day—I should be free—free! But I thought of it and it did not make me happy; I only sat staring at myself, shuddering. The endless mournfulness that is in my heart surged up in me like a tide, and suddenly I began to cry like a child.

"It has come to me too late," I exclaimed, "too late! I can't believe it—it doesn't mean anything to me. I don't care anything about it—I mean the poem! I don't believe in it myself!"

God, do you know I said that, and meant it? I said more—I sat and whispered it to myself: "Let them take it, yes, let them! I don't care—it will set me free—I shall have some money! But they're fools to do it, they're fools!"

* * * * *

March 11th.

I tremble with excitement all the day, dreaming about that thing. I go about half-mad. "Oh, just think of it," I whisper, "just think of it!"

I linger about it hungrily! He spoke as if he really meant to make them take it.

* * * * *

March 13th.

I went to see him to-day to ask. No, they had not let him know yet, but they had the manuscript. He would write me.

I made up my mind that I would not bother him again. I will wait, hard as it is.

* * * * *

I sat asking myself to-day, "Do you really mean that you believe that poem is going to stir the world—this huge, heedless world you see about you? Have you truly that blind, unreasoning faith that you try to persuade yourself you have?"

* * * * *

Ah, I don't know what I believe now. Only, once I had my young courage,—I feared not the world, I could do anything. Now I am but one among a million.

* * * * *

March 16th.

I force myself to read these things that half-interest me; but I think I spend a quarter of my time wandering about whispering that they are going to publish it. I cry out, "Oh, they must!" I go into the library and stare at the magazine and think of it there. I walk past the publishers', and think of it there! I have been inquiring all about publishing, about terms and all that sort of thing. It makes my brain reel—why, they might pay me five hundred dollars for it! Think of it—five hundred dollars!—I could go crazy with such a thought as that.

And then I think what the reviews will say of it, and I cry, "Oh, no, it can't be true!"

Again I find myself saying, "Only let them take it! I don't care about the rest, whether it succeeds or not—let them take it!"

* * * * *

March 18th.

I walked past the editor's office to-day. It took just every bit of will that I had, not to go in. I said: "He might know even now, and I wouldn't hear till to-morrow!"

But I didn't do it. I said I would wait a week, anyhow.

* * * * *

March 20th.

I don't know what in the world to make of it.

The week ended to-day, and nothing yet; and I hit upon another scheme, I went to the publishers. I said: "I will ask them, and he needn't know anything about it and it won't bother him." So I went in and they referred me to the manuscript clerk. She said she had never heard of The Captive.

"But it's here somewhere," I said, "the editor brought it here."

"There is no manuscript ever comes here," she answered, "that is not entered on my books."

"But," I said, "some member of the firm must have it."

"If any member of the firm got it," she said, smiling, "the first thing he would do would be to bring it to me to enter in the books."

I insisted. I wanted to see somebody in the firm, but she answered me there was no use. Finally she suggested that they might know something about it up in the offices of the magazine. I went there, but no, no one had ever heard of it there.

I came home dazed. I don't know what in the world to make of it. He certainly said that the firm was reading it. I wrote to-night to ask him about it.

* * * * *

March 23d.

I have waited day by day in the utmost perplexity to hear from him about that. I should have heard from him yesterday. I don't know what in the world to make of it. Can he have gone in to them privately? Or can he have forgotten it—he is so busy!

I dread the latter circumstance—but I dread as much to anger him in the other case.

* * * * *

March 27th.

I waited four days more. I went up to see him. Just as I feared. I have annoyed him. I could see it. I know he must be tired of seeing my face.

"Mr. Stirling," he said, "I have told you that the poem is being read by the firm, and that I will let you know the moment I hear from them."

"I only came," I said, "because the clerk told me—"

"There are some things clerks don't know," he put in.

I tremble at the thought of making him angry. I will not go near him again.

* * * * *

March 30th.

I am doing my best to keep my mind on some reading, so as not to make the agony unbearable. But it is very hard—the mails disturb you. I can only read in the middle of the day, and at night. In the morning I expect the first mail, trembling; but after that I know a city letter can't come till afternoon, so I can read. Then again at night I know it can't come.

* * * * *

—I am reading The Ring and the Book. I have always found that it doesn't do to take vulgar opinions. I had supposed I should find The Ring and the Book hard reading.

It is skippable—the consequence of having a foolish scheme to fill out. But the story of Pompilia and Giuseppi is one of the finest things I know of anywhere.

* * * * *

April 3d.

It has been another week. I could not stand it any more. I am going over to the publishers' again this afternoon.

—What in Heaven's name does this thing mean? I met the satisfied smile of the clerk again. "We have never seen the manuscript, Mr. Stirling!"

If you could only see how positive she is! "I don't know anything about what the editor told you, I can only tell you positively that he has never submitted any such manuscript to the firm, or to anybody connected with the firm."

That thing drove me wild. I don't know what to make of it. Surely he's given it to some one, for he told me so.

I went up to the magazine rooms, and he was in his office; but he had left word that he would not see any one, and they would not even take in my name.

* * * * *

April 4th.

I can do nothing but haunt that place till I find out what it means! It has been three weeks and a half since he gave it to them, and he said I would hear at once. What in the world does he think it means to me? Can't I presume the slightest gleam of interest, of care, on his part?

* * * * *

April 5th.

To-day I could not stand it any longer. I went to the place again. I saw the manuscript clerk once more—the same answer. I went upstairs; he was there again, but busy. I wrote a note and left it. I explained that I did not in the least wish to trouble him, but that the thing meant a great deal to me, and that I had the utmost need of promptness; that it had been almost four weeks since he gave it to the firm, and that nobody there seemed to know anything about it.

* * * * *

April 7th.

He did not answer my letter! I thought I should hear to-day. O God, this is the most tormenting thing! Think what it means! And what in Heaven's name has he done? Surely some one—he must have given it to some one!

Only why in the world doesn't he understand my perplexity and explain?

* * * * *

April 9th.

No letter yet. I went back to the publishers' again this morning. I have been wandering by the place every day since. They had not seen it yet. She said she'd have the firm inquire, but I said not to, as it might annoy him. "He surely has given it to some one, you know."—She laughed at me.

I went up to the magazine office again. He was not there, but I saw his associate. The associate did not know anything about it either.

* * * * *

April 10th.

I waited one day more and no answer. I wrote to him again to-night, begging him to please reply.

* * * * *

—I have begun several novels, but I can't get interested in them. I am simply sick. I came out of that horrible restaurant with money enough to do me for ten weeks, and here are over five of them gone in this hideous way. Oh, it is monstrous!

It has been nine weeks and a half since I gave him that poem in the beginning! I never spent nine such weeks of horror in my life.

* * * * *

April 12th.

"In answer to your letter I beg to inform you that the manuscript of The Captive is now in the hands of the firm, and that you may expect a decision in about a week."

So! It is a relief at any rate to know that the thing is all right. I can wait a little better now.

Of course I knew it must be there. A plague on that foolish clerk!

* * * * *

April 14th.

All the while that I am writing about this thing I keep up my courage by thinking what it will mean to me. It is something so immense that I can hardly realize it. I shall be famous!—And he really liked it, there can be no doubt about that! He was too busy to talk much, but he showed he liked it.

* * * * *

April 17th.

Oh my soul, I think this is the most frightful thing—is it not simply a nightmare? I have been pacing the floor to-night in an agony. They have never seen that manuscript!

I was going by there to-day, and I couldn't withstand the temptation; the week was not up, but I said: "If I inquire, there's no reason why he should know about it." I went in.

And that terrible clerk—she smiled at me still! The more I talked, the more she shook her head. "There's no such manuscript ever been seen here," she said. I showed her the letter, and that decided her to go in and see the firm. They sent out word that neither they nor their readers had ever heard of it, but that they would write to the editor at once.

* * * * *

Oh, I think this is horrible—horrible! And then just guess what I did! I couldn't bear the agony—I went to the other place, and he wasn't there, and so at last I went to his club.

He wasn't at the club, but they told me where he was; and I spent ten cents telephoning him. At this place they said he had an engagement to be there later, so I spent another ten cents, and that time I found him. I told him who I was. "The week isn't up yet," I said, "but the firm say they have never received the manuscript."

"So?" he said; his voice sounded hard, I thought, and it made me shudder. "You come up to see me the day after to-morrow at ten o'clock, and you'll hear about your manuscript."

