The Journal of Arthur Stirling : ("The Valley of the Shadow") Part 22

September 1st.

"The reason for delay in replying to your letter is that it was mislaid.

I am directed by Mr. ---- to say that he has so many requests to read ma.n.u.scripts that he is compelled to make it an invariable rule to decline.

"Secretary."

So that hope is gone!

That letter--or rather the chain of thoughts which it brought me, made me feel ill to-night. "So many requests!" "An invariable rule!"

So many swarming millions, helpless, useless, dying unknown and unheeded.

And I am in the midst of them--helpless, unknown, and unheeded! And now that I have done my work, I can not find any one with faith enough--interest enough--even to look at it!

How could a man who is a poet--who writes things that stir the hearts of men--how could he send such an answer to such a letter as I wrote him? I do not think that _I_ shall ever send such an answer!

Or is it really true, then, that the world is such a thing that it closes the hearts even of poets? That his ardor and his consecration, his sympathy and love and trust--he gives all to the things of his dreams and never to the men and women he meets?

Oh how shall I find one--just one--warmhearted man!

I begin the trying of the publishers once more to-morrow.

September 2d.

I am in my sixth week! Two weeks of the money is nearly gone--I had to get another pair of shoes and a necktie and to have some things laundered twice. I have to be respectable now, I can not wash my own clothes at the faucet when no one is about.

My "room" costs me seventy-five cents a week, and my food from a dollar and a half to two dollars. At the end of the seventh week I shall have over fifty dollars clear. I have made up my mind to give up the place at the end of that time. Twelve dollars is the most I ever earned, but I can't stand it longer than that.

I shall be clear for nearly four months, and that will surely put me safe until I have found a publisher. I would go away into the country again, only I must have books. I have nothing to write now.

--Oh the heat of this dreadful city; sometimes it takes all my strength to bear that and my drudgery, and nothing else. When the night comes I am panting, and can only shut my eyes.

If I am kept here long, I tell you I shall never, as long as I live, be as strong and keen as I might have been.

So long as I was working, striving for an education, preparing myself, I could bear it. But now I have done all that I can do amid these surroundings. I cry out day and night, "I have earned my freedom!"

September 6th.

He had no business to send me that answer! He had no business to send it!

I care not how many such requests he gets! Pain throbbed in that letter, hunger and agony were in it; and if he were a man he would have known it!

He had no business to send me that answer! I shall never forgive him for it.

The last publisher said it would take a month; they had many ma.n.u.scripts on hand, and could not do any better. So I have only to set my teeth together and wait.

I count the days before my escape from that hideous place down-town. The thought of it drives me wild--it gets more and more a torture. Can I stay out the week? I ask.

September 8th.

All day--all day--I have but one thought in my mind--but one thought in my life! I am beset by it, I can not escape it. That horrible shame to which I am subjected!

It turns all my life to gall! It beats down my enthusiasm, it jeers at my faith, it spits into the face of my unselfishness! I come home every night weak and worn and filled with despair, or else with a choking in my throat, and helpless, cruel rage in my soul. Never mind that I am going to be free--the wrong is that it should ever have been--it will stay with me all my days and turn all my life to gall! It will wreck all my visions, all my aspirations, my faith, my eagerness; the memory of it will sound like a mocking voice in my ears, a sneer!

Day by day I strive and struggle and tear my-self to pieces, and sink back worn out; and don't you suppose that has any effect upon me? I can feel it.

I see it plain as day, and shudder at it--I am being cowed! I am being tamed, subdued, overpowered; the thing is like a great cold hand that is laid upon me, pressing me down, smothering me! I know it--and I cry out and struggle as if in a nightmare; but it only presses the harder. Why, I was like a lion--restless--savage--all-devouring! Never-ceasing, eager, untamable--hungry for life, for experience, for power! I rushed through in days what others took months at--I watched every instant--I crowded hours into it.

--And now look at me! I crouch and whine--there is an endless moan in my soul. Can you break a man's spirit so that he never rises again? So that all his attempts to be what he was mock at him? So that he never _tries_ any more? Look at those poor wretches you pa.s.s on the street--those peasants from Europe, from Russia! See the restless, s.h.i.+fting eyes, the cringing gait--_that_ is what it is to be tamed!

Hateful tyrant of the commonplace--so you will lay your cold hand over me and crush out all the fire from my heart. All this that was to build new empires--new hopes, new virtues, new power; all that I was, and all that I sought to be! Ah, but you will not crush me--understand it well, you may beat me and kick me, you may starve me to death, but you will never overcome me, you will never tame me into one of the pack-horses of society!

I will fight while I have a breath in me, while my heart has left one beat.

The time may come when I shall have to drag myself away like a sick beast to die in the mountains; but if it does, I shall go defying you!

Bah!

--How I wish I could find a rich man who could spare it, and from whom I could steal a thousand dollars. I would turn it into a thousand songs that diamonds could not buy--that would build new empires--and then I would pay the poor rich man back.

--I read a poem of Matthew Arnold's last night:

From the world's temptations, From tribulations; From that fierce anguish Wherein we languish; From that torpor deep Wherein we lie asleep, Heavy as death, cold as the grave, Save, oh save!

September 10th.

A man was talking to me to-day about what I am doing. "I should think you would try to get some work more congenial," he said, "some literary work."

Yes!--I sell wholesale-paper, and that is bad enough; but at least I do not sell my character.

I to enter into the literary business world! I to forsake my ideals and my standards--to learn to please the public and the men who make money out of the public! Ah, no--let me go on selling paper, and "keep my love as a thing apart--no heathen shall look therein!"