Part 5 (1/2)

I am wild to-day. Oh, how can I bear this--why should I have to contend with such things as this! Is it not hard enough--the agony that I have to bear, the task that takes all my strength and more? And must I be torn to pieces by such hideous degradation as this? Oh, my G.o.d, if my life is not soon clear of these things I shall die!

Oh, it is funny--yes, funny!--Let us laugh at it. The dance-hall musician has brought home his 'cello! I heard him come b.u.mping up the stairs with it--G.o.d d.a.m.n his soul! And there he sits, sawing away at some loathsome jig tunes! And he has two friends in there--I listen to their wit between the tunes.

Here I sit, like a wild beast pent in a cage. I tell you I can bear any work in the world, but I can not bear things such as this. That I, who am seeking a new faith for men--who am writing, or trying to write, what will mean new life to millions--should have my soul ripped into pieces by such loathsome, insulting indignities!

Oh, laugh!--but _I_ can't laugh--I sit here foaming at the lips, and crying! And suppose he's lost his position, and does this every day!

Now every day I must lay aside what I am doing and sit and shudder when I hear him coming up the steps--and wait for him to begin this! I tell you, I demand to be free--I _demand_ it! I want nothing in this world but to be let alone. I don't want anybody to wait on me.--_I don't want anything from this h.e.l.lish world but to be let alone!_

It is pouring rain outside, and my overcoat is thin; but I must go out and pace the streets and wait until a filthy Dutchman gets through sc.r.a.ping ragtime on a 'cello.

All day wasted! All day! Does it not seem that these things persecute you by system? I came in, cold and wet, and got into bed, and then he began again! And the friends came back and they had beer, and more music. And I had to get up and put on the wet clothes once more.

May 2d.

I was crouching out on one of the docks last night. I had no place else to go. I can think anywhere, if it is quiet.

A wonderful thing is the night. I bless Thee for the night, oh ”_susse, heilige Natur_”!

It was a voice in my soul, as clear as could be.

--She can not bear too long the sight of men, sweet, holy Nature: the swarming hives--the millions of tiny creatures, each drunk and blind with his own selfishness; and so she lays her great hand upon it all, and hides it out of her sight.

Once it was all silent, and formless as the desert; soon it shall all be silent and formless again; and meanwhile--the night, the night!

Oh, I hunger for the desert! I do not care for beauty--I have no time for beauty, I want the earth stern and forbidding. Give me some place where no one else would want to go--an iron crag where the oceans beat--a mountain-top where the lightning splinters on the rocks.

I go at it again. But I am nervous--these things get me into such a state that I simply can not do anything. It was not merely yesterday--I have it constantly. The dirty chambermaid singing, or yelling down to the landlady; the drunken man swearing at his wife; the boys screaming in the street and kicking a tomato-can about. When I think of how much beauty and power has been shattered in my life by such things as these, it brings tears of impotent rage into my eyes.

I must be free--oh, I must be free!

It comes strangely from the author of The Captive, does it not?

I give all my life to my work, and sometimes, when I am broken like this, I wonder if I do not give too much. Once I climbed to a dizzy height, and I cried out a dizzy truth:

”O G.o.d, how as nothing in Thy sight are my writings!”

I do not know if I shall ever reach that height again.

May 3d.