And that is all. And I walked out of the great, rich club, and I have been pacing up and down in my own garret ever since. I am almost too ill with anxiety to stand.

* * * * *

April 18th.

And to-day I can only wait. Once I lay down upon the bed and cried.

* * * * *

April 19th.

I don't know how to tell this thing. I am simply dazed. I had an experience to-day—the most hideous thing that I think ever happened to me in my life. Oh, I have been like a madman ever since—I lost my head—I did not know what I was doing. I was really crazy—it is three o'clock in the morning, now, but I shall write it down—I can not sleep.

* * * * *

To-day I went up to see that man as he told me to. I went trembling with suspense—just think, it has been eleven weeks since this agony began. And I went into his office—he was alone; and when he saw me he sprang to his feet—my soul, he looked like a tiger. He stood there in the middle of the room fairly gasping with rage.

"So," he cried, "you've come, have you! I tell you, young man, I have never been subjected to such an outrage as this in my life! I would not read another manuscript for you—why, I wouldn't stand for such an imposition from Balzac or Thackeray—no, sir, I wouldn't!"

I stared at the man simply speechless with astonishment. "Why," I panted, "what do you mean?"

"What do I mean? Why, you have hounded me about this city until I'm crazy. There's no place I can go to escape you. You come to my office, you come here, you come to my club! You have made yourself a perfect pest at the publishers to every one! Why—"

He stopped out of breath. Of course I have no courage or head with men—I was ready to grovel at his feet. "My dear sir," I pleaded, "I assure you I didn't mean to do anything of the kind—it was only that the clerk kept telling me—"

"I don't care what the clerk kept telling you! I tell you that that manuscript has been in the hands of the company since the day I told you I would leave it there. Of course there have been delays, there is all sorts of routine to go through with; but suppose all our contributors did the same thing—what would we do?"

He was talking at me as if expecting a reply. Fortunately the right words came to my lips—I was really ready to cry with shame and perplexity.

"I don't think it is quite the same with all your contributors," I said, with a trembling voice. "While I have been waiting I have been simply starving."

It seemed to clear the atmosphere. He stared at me, and then he sat down. He was ashamed of himself, I could see. "Why," he said, "you couldn't have been paid anything for months."

"I didn't know," I said, "I didn't know anything about it. But I have been starving."

He spoke more quietly. "Mr. Stirling," he said, "I'm very sorry about this, the whole thing has been unfortunate. Excuse me that I spoke angrily; let us not think any more about it."

I stood there, feeling almost like crying, I was so nervous.

"Now, about that manuscript," he went on, "I'm doing what I can to learn about it. It's been there all along, as I told you, and you will hear about it soon. Why, Mr. Stirling, I even took the trouble to send my secretary down there yesterday to make sure that it was all right."

"I did not want you to go to any such trouble," I stammered.

"That's all right," he said, "don't mention it. Now they will have decided in a few days, and I will write you—"

"No, please do not," I said, still with my abject humility. "Don't take any more trouble—let me go there and find out—"

"By no means!" said he. "Take my advice and don't go near there again under any circumstances. You can't tell how much an author hurts himself by troubling a publisher as you have done. Don't go near there—let me write to you."

I promised that I would; and then with more abjectness I got myself out of that room, and I went out and sat down upon a step near by, simply shaking like a leaf.

"Oh, heavens!" I gasped. "That was horrible! Horrible!"

* * * * *

I sat dazed—thinking about it—thinking it over and over—I couldn't understand it, try as I might. Why should he have been so angry that day—had he not told me to come there? And had he not said I should have a report?

* * * * *

—And then suddenly something flashed over me that made me leap! That firm had written him a letter the day before yesterday asking about the manuscript, and that was why he was angry! And he had sent his secretary down to inquire!—But why in Heaven's name should he send his secretary down to inquire when he had a telephone connecting with the firm right there in his office!

And so I saw it—all in one instant the thing flashed over me!

I was so wild I paid a car-fare—I rode straight as a die down to that place, and I went in and saw the clerk.

"He has sent the manuscript now," I said, "hasn't he?"

"Yes," she said.

"He sent it in yesterday?" I said.

"Yes."

"He sent it by his secretary, didn't he?"

"Yes," she said again.

"Thank you," I answered, and went out.

* * * * *

Is not that simply monstrous, simply awful beyond words? I have been beside myself tonight with rage, with amazement, with perplexity. Oh, think what I have suffered at the hands of that frightful man! And what have I done to him—why should he have treated me so? What does it mean? I am baffled every way I turn.

The thing is like flame in my blood—like acid in my veins. It makes me hysterical with pain. I cry aloud.

* * * * *

—What do you mean by it, you monster, you wretch? Why, here for eleven weeks I have been hanging upon your every word—eleven weeks of my life spent in torment—absolutely flung away! Eleven weeks! And you have lied to me—and you have kicked me about like a dog!

What do you mean? What do you mean? Tell me, above all, why you did it! Were you torturing me on purpose? Or did you simply forget it? But then, how could you forget it when you had to tell me all those miserable falsehoods? And when you had to write me those letters?

And then to-day!

That is the thing that goads me most—to-day! I stood there cringed before you like a beaten cur—you kicked me—you spit upon me! And it was every bit of it a lie! That insolent rage of yours—why, it wasn't even genuine! You weren't even angry—you knew that you had no reason to be angry—that you had treated me as if I were a worm to tread on! And yet you stood there and abused me!

Oh—why, the thing is madness to think of! It is more madness the more you realize it! I have never known anything like it before in my life.

Yes—actually—it is something quite new to me. I have met blind people—people who would not heed me—but a really evil person I have never known before! A person who has no respect for another's rights—who would trample upon another! Oh, you miserable wretch—and the lies—the lies! The hateful sneaking of it—you black-hearted, insolent man! The manuscript had been there all the time! The delays, the routine! And you had sent your secretary down to inquire! And above all—oh, above all—the prince of them—I must not go near there lest I should injure myself! I must not go near them—they were so weary of seeing me! And I never saw a single soul there in my life but one clerk!

I never suffered such a thing as this before in all my days—deliberate, brutal injustice! And that I should be so placed as to be a victim of such a thing—that I should have to hang upon your words and to be at your mercy for eleven weeks of agony! You are a great editor, a clubman, a rich man! You have fame and power and wealth—and you stand up there and scald me with your rage—and with your heart a mess of lies all the time!

* * * * *

—But why did you do it? That is the thing I ask myself in consternation. Why? Why?—Were you not interested in my work? If you weren't—why didn't you give it back to me, and let me go my way? And if you were—if you had any idea of publishing it—then why did you use me in this way? Where was the manuscript all this time? What did you mean to do with it? How long did you expect me to wait? And what object did you have in telling me untruths about it meanwhile?

—The whole thing is as blank to me as night. That a man should have in him so much infinite indifference about another as to leave that manuscript in a drawer, and write me that I was to "have a report on it within a week"! Why, it is something of which I can not even think. And then to get out of it by that sham anger and that sneaking!—

* * * * *

April 20th.

I have done absolutely nothing but brood over this thing and rage all day. What am I to do?—I sat and wondered if there was anything I could do but go and shoot that man. And I asked myself: Ought I not at least to go and get the manuscript from that accursed place this instant? Ought I not to have taken it then and there? But see the utter misery of my situation, the abject shame of it—suppose they were to take the thing! It is my one hope in this world—I dare not lose it—I have to leave it there!

* * * * *

But then, what hope is there now? I ask. Why, he was going to urge it upon them! And now, of course, he's simply sent it in there without a word!

Don't you see what it was—it was that letter of inquiry they wrote him! He paid no more attention to me than if I were a hound; but he had to send it when they wrote! And perhaps they said something about carelessness and that made him wild.

Oh, the thing is an endless spring of gall to me! I am all raw with it—I have to rush out on the street and walk away my passion. I never saw my situation so plainly—the horrible impotence of it! Just see what I struggle against, the utter insane futility of everything I do! Why, I beat my wings in a void, I hammer my head against a wall!

* * * * *

—And now I must wait for that thing to come back—don't I know that it will come back? And don't I know that that will be the end of me?

A black, horrible gloom has settled down upon me. I am utterly lost in despair.

* * * * *

April 21st.

I will write no more about that man—my whole being is turned to bitterness. I wonder at myself—I have no longer one feeling left in this world except a black brooding hatred of him!

