Part 44 (1/2)

--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 h.o.a.rd 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, s.h.i.+vering 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.