Part 26 (2/2)

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

October 25th.

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

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

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

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

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

But what matters it?

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

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

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

October 29th.

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

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

For I am lord of a thousand dollars!

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

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

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

November 2d.

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