* * * * *

—And all the time the thing haunts me like a detective story—I can't find the solution! What does it mean? Why did he do it? It is so irrational—so impossible—so utterly incomprehensible! And shall I never know the truth about it?

* * * * *

April 24th.

"We regret that we are not advised to undertake the publication of The Captive. We return the manuscript by express."

* * * * *

There it is! I read that thing, and I felt my whole being sinking down as if into hell. There it is! And that is the end of it all! Oh, merciful Providence, is it not simply too cruel to be believed! Eleven weeks! Eleven weeks!

* * * * *

—I can do no more—I do not know where to turn. I believe I shall go mad with my misery.

* * * * *

April 25th.

To-day I thought I would go up and see him—I thought I could not live until I knew what this thing meant. I heard myself saying, "I demand to know why you treated me thus? I say I demand it! Before God, how dared you—or don't you believe in a God?"

* * * * *

—Then again I thought, I will plead with him. It must be some mistake—I can't believe that it is all over. Why, he liked it! And now perhaps it was only looked over by some careless reader and flung aside!

But no—I could not go near the place! I could not face that man again. The memory of his look as he stood there in his insolence is so hateful to me that it makes me tremble.

* * * * *

April 26th.

I see myself crying this out from the housetops. I even wrote a letter to a newspaper, but I did not send it.

I went to a lawyer, a man I used to know. I told him I had no money—I asked him to help me. But I can not sue him—he was under no obligations, it seems; and I can not prove that the manuscript was injured in value by the delay.

So there is nothing that I can do. He will go his way—he will never think of me again. He is rich and famous.—

* * * * *

—I have just nine dollars left of my money. I can not possibly make it do more than three or four weeks; and meanwhile I sit and brood and watch them go by in blank despair.

* * * * *

April 28th.

I fight with myself—I must get that hellish thing out of my head! I went to a publisher's to-day—I didn't have the heart to go in, but I gave it to the clerk.

It will take two or three weeks. This will be the eighth publisher.

* * * * *

I said to-day: "I will force myself to read, I will get myself together; I will not let myself be stamped to the mud by this man."

* * * * *

There is nothing I can do about it—I only poison my whole soul thinking of it. I must put it out of my mind—I must work!

* * * * *

May 1st.

I said to myself to-day: "Do you really believe that the world would heed that poem? Do you think that if any publisher published it, he could sell it?" I answered, "No, I do not."

If one took it I should think I was making a fool of him. I offer it on that chance!

—What am I going to do? I do not know. I must try to find some work that does not tear me to pieces; and then perhaps some day I shall be able to write something different.

* * * * *

May 3d.

My whole soul is in a turmoil these days. I struggle,—I can not give up while I live; but for what do I struggle? I am a man journeying in a thicket; I can not see one step before me.

—I try to forget myself—I try to get interested in a book. But I never had but one kind of interest. I can not get used to living without a purpose, without enthusiasm, without morality.

* * * * *

I have no ideas any more. My whole life is shrunken and contracted. It is all stagnant—the garden of my soul is full of weeds. The broad fields that I used to cover, the far-off things I used to strive for—what have they to do with me now?

* * * * *

—I heard a gull to-day—far, far up—a mere speck in the sky. I started, as I watched him vanish. Then I said: "But you, too, will have to come down and mingle in the turmoil and the danger!"

* * * * *

May 6th.

I go over into the Park—the springtime is in full glory, all the sights that used to thrill my heart are there; the splendor of new verdure and young flowers, the birds that I love rioting in song. But it moves me not in the least, it only makes me ten times more mournful. I turn away.

Why, once an apple spray in blossom was to me a drunken ecstasy.

—Shall I ever know what it is to be generous, and rich and royal in my heart again? To know that surging fulness of emotion that makes you think of gold and purple and regal pomp?

I tell you the whole thing is a question of money with me. I have come down to the bare bed-rock of sordidness—I must have money—money!—It is everything in this world to me. I can never think of anything else again until I have it.

* * * * *

I see myself going out into the world and fighting as other men fight, and making a place in it for myself.

* * * * *

May 8th.

I am getting down again; my poor hoard is going! I sit and count it—I calculate it—I lay out my bill of fare. Oh, where shall I go, what can I do? Can I write anything? I ask. I have nothing in me but a naked, shivering longing.

I dread to be in the desperate fix I was the last time I could find no work. And yet I can not make up my mind to do anything until I hear from this one publisher more.

* * * * *

May 9th.

I walked over there to-day to save a postage-stamp. They had not heard from the reader yet.

* * * * *

—I sit down and try to study. Then I get up and say I ought not to put it off any longer. Then again I think: "Wait until to-morrow, at any rate."

* * * * *

May 10th.

I was looking at that man's magazine to-day. What thoughts it brought to me—what agonies, what longings, what despair! And, above all, what ocean-floods of bitterness!

* * * * *

I walked all the way down to the wholesale-paper store. I thought I would prefer that to evils that I know not of. I have almost a terror of having to come into contact with new people.

But my place was filled. I trudged home again. I went to the publisher's too; nothing yet. The three weeks were up to-day.

* * * * *

May 12th.

I dared not wait any more to-day. I had just three dollars and ten cents left. And my rent is due the day after to-morrow. I have answered every sort of advertisement, from dishwashing to tutoring a boy. I guess I looked too seedy for the latter.

* * * * *

—Sometimes when I am wandering around in all this misery, still yearning for what I might have been, the thought comes across my mind: "And in this huge world there might yet be some one who would understand the thing! Some one who would help me! Some one by whom it would be an honor to be helped—if I could only find him."

And here I am, having my life beaten out of me, spark by spark,—and I can't find him—I can't!

* * * * *

I cry out for money—for money!

* * * * *

But no, it is others who have it.—And the way that they use it—O God, the way that they use it!

If all the world were poor, it would not be so bad; but the sight of wealth—of infinite oceans of it squandered in perfect frenzies of ostentation! The sight of this "world"—this world, which they take quite as a matter of course!

* * * * *

I have seen a good deal of this world myself, and I at least do not take it thus. I gaze upon the men and women who do take it thus, and I say, "Are you men and women really? Or are you not some strange, un-Godmade creatures, without ever a thought about justice, without ever a gleam of reason or purpose or sense?"

* * * * *

May 14th.

I have tramped the streets for two days more. I was made so ill by my anxiety last time that I made up my mind I would not risk it again. I asked my landlady to-night to wait a while, as I was looking for some work. She was ungracious enough, but I have no longer any sensibilities—I only want to be safe. She can wait—she has my trunk, as I told her.

* * * * *

Probably she wouldn't even be as willing, if she could see what is in it! I have no longer anything to sell. I had to exchange my waiter's costume for a pair of trousers, for mine were all in rags.

I have two dollars and seventy cents. I imagine that is a safe margin.

There are no words that can tell what an absolutely deadening thing it is to be wandering about the city looking for work. It turns you into a log of wood—you not only no longer have an idea, you have not a thought of an idea. You simply drag on and on until the thing becomes a habit, and you go without even thinking of that.

* * * * *

May 15th.

"Our readers have examined with a great deal of interest the unusual piece of work which you have sent us. But it has been our experience that poetry proves such a distressing adventure commercially, that we are forced to decline the offer which you have so kindly made us. We wish, however, to assure you of our desire to see anything else which you may have on hand, or may have at any time in future."

That is about the way the letter ran—I tore it up. I did not read it but once. I took the thing to another firm—it can't do any harm.

I have not been able to find anything to-day.

* * * * *

May 16th.

So long as I have thoughts I can write a journal; but while my life is that of an animal, it doesn't seem very necessary. I have always felt myself an outcast—a poet has to be that; but I never felt it quite so much as at present. I wander around from door to door; and those who have homes and money and power—they simply order me out of the way.

* * * * *

May 18th.

I do not think I can stand this much longer. I never had such a time before finding anything. I think my state must be written in my face—men no longer have any use for me.

I fear my coat is seedy. And I know my collar is soiled; but the two I left at the laundry won't be done till to-morrow.

I have broken my last two-dollar bill. I watch in terror for the next week—I can not face that woman again. I must save enough for that.

* * * * *

May 19th.

I applied for a position as office-boy to-day—I was desperate. I have not enough to last me through a week, if I pay the woman anything.

But they said I was too old.

