An idea which has gradually been forming in my mind I hope to begin to put into definite form just four weeks from to-night, and I then hope to have four clean weeks behind me as a start for my year’s abstention from passion. During this time, while endeavoring to obtain a foothold in the magazine field with short stories, my big idea is to write a novel of the various struggles and emotions of an ambitious, erratic youth, with a premature weariness, and unless pre-empted by another, I shall very probably call this “A Youth Who Was Prematurely Tired,” suggested by a criticism of Mademoiselle de Maupin, but this is to be altogether different, and is to touch the depths of agony and despair contrasted with the heights of ecstasy and the fierce, hungry longings, terrible disappointments, unrelieved passion, loneliness, ambition, morbidity, deep poetic feeling, and the other emotions of a sensitive, over-nervous youth of artistic temperament and large insight tempered by many paradoxes in character. I have found myself enough to see the necessity of one course at least, that is, to preserve a dignified silence. The coarse, vulgar familiarity of the fellows I have met has jarred on me more and more, and I see that my only escape in the future is to maintain a reserve and a dignity beyond which no man may penetrate. Anything I reveal will be by writing, not by speech. I have made considerable progress, but still have to fight a foolish talkativeness on occasions. Another policy I expect I will follow later, at least, will be the cultivation of courtesy and a more gentlemanly treatment of others, friends and otherwise. I only have to overcome one or two little weaknesses, and to recover what I have lost physically to be able to win out--and I will. =--, Sunday, April 21, 1912.= After another relapse last night, I am beginning to think that much of my so-called idealism is merely a pitiable, boyish, conceited foolishness. This has often come to my mind, but I hesitated to express it; but if I am sincere I must record the other side of the question. To-day may or may not be the beginning of a more sensible outlook as far as my erratic, artistic temperament will permit. In any case this strain, self-imposed for the most part, must stop even if I have to throw over a few pet theories. I must be human even at the expense of virtue. I almost congratulate myself that I can at least laugh at my own foibles and enjoy the joke, just as I cannot help, cynically to a certain extent, pointing out others’ foolish earnestness over nothing. My sense of humor is indeed my saving grace. * * * *