Part 2 (2/2)

It is true that my whole life has been a practise for the writing of this book, that this book is the climax of my whole life. I have toiled--learned--built up a mind--found a conviction; but I have never written anything, or tried to write anything, to be published. I have said, ”Wait; it is not time.” And now it _is_ time. If there is anything of use in all that I have done, it is in this book.

Yes; and also it is a climax in another way. It is my goal and my salvation.--Ah, how I have toiled for it!

April 19th.

I saw my soul to-day. It was a bubble, blown large, palpitating, whirling over a stormy sea; glorious with the rainbow hues it was, but perilous, abandoned.--Do you catch the _feeling_ of my soul?

Something perilous--I do not much care what. A traveler scaling the mountains, leaping upon dizzy heights; a gambler staking his fortune, his freedom, his life--upon a cast!

I will tell you about it.

It began when I was fifteen. My great-uncle, my guardian, is a wholesale grocer in Chicago; he has a large palace and a large waistcoat.

”Will you be a wholesale grocer?” said he.

”No,” said I, ”I will not.”

I might have been a partner by this time, had I said Yes, and had a palace and a large waistcoat too.

”Then what will you be?” asked the great-uncle.

”I will be a poet,” said I.

”You mean you will be a loafer?” said he.

”Yes,” said I--disliking argument--”I will be a loafer.”

And so I went away, and while I went I was thinking, far down in my soul.

And I said: ”It must be everything or nothing; either I am a poet or I am not. I will act as if I were; I will burn my bridges behind me. If I am, I will win--for you can not kill a poet; and if I am not, I will die.”

Thus is it perilous.

I fight the fight with all my soul; I give every ounce of my strength, my will, my hope, to the making of myself a poet. And when the time comes I write my poem. Then if I win, I win empires; and if I lose--

”You put all your eggs into one basket,” some one once said to me.

”Yes,” I replied, ”I put all my eggs into one basket--and then I carry the basket myself.”

Now I have come to the last stage of the journey--the ”one fight more, and the last.” And can I give any idea of what is back of me, to nerve me to that fight? I will try to tell you.

For seven years I have borne poverty and meanness, sickness, heat, cold, toil--that I might make myself an artist. The indignities, the degradations--I could not tell them, if I spent all the time I have in writing a journal. I have lived in garrets--among dirty people--vulgar people--vile people; I have worn rags and unclean things; I have lived upon bread and water and things that I have cooked myself; I have seen my time and my strength wasted by a thousand hateful impertinences--I have been driven half mad with pain and rage; I have gone without friends--I have been hated by every one; I have worked at all kinds of vile drudgery--or starved myself sick that I might avoid working.

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