My feet are most horribly sore. I can hardly walk. And I have the strangest ringing in my head. I could not eat any supper—and the milk won't keep in this warm weather, either.

* * * * *

May 22d.

The day before yesterday, when I woke up in the morning, I could hardly stand. My head was on fire, and I do not think I have ever been so sick before. I got around to a drug-store—the man said he would give me some powders; he said they were forty cents, but I dared not pay it. He gave them to me for a quarter. He said I should have a tonic, but I haven't had it.

I was too ill to move all day yesterday. I am better to-day, but still I daren't go out. I have only eighty-five cents left.

* * * * *

I must manage to get out and get some work to-morrow, or I shall go mad.

* * * * *

I had a scene with that horrible creature yesterday. It was the second week—she thought I was shamming, I know. She said she never allowed her "roomers" to get behindhand—it was her invariable rule. O God, I was so sick I could scarcely see—I did not care what she did. I told her that I had no money; that I was waiting to get some work; that I would pay her the first moment I could.

"Why don't you keep work when you get it?" she demanded. "You have been idle nearly all the whole time you've been here."

I could not argue with her; she can turn me out when she likes.

* * * * *

May 24th.

I dragged myself out to-day. I feel better except for the blisters on my feet. But nothing to do! Nothing to do! Oh, I am half mad.

I thought to-day I would call upon some of my relatives. But I bit my lips together—no, I will not ever do that!

* * * * *

It is the ghastly heat that kills me. Yesterday was almost stifling, I thought I could not bear it. I never knew it to be so hot so early.

* * * * *

May 26th.

I have got but thirty-five cents, and to-day I was so tired I had to rest for two hours nevertheless. Oh, merciful heavens, but this is fiery torture!

* * * * *

It is half a week again. I know she will not let me stay another week. I did a strange thing—I wrapped up all my papers and carried them out under my coat. She can keep everything else I have, but my papers are mine. I took them to the grocery-store where I buy things and asked the man to keep them for me.

* * * * *

May 27th.

What does a man do when he wants to work and can't find anything? Does he really starve? Or does he get locked up? Or what?

I said to-day: I will eat nothing but bread and oatmeal till I get something to do.

* * * * *

May 29th.

It was just as I thought. She has demanded her money—and I have but fifteen cents! I helped a man up with a trunk and got ten.—She told me that I would have to get out. It is clear to-night. I shall sleep somewhere in the Park. I can not write any more.

* * * * *

May 31st.

I got some work to do after all—at the height of my despair. I am giving out samples of a hitherto unequaled brand of soap.

It was yesterday morning, I met one of the men and asked him where he got the job. He said they wanted more men, so I got on a car and rode down there in haste. I made fifty cents yesterday, for half a day, and a dollar to-day. Thank God!

I spent the night before last in the Park, and last night in the room where I am writing. It is in a tenement-house. I paid fifty cents a week for it, and there is a drunken man snoring on the other side of a board partition.

I sha'n't go back to the other place, of course, until I get more money. Besides, she has probably rented the room.

* * * * *

I am so relieved at having gotten something to do. I believe I am even proud of the soap.

I am getting used to walking all day; anything so long as one doesn't have the agonizing worry about starvation. I am ill, but I shall keep at it, and answer advertisements meanwhile by mail, till I get something better.

I am going out to sit by the river. I can not stand the heat and stench in this room. To-morrow is Sunday. I shall have a long rest.

* * * * *

June 2d.

I did not go back to distribute soap to-day. I have given up the work. I have just seventy cents left in my pocket. The rent of this room is up on June 6th, and the money will last me until then.

On June 6th I am going to die.

* * * * *

—To-day I went to the publisher's. I said: "On June 6th I am going out of town. (Grim humor, that!) On June 6th you will have had the manuscript three weeks and more. I shall have to ask you to have a report by that date, or to return it to me now." He said: "You shall have the report."

If they will publish the poem, I shall wait. If not, I shall die on June 6th. That is settled.



PART III

THE END

Listen to me now. I must soon get to the end of this. I mean to tell you about it. I have spent yesterday and to-day going over this journal, explaining things that I had written too briefly, putting in things that ought to be there. I mean to tell everything.

When I began this journal it was with the idea that I should be famous, and that then it would be published. Of late I have written it from habit, mainly, never expecting that any one would see it. Now I write again for a reader, to a reader. I know that it will be published.

* * * * *

The night before last I went down by the river. As well as I can remember, these were the thoughts that came to me.

* * * * *

It was a calm, still night, and I sat watching the lights on the water. Then suddenly I recollected the night when the yacht had passed, and I had heard the woman singing. It came back to me like an apparition, that voice and that melody. I heard it again more plainly than words can tell, dying away over the water; and a perfect sea of woe rolled over my soul.

I thought of that night, what I had been that night, what hopes I had had, what fervor, what purpose, what faith. That was, you remember, just when I was at the height of my work; and the memory came back to me, as it has never come back to me since the day that I came out of the forest with my book. It simply overwhelmed me, it shook me to the very depths of my being. I buried my face and burst out sobbing. It shook away from me all the hideous dulness that had mastered me. I saw myself as I was, ruined, lost. I cried out: "Oh, my Father in heaven, it is gone! It is gone, and it will never come back! I am a lost soul! I am a traitor, I am ruined!"

So I went on, feverishly, twisting my hands together. "I have given up the fight! I have been beaten—oh, my God—beaten! Think of those raging hours in the woods, those hours of defiance, of glory! I gazed at commonplaceness and dulness—I mocked at it; and now it has conquered me! I am trampled down, beaten! It is all gone out of me!" And then I cried out in despair and terror: "Oh, no, it can't be! It can't be!"

But even while I cried that, my thoughts fled back to the horror to which I was tied, to the samples of soap and to the filthy hole next to a drunken laborer. The thing overwhelmed me, even while I stood there trying to resolve.

I was frenzied. "I have done everything," I panted, "I have fought and toiled and struggled—I have wept and prayed, and even begged. And yet I have been beaten—I have gone down—down! And what more is there that I can do? I shall be beaten down again! Oh, what shall I do? Is there any hope, any new plan that I can try? Shall I go through the streets and shriek it; shall I lay hold upon some man and make him hear me? Is there anything—anything?"

To make them understand what I have! To make them understand what they are doing! God gave me a vision—it may not come again for a century, it can never come again—it is mine—mine only! And they grind it into the dust! This demon power that is in me—don't you suppose I know what it is? This thing that roars like the wind upon the mountains, that runs like the great billows on the sea!

I was pacing back and forth in the silent night. I had all the world about me, I cried out to it, I gripped it, to make it hear me. "Fools! oh fools!" I cried, "what is it that you do believe in? Blind creatures that you are, this raging faith of mine—this fervent ardor—you do not believe in that! You do not believe in enthusiasm, you do not believe in ecstasy, you do not believe in genius! You think that I am mad, poor raving poet! You see me sick, haggard, dragging myself about.

"But I am caged, I tell you,—I am caged! You are killing me as you would kill some animal; and I am never to sing that song—I am never to sing that song!"

The thing was a madness to me. "No, no!" I rushed on, "I will! I will get free—I say I will! If I must, I will go out and beg on the streets, before I will let this thing die! Show me the vilest of you—I will get down upon my knees before him—I will kiss his feet and beg him to let me live! There is no degradation of my self that I will not bear! I!—what am I? I am a worm—I am filth—I am vanity and impertinence and delusion. But this thing—this is God! Oh you man with a carriage, will you not give me a little? For a hundred or two of dollars I can live for a year! And you—why, see that ring on your finger! You would not think twice if you lost it; and yet think what I could do with that bauble! Oh, see how you abuse life—how you mock it, how you trample upon it—how you trample upon God!

—"So I go about all day, haunted all the time, raging, lusting for my task. And you who believe in genius in the past, and do not believe in it in the present! Some of you had this faith when you were young; but I have it always—it is I! I was born for that, I will die for that! It is my love, my food, my health, my breath, my life! It comes to me wherever I am—carrying trays in a restaurant—pacing back and forth by the river—sitting here in my room and writing of it!"

* * * * *

So I thought, so I cried out; and each time as the thing surged in me, I sank down and moaned and sobbed. "No, it is all lost. I am helpless. I am beaten! I am walled in and tortured! I am a slave, I am a prisoner—I—"

—And so the torrent of my thoughts sped on, and so I rushed with it—rushed to my fate. For suddenly I came to four words—four fearful words that roared in my soul like the thunder!—

"I AM A CAPTIVE!"

It was like the falling of a bolt from the sky. It came with a sound that stunned me, with a flash that lit in one instant the whole horizon of my mind.

"I am a captive! I am The Captive! Fool that I am,—pent here in these prison-walls of tyranny, and beating out my brains against them! Panting—praying—cursing—pining to be free! And I am The Captive!"

The thing struck terror into the last chambers of my soul. I stood stock still; I felt my flesh quiver, I felt my very hair move. I saw a pair of demon eyes glaring into mine—I saw all the wildness and the fearfulness of life in that one instant.

"I wrote a book, I tried to make it true—and, oh, my God, how have I succeeded!"

I do not know what I did, I was half-crazed, as in a nightmare. I fought and struggled; but I was in the grip of a truth, and though it set my brain on fire, I had to face it.

I was The Captive! I was The Captive! And I was crying out against circumstances—I was crying out against my fate—and all the time there it stood and faced me—the truth, the iron truth:

* * * * *

—I was to die!

* * * * *

A sudden fury swept over me—my whole being flamed with wrath. "What!" I cried. "I shall go on in this servitude—in this degradation! I shall go on playing the lackey to the filthy pleasures of men, cringing, crouching before any insult—begging for my bread—begging to keep my miserable self alive! And I shall see one by one my virtues die in me, my powers, my consecrations! I shall sink into a beast of burden, into a clod of the earth, into a tool of men!

"And I, who wrote The Captive—my God, who wrote The Captive! I, who stood upon that height, drank in that glory, sang with those angels and gods! I, who was noble and high-born—pure and undefiled—seer and believer—I! I walked with Truth—and now I am a slave; a whimpering, beaten hound! They have made a eunuch of me, they have cut away my manhood! They have put me with their swine, they have fed me upon husks, they have bid me drink their swill! And I bear it, by God, I bear it! And why?—

* * * * *

"I bear it that I may live!"

* * * * *

"Come here, come here! Look at this!" The thing seized me by the shoulders and shook me, the thing with the fiery eyes. "Did you mean it, all that you wrote in that book—did you mean it, those vows that you swore in the forest? Were they the truth of your soul as you faced your God—or were they shams that you dallied with to please your vanity? Answer me! Answer!"

* * * * *

I sank down upon the ground as I heard that voice. I was shuddering with fear; and I moaned aloud: "I don't want to die! I want to live, I want to do my work!"—And then I heard the voice say, "You hound!"

And so I shut my hands like a vise; and I panted: "No, no! Come! Take me! I will go!" I think it must have been hours that I lay there, wrestling in horrible agony. I cried again and again: "Yes, yes,—I will do it! I will do it!" I fled on breathlessly, whispering, panting to myself. Before I knew it I was saying part of The Captive—the first fearful lines of the struggle:

Spirit or fiend that led me to this way!

Oh, tell me, was ever poet so taken at his word before?

I thought of that then, and I shook like a leaf with the pain of it. Again and again I faced it, again and again I failed. It was physical pain, it was a thing that I could feel like a clutch at my heart. Was it not tearing out my very soul?

* * * * *

But the voice cried out to me: "You have been a slave to the world! You have been a slave to life! You have been crucified upon the cross of Art!"—Yes, and all things a man may sacrifice to Art but one thing; he may not sacrifice his soul!

"What!" it rushed on. "Have you so much faith in your art, and no faith in your God? Is it for Him that you have so much need to fear, to crouch and tremble, to plot and to plan—for Him? And when he made you, when he gave you your inspiration—his soul was faint?"

"He that sendeth forth the surging springtime, and covereth all the earth with new life! He that is the storm upon the sea, the wind upon the mountains, the sun upon the meadows! He that poureth the races from his lap! He that made the ages, the suns and the systems throughout all space—he that maketh them forever and smiteth them into dust again for play! He that is infinite, unthinkable, all-glorious, all-sufficient—He hath need of thee!

"He hath need that thy wonderful books should be written, that mankind should hear thy wonderful songs! Thy books, thy songs, that are to last through the ages! And when this earth shall have withered, when the sun shall have touched it with his fiery finger, when it shall roll through space as silent and bare as the desert, when the comet shall have smitten it and hurled it into dust, when the systems to which it belongs—the sun into which it melted—shall be no more known to time—where then will be thy books and thy songs? Where then will be these things for which thou didst crouch and tremble, didst plot and plan? For which thou didst lick the feet of vile men—for which thou didst give up thy God!"

And then I leaped up and stretched out my arms. "No! No!" I cried aloud: "I have done with it! Have I not fought this fight once, and did I not win it—this fight of The Captive? And can I not fight it and win it again? Away, away with you, world, for I am a free man again, and no slave! Soul am I, will am I, unconquerable, all-defying! In His arms I lie, in His breath I breathe, in His life I live—I am He! Fear I know not, death I know not, slavery and sin and doubt and fear I will never know again!"

Nay,—nay. Go thy road, proud world, and I go mine!—

In dem wogenden Schwall, in dem tnenden Schall, in des Welt-Athems wehendem All!— ertrinken— versinken— unbewusst— hchste Lust!

Oh, think not of that poetry! Think of the music! The surging, drunken, overwhelming waves of music! Do you not hear them—do you not hear them?—

Wie sie schwellen, mich umrauschen! Soll ich athmen, soll ich lauschen!

So the thing went; and I panted and throbbed, and sank down upon the ground for weakness. There came to me all that mad poetry that I had written myself, all that victory that I had won, that freedom, that vision, that glory! It came to me ten times over, for was it not everything to me now? It was more than I could bear, it split my brain.

And it would not leave me. All through the long, long night I prayed and wept with it; and in the morning I reeled through the street with it, and men stared at me.

* * * * *

But here was one time when I did not fear men! I was free—I was a soul at last. I had won the victory, I went my way as a god. I had renounced, I had given up fear, I had given up my self. My mind was made up, and I never change my mind. I had passed the death-sentence upon myself, I walked through the streets as a disembodied soul—as the Captive dragged to the banquet-hall.

But no, I went to my torture of myself.

* * * * *

I went to the store. It was early Sunday morning, and the place was just open.—I got my papers and put them under my arm—my original draft of The Captive, and all my journal. I went down the street and came to a place where a man was burning some trash.

I was a demon in my strength just then; my head reeled, but I went with the dancing step of new-born things. I stood upon the heights, I "laughed at all Sorrow-play and Sorrow-reality"! "Ho, sir," I cried, "I have things here that will make a fire for you!"

And so I knelt down and unwrapped The Captive. "There is much fire in this," I said; "once I thought it would explode, I did. It was a shot that would have been heard around the world, sir! Only I could not pull the trigger."

The man stared at me, and so I burned it, page by page, and laughed, and sang a foolish song that I thought of: Stride la vampa!

And afterward I unwrapped the journal. I laughed at my journal—'tis a foolish thing; but then all at once my conscience touched me. I said: "Is it not a shame? Is it not small of you? They would not heed you!—fool, what of it? Perhaps it is not their fault—certainly it is their sorrow. But you will not get much higher than you are now by trampling upon them."

And so I stopped; and I wrapped up my journal again. "You have fire enough now, sir," I said to the man. "I will keep this to build another fire with."

I went on. "Let them have it," I said, "let them make what they can out of it." And then I laughed aloud: "And they will discuss it! And there will be reviews of it! And wise articles about it! And learned scholars will write tomes upon it, showing how many sentences there are in it ending with a punctuation mark; and old ladies and Methodist ministers will shake their heads over it and say: 'See what comes of not believing in Adam!'"

I walked on, singing the Ride of the Valkyries, the children staring at me, going to Sunday-school.

* * * * *

But I was glad that there was another copy of The Captive left. I love even that wicked editor now.

* * * * *

—All that was a day and a half ago. I am not so happy now, but I am very calm. I have found my righteousness again, and I can take whatever comes.

And tasks in hours of insight willed Can be in hours of gloom fulfilled!

* * * * *

June 3d.

I have now three days more to wait, to learn if The Captive is accepted. I have money enough to last me till then. If it is not accepted I should obviously have to starve, should I not? For I will never serve the world again. And am I a sheep that must be driven? No, I shall find a quicker way of dying than by starvation. In the meanwhile I live my life and say my prayer.

* * * * *

I have thought a great deal about the thing, and it seems by no means best for the world that it should treat all the men who have my gift as it has treated me. Let the world take notice that I perish because I have not cheap qualities. Because I was born to sing and to worship! Because I have no alloy, because I will not compromise, because I do not understand the world, and do not serve its uses! If I only knew all the book-gossip of the hour, and all the platitudes of the reviews! If only I knew anything of all the infinite frivolity and puerility that occupies the minds of men! But I do not, and so I am an outcast, and must work as a day laborer for my bread.

—The infinite irrationality of it seems to me notable. Why, upon the men of genius of the past you feed your lives, you blind and foolish men! They are the bread and meat of your souls—they make your civilizations—they mold your thoughts—they put into you all that little life which you have. And your reviews have use enough for them! Your publishers publish enough of them! But what thoughts have you about the NEW teacher, the NEW inspirer?

The madness of the thing! I read books enough, it seems to me, telling of the sufferings of the poets of a century ago!—of the indifference of the critics, the blindness of the public, of a century ago. And those things pain you all so cruelly! But the possibility of their happening to the poets of the present—it never seems to enter into your heads! Why, that very man who sent me back his curt refusal by his secretary—he writes about the agonies of Shelley and Keats in a way that brings the tears into your eyes! And that is only one example among thousands.

What do these men think? Is it their idea that the public and the critics are now so true and so eager that the poets have nothing more to fear? That stupidity and blindness and indifference are quite entirely gone out of the world? That aspiration and fervor are now so much the rule that the least penny-a-liner can judge the new poet?

And they think that the soul is dead then! And that God has stopped sending into this world new messages and new faiths!

Oh you civilization! You society! You critics and lovers of books! Why, that new message and that new faith ought to be the one thing in all this world that you bend your faculties to save! It is that upon which all your life is built—it is that by which this Republic, for one thing, is to be made a factor in the history of mankind. But what do you do? What have you done? Here I am; and come now and tell me what it is that you think you have done. For I have the message!—I have the faith! And you have starved me, and you have beaten me, until I am too ill to drag myself about!

And what can I do? Where can I turn? What hope have I, except, as Swift's phrase has it, to "die like a poisoned rat in a hole"? I could wish that you would think over that phrase a little while, cultivated ladies and gentlemen. It is not pleasant—to die like a poisoned rat in a hole.

* * * * *

You ask me to believe in your civilization; you ask me to believe in your love of light! Let me tell you when I would believe in your civilization and your love of light.

I say that the last and the highest thing in this world is Genius. I say that Religion and Art and Progress and Enlightenment—that all these things are made out of Genius; and that Genius is first and last, highest, and best, and fundamental. And I say that when you recognize that fact—when you believe in Genius—when you prepare the way for it and make smooth the paths for it—I say that then and then alone may you tell me that you are civilized.

The thing shrieks against heaven—your cruelty, your stupidity. Since ever the first poet came into this world it has been the same story of agony, indignity, and shame. And what do you do?

It is poverty that I talk about, poverty alone! The poet wants nothing in this world but to be let alone to listen to the voices of his soul. He wants nothing from you in all this world but that you give him food while he does it—while he does it, miserable people—not for himself, but for you.

This is the shame upon you—that you expect—that you always have expected—that the poet, besides doing the fearful task his inspiration lays upon him—that he shall go out into the coarse, ruthless world and slave for his bread! That is the shame! That is the indignity, that is the brutality, the stupidity, the infamy! Shame upon you, shame upon you, world!

* * * * *

The poet! He comes with a heart trembling with gladness; he comes with tears of rapture in his eyes! He comes with bosom heaving and throat choking and heart breaking. He comes with tenderness and with trust, with joy in the beauty that he beholds. He comes a minstrel, with a harp in his hand—and you set your dogs upon him—you drive him torn and bleeding from your gates!

* * * * *

The poet! You make him go out into the market and chaffer for his bread! You subject him to the same law to which you subject your loafers and your louts—that he who will not work can not eat! Your drones, and your drunkards—and your poets! Every man must earn for himself, every man must pay his way! No man must ask favors, no man must be helped, no man shall be any different from other men! For shame! For shame!

* * * * *

And you love letters! You love poetry! You are civilized, you are liberal, you are enlightened! You are fools!

* * * * *

I tell you the agony of this thing is in me yet—it has heaped itself up in my soul all my days. It was my life, it was my life that cried out! And now that I can not save my own self—oh, let me at least save the others! O God, let me not die till I have said one word that reaches their hearts, till I have done something to change this ghastly thing! The voices of the ages cry out to me. Not only the hundreds who have gone before—but the hundreds and the thousands who are to come! What are we to do? they cry—who shall save us? Are we to share the same fate—are we too to struggle and die in vain? And in this world that is civilized! In this world that seeks progress! In this world that wants nothing but light! Not to the mob I speak, not to those who once mocked me; if none but they lived, I should hold my tongue and go. But you men who are leaders, you men who stand upon the top, you men who see!—can I not find some word to reach you? You men who really love books—who have money—who want nothing but to put it to use!—can I not find some word to reach you?

O God! And it is all so simple.

* * * * *

I tell you this land will never be civilized, this land will never lead mankind, it will never be anything but the torture-house that I have found it, until it makes some provision for its men of Genius! Until this simple fundamental thing be true—that a man may know that if he have Genius—that the day he shows he has Genius—he will be honored and protected by society and not trampled and kicked like a dog. That he will not have to go out into the market-place and vend his wares! That he will not have to make sick his soul haggling for his bread! That if he turns his strength to higher things, and exposes himself to the world thereby, he will not be trodden down in the struggle for existence! That he will not have to bear indignities and insults; that he will not have to write till he be ripe, or be stunted and deformed by early deprivation.

* * * * *

Genius. And am I not to die now?—And what matters the world?

Therefore let me write it: that I was a man of Genius. And that you have trodden me down in the struggle for existence. That I saw things that no other man has ever seen, I would have written things that no other man can ever write. And that you have trodden me down in the struggle for existence—that you have trodden me down because I could not earn my bread!

* * * * *

This is what I tell you—this is what I cry out to you, that the man of Genius can not earn his bread! That the work by which he develops his power is something absolutely and utterly different from the work by which he earns his bread! And that every hour which he gives to the one, he lessens his power and his capacity for the other! Every hour that he gives to the earning of his bread, he takes from his soul, he weakens his work, he destroys beauty which never again can he know or dream!

And this again is what I tell you, this again is what I cry out to you: that the power by which a man of Genius does his work, and the power by which he earns his bread, are things so entirely distinct that they may not occur together at all! The man may have both, but then again he may only have the former.—And in that case he will die like a poisoned rat in a hole.

* * * * *

What is the first principle of the democracy of which we boast, if it be not that excellence, that power, that Genius, is not the attribute of the rich or the noble, but that it may make its appearance anywhere among men? And you who sigh for men of talent to raise American letters—what do you do about it? I will tell you something right now, to begin with; it will startle you, perhaps, and you may not believe it; but I mean to prove it later on. For the present I say this: that of the seven poets who constitute the glory of the literature of England in the nineteenth century, four of them were rich men, five of them were independent, one of them was endowed when he was a youth, and the seventh, the greatest of them all, died like a poisoned rat in a hole.

And what do you do about it? What you do is to lean back in your chair and say: "The literary market was never so wide-awake as it is now, and the publishers never so anxious for new talent"!

* * * * *

Fools! And you think that the publishers are in business for the developing of talent, and for the glory of literature! And that they care about whether a man of Genius dies in the streets, or not! Why, have I not heard them tell me, with their own lips, that "a publisher who published books that the trade did not want would be driven out of business in a year"?

* * * * *

And you tell me that the author is an independent man nowadays! And can earn his living with his books!

* * * * *

It is your privilege to think that, if you choose; but perhaps you will not mind hearing what I tell you—that the author can find no way to a living more degrading to him than the earning of it with his books. I have shoveled snow, and shoveled manure too, in the streets, and shoveled food for swine in a restaurant. But I never did anything so degrading as I should have had to do if I had tried to earn my living with my books.

* * * * *

Oh, the author may be independent, may he! And you will escape with that fine platitude, and with that bitter mockery! And never think that the author's independence is but the fine phrase for your own indifference!

Again it is your privilege to think what you choose; but again perhaps you will not mind hearing what I tell you—that there can never be any man in this world more dependent than an author, if he be a true author. A true author is the singer and dreamer of society; and who is there more dependent than the singer and the dreamer—who is there less powerful and less cunning in the things of the body?

* * * * *

Why, the author gives up his whole life for your joy and help, he consecrates himself, he lashes and burns and tortures himself—for your sake! And you spurn him from you, and tell him he is "independent"!

Here is the truth, here is the crux, here is the whole thing in a sentence. A publisher is not in business for the furtherance of Art, or for the uplifting of humanity, or for the worship of God. He doesn't mind doing these things incidentally, of course, when the fortunate occasion arises; but do you think if he had his choice between publishing a new Paradise Lost to be read fifty years from date, and publishing a biography of a reigning prince, or a treatise on gastronomy, or a new dime novel by Marie Corelli in a first edition of a hundred thousand copies—do you think he would hesitate, now really?

* * * * *

You say that "literary excellence is identical with publishing availability"! I tell you that they are as far apart—why, that they are just exactly this far apart—as far as what mankind likes is from what mankind ought to like.

* * * * *

And you ask the man of Genius to cringe and tremble before the standard of what the reading public likes! You ask him to tame the frenzy of his inspiration, to pull your pleasure-carriages with his wingd steed! He shall be no more the seer and the prophet and the leader—he shall be mountebank and public-entertainer.

And you call yourself civilized! O God!

And the poet! Again the poet! Is he not vital to your society? Is he not, in the last analysis, the lawmaker, the law-enforcer—this seeker, this inspirer, this man with the new vision of right? I look at this society—body enough I see, bone and muscle, and a good, large, capable stomach. Brain enough I see, too, or nearly enough; but Soul? Soul? Who will dare to tell me that there is Soul enough? And your poet—why, he is your Soul! He is the man who fills the millions with the breath of life, who makes the whole vast machine a living, rejoicing, beautiful thing. He—every noble impulse that you have has come originally from him—the memory of his words thrill in the hearts of men—pupils gather to study them—tired hearts seek them for refreshment—they grow and they fill all the earth—and never through the centuries do they die! They blossom into noble impulses, into new movements,—into reforms that reach down to the lowest wretches of the gutter, who never even heard of a poet. Why, they have reached to the very dogs, that are beaten less than they were.

* * * * *

And what is it that makes civilization in the end? What is it that the world really honors in the end? You Americans, you who love your country, you who believe in your country's institutions, who believe that your country holds in her womb the future of mankind! You who want the world to believe that!—how are you going to get the world to believe that? Is it—poor, impotent, foolish creatures—by covering your land until it is a maze of twenty-story office buildings? By lining it with railroads six feet apart?—Do you not know that this very hour the reason why Europe does not believe in America is that it has not a man to sing its Soul? That it has been a century in the eyes of the world, and has not yet brought forth one single poet or thinker of the first rank?

The poet! And I sought to be that man, my heart burned to sing that song! And look at me!

* * * * *

Who will dare to say that I might not have sung it? What chance have I had—have I not been handicapped and stunted, beaten and discouraged, punished as if I had been a loafer—by you, the world? Here I am—I am only a boy—and thrilling with unutterable things! And I am going down, down to destruction! Why, for what I had to say I needed years and years to ripen; and how can I tell now—how can any man tell now—what those things would have been?

And I—what am I?—a worm, an atom! But what happens to me to-day may happen to another to-morrow, and may happen to a hundred in a century. And who knows?—who cares?

* * * * *

What do you do with your railroad presidents? You take good care that they get their work done, don't you? They have secretaries to catch every word, they have private cars to carry them where they would go, men to run and serve them, to make smooth their paths and save their every instant for them! But your poet, your man of genius—who makes smooth his paths, who helps him? He needs nobody to run and serve him—he needs no cars and no palaces, no gold and precious raiment—no, nor even praise and honor! What he needs—I have said it once—he needs but to be left alone, to listen to the voices of his soul, and to have some one bring him food to keep him alive while he does it. That—only that!—think of it—for the most precious things of this life, the things that alone save this life from being a barren mockery and a grinning farce! And he can not have them—and you, you enlightened society, you never care about it, you never think of it!

* * * * *

If he comes a master, he can force his way; or if he be rich, or if some one honor him, then he can live his life and heed nothing. But when he is poor! And when he is weak! And when he is young! God help him, God help him!—for you, you great savage world, you crush him.

* * * * *

You send him to the publishers! And he is young, and crude, and inexperienced! He has not found himself, he has not found his voice, he stammers, he falters, he is weak! And you send him to the publishers!

* * * * *

I have said it once, I say it again: that the publisher is part of the world and his law is a law of iron—he publishes the books that will sell. And this feeble voice, this young love, this tender aspiration, this holy purpose—oh, it is a thing to make one shudder!

* * * * *

And these things higher yet, these things so precious that we dare not whisper them—this new awe of righteousness—this new rage at what the world loves best—this flash of insight that will astound a new age!

* * * * *

You send it all to the publisher!

* * * * *

But what can you do? I will tell you what you can do—I will tell you what you will do when you come finally to honor what is truly precious in this life—when you are really civilized and enlightened—when you really believe in and value Genius.

* * * * *

You will provide it that your young poet, your young worshiper, come elsewhere to receive a judgment than to the money-making publisher, and to the staring, vulgar crowd. You will provide it that he does not measure his voice against the big-drum thumping of the best-selling pomposities of the hour. You will provide it that he come, with all honor and all dignity, to the best and truest men that you can engage for the service; and that he come to be judged by one standard, and that not the standard of sales. Whether it be true, whether it be noble, whether it be sincere; whether it show imagination, whether it have melody, beauty, love, aspiration, knowledge; whether, in short, in those forms or in any other forms, it have power! Whether the man who wrote it is a man worth training, whether he will repay society for its trust, whether he will bring new beauty into the world!—And then, if these things be true, so long as he works, and grows, and proves his value, so long shall he have the pittance that he needs until he be the master of his voice.

Yes, you never thought of that before! I read everything—everywhere—and I never heard it before. And what does that tell about the poverty and blindness and stupidity of this world? Are we not rich enough? Are we not the richest nation in the world? Have we not railroads and houses, food and clothing and bank-stocks enough to make the brain reel? And do we not call ourselves a Christian land? And worship as divine the Teacher who said that "man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God"?

* * * * *

Oh, you world!

* * * * *

And what would it do? What would it mean? I will tell you a few things that it would mean.

First of all it would mean that the man who felt in him the voice of God would know that there was a road he could travel, would know that there was a home for him. He would no longer face the fearful alternative of mediocrity or starvation. He would no longer be tempted, he would no longer be forced to turn from his faith, and stunt his development, and wreck his plans, by base attempts to compromise between his highest and what the world will pay for. Can you have any idea what that would mean to an artist? You say that you love art! Can you have any idea of the effect which that would have upon art? Upon the art of your country—upon American literature! To have a band of perhaps a hundred—perhaps a thousand, proved and chosen—the best and strongest that could be found—and set free and consecrated to the search for beauty! Try it for fifty years—try it for ten years—try the method of raising your poets in your gardens instead of flinging them into your weed-beds—and see what the result would be! See if in fifty years American literature would not have done more than all the rest of the world!

* * * * *

And what would it cost?—O God! Is there a railroad in this country so small that its earnings would not pay for it—for the whole of the thousand? Why, pay a poet five hundred dollars a year, and he is a rich man; if he is not, he is no poet, but a knave.

* * * * *

And there would be waste?—Yes—where is there not waste? But grant that in the whole thousand there is just one who is a master mind; and that him you set free and keep from defeat—that him with all his glory you make yours—and then tell me if there be any other way in this world that you could have done so much for man with your money!

* * * * *

—No, these are not your ways, oh you cruel world! You let every man go his way—you let him starve, you let him die in any hole that he can find. The poet—tenderest and most sensitive of all men! The poet—the master of the arts of suffering! Exposed on every side, nervous, haunted, unused to the world, knowing how to feel and knowing that alone! Is not his life an agony under any conditions,—is he not tortured for you—the world? And you leave him helpless, despairing!

What is the matter with you?—How can you be so blind? There are some of you who really love books—look and see the story of genius—if it be not a thing to make you shudder and turn sick. It has been so through all the ages, and it will be so through all the ages to come, until society has a conscience and a soul. Tell me if there is anything in this world more frightful than the lot of the poets who have been born poor—of Marlowe and Chatterton and Goldsmith, Johnson and Burns and Keats! And who can tell how many were choked before even their first utterance?

* * * * *

I can not talk of that, for it makes me sick; but I will talk of the poets who were born rich. Is it not singular—is it not terrible—how many of the great stalwart ones were rich? To be educated, to own books, to hear music, to dwell in the country, to be free from men and men's judgments! Oh, the words break my heart!

* * * * *

—But was not Goethe rich, and did he not have these things? And was not Hugo rich? And Milton? When he left college he spent five years at his father's country place and wrote four poems that have done more to make men happy than if they had cost many millions of dollars.

* * * * *

But let me come to what I spoke of before, the seven poets of this century in England.

* * * * *

I name Wordsworth and Byron, Tennyson, Browning and Swinburne, Shelley and Keats. I said that six of them were independent, and that the other—the greatest—died like a dog.

* * * * *

Wordsworth came first; he was young and poor and struggling, and a friend left him just such an independence as I have cried for; and he consecrated himself to art, and he revolutionized English poetry, he breathed truth into a whole nation again. And when he was clear and looked back, he made such statements as these: that "a poet has to create the taste by which he is to be enjoyed," and that "my poetry has never brought me enough to pay for my shoe-strings."

* * * * *

And see how the publishers and critics—how the literary world—received him! How they jeered and jibed, and took fifty years to understand him! Oh think of these things, think what they mean, you who love literature! Think that the world owes its possession of Wordsworth's poetry to the accident that a friend died and left him some money!

* * * * *

I name Byron; he was a rich man. I name Tennyson; he had a little competence, and he gave up the idea of marriage and for ten years devoted himself to art; and when he was thirty-two he published his work—and then they gave him a pension!

* * * * *

I name Browning; Browning went his own way, heeding no man; and he never had to think about money. I name Swinburne; and the same was true of him.

* * * * *

I name Shelley; and Shelley was wealthy. They kept him poor for a time, but his poems do not date from then. When he wrote the poetry that has been the spiritual food of the high souls of this century, he lived in a beautiful villa in Italy, and wandered about the forest with his books. And oh, you who love books, stop just a moment and listen: I am dying, and the cry of all my soul is in this. Tell me, you who love Shelley—the "pardlike spirit, beautiful and swift"—"thyself the wild west wind, oh boy divine!"—tell me how much you think you'd have had of that glorious burst of music—that golden rain of melody, of heavenly ecstasy—if the man who wrote had been a wholesale-paper clerk or a cable-car conductor! How much do you think you'd have had if when he'd torn himself free to write Queen Mab—or even if he'd been ripe enough and written his Prometheus—if he'd had to take them to publishers! If he had had to take them to the critics and the literary world and say, "Here is my work, now set me free that I may help mankind!"

* * * * *

—And when I wrote that I sank down and burst into tears. It can not be helped. It is very hard for me.—

* * * * *

Oh, but come face this thing—you that are responsible!

* * * * *

—"But who is responsible?" I hear a voice. Every single man is responsible—every single man who has money, who loves letters, and who faces these facts—you—YOU—are responsible!

* * * * *

Perhaps you are weary of my pleading, you think that I perish of my own weakness. But come and tell me, if you can, what it is that I have not done? What expedient is there that I have not tried, what resource, what hope? Have I not been true enough, have I not worked enough? Have I been extravagant, have I been dissipated? Did I not make my work my best? Come and reason with me—I shall be dead when you read this, but let us talk it over calmly. Put yourself here in my place and tell me what you would do. Have I not tried the publishers, the critics, the editors, the poets, the clergymen, the professors? Have I not waited—until I am sick, crazy? Have I not borne indignities enough? Have I not gotten myself kicked enough for my efforts?

* * * * *

—But you say: "I know nothing about The Captive!" Yes—so it is—then let us go back to Shelley. A fair test would be Queen Mab or The Revolt of Islam—he was my age then; but I will go ten years later and take Prometheus Bound. Would he have found any one to publish it? Did he find any one to read it? Why, ten or twenty years after Shelley died, Browning (then a boy) records that he searched all England for a copy of that queer poet's works! Why, Shelley's poetry was a byword and a mockery; and Shelley himself—first of all he was insane, of course, and afterward he was exile, atheist, adulterer, and scoundrel. They took his children away from him, because he was not fit to take care of them!

* * * * *

And he would not have been welcomed with open arms, I think! And he wouldn't have been set free—consecrated soul that he was. And sensitive, nervous, fragile, hysterical boy—do you think he would ever have written his poems, that he would ever have uttered his message?

I have to make somebody understand this thing, somehow. I suggest that you think what that would have meant to you—to you who love poetry. Think that you would never have read:

Oh wild west wind, thou breath of Autumn's being!... Oh lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud, I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed!

Think that you would never have read:

Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know!

That you would never have read:

On a poet's lips I slept!

I repeat that I have to make somebody understand this thing. I try that plan a little more. Listen to me now—think what it would have meant if that wise friend had not died when he did; think that you would never have read:

And then my heart with rapture fills, And dances with the daffodils!

Think that you would never have read:

The light that never was on sea or land, The consecration and the poet's dream!

Think that you would never have read:

Blank misgivings of a creature Moving about in world not realized; High instincts before which our moral nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised!

That you would never have read:

Will no one tell me what she sings? Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow For old, unhappy, far-off things And battles long ago.

I say a third time that I have to make somebody understand this thing. Let us try it again now, just once again. Let us suppose that there had not been any little independence or any pension. Who can think what it would have meant to us? Who can think what it would mean never to have read

Ring out, wild bells,

or

When the war-drum throbs no longer,

or

Crossing the bar.

Never to have read

Blow, bugle, blow!

Never to have read

My strength is as the strength of ten, Because my heart is pure!

* * * * *

Oh, think not of what these things are to you—think of what they are to men! How many railroads would pay for them?—one, do you think? The work of how many libraries have they done, do you think? How much money do you think could be raised in the world to-day to save them?

* * * * *

And not one cent to create them!

* * * * *

—I have saved the chief thing to the last. I have spoken of the six fortunate ones who had money; I have not spoken of thee, oh my poor, poor Keats! The hours that I have hungered with thee, the hours that I have wept with thee, oh thou my poet, oh thou my Keats! Oh thou most wretched, most miserable of poets, oh thou most beautiful, most exquisite, most unthinkable of poets! Most inspired poet of England, since Milton died!—It was given to others to be beautiful, it was given to thee alone to be perfect! It was given to thee to be ecstasy incarnate, to be melody too sweet to hear! It was given to thee, alone of all poets, to achieve by mere language a rapture that thrills the soul like the sound of an organ. And they mocked thee, they spit upon thee, they cursed thee, oh my poor, poor Keats! Thou, the hostler's son—thou, the apothecary's clerk! Thou, sick and starved and helpless—thou, dying of disease and neglect and despair:

Oh for a draft of vintage! That hath been Cool'd a long age in the deep-delvd earth, Tasting of Flora and the country green, Dance and Provenal song, and sunburnt mirth! Oh for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-staind mouth; That I might drink and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim!

"Go back to thy gallipots, Mr. Keats!" Think not of Gifford—poor fool—but think of yourself, oh world! Think what you lost in that man! You killed him, yes, you trampled him, and you throttled him! And he was only twenty-five! And he had never finished Hyperion—because he had not the heart!

* * * * *

—Come, now, all you who love books, come quickly, and let us take up a subscription, that we may save for men the rest of Hyperion!

Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains, And feeds her grief with his remembered lay!

* * * * *

I have been sitting here from seven in the evening until three in the morning, and I can not write any more.

* * * * *

Only—think about this thing. Look up the facts and see if they are not true. These seven men made England's poetry for a century; they made England's thought for a century—they make it to-day! They are the inspiration of whole peoples, the sources of multitudes of noble deeds and purposes. What do you think in money would be represented by the value of these books alone? Enough to support ten thousand poets for a lifetime, do you think? And how many hundreds of thousands of students are hearing about them this day? How many young men and maidens are going out into the world owing all that they have that is beautiful to them? And all these authors of the day, all these critics and teachers, novelists and poets—how much of what they have that is true do they not owe to these men? Go ask them, go ask them!