Again I have been pacing the streets the whole endless day, beaten back and rebuffed at every turn. I have been drilled for this, this is the climax! First take every gleam of heart out of me, and then set me to pacing the streets in the cold, to be stared at and insulted by every kind of a man! And still nothing to do. * * * * * February 15th. I take my lunch with me--I have cut myself down to twenty cents a day for food. I walk and walk, and I am so hungry I can not do on less than that. I have but sixty cents left to-night. I failed again to-day. * * * * * February 16th. It is not as desperate as it sounds, because I have a few books and things that I can sell--I do not believe that I will actually starve--I have always done my work well, and have gotten references. But O God, the shame of it--the endless, heaped-up bitterness! I have sunk into a beast of burden. I trudge on with my mind torpid--I take whatever comes to me, and go on mechanically. Oh it cows me, it wears me down! I have learned to bear anything--_anything_! A man might kick me and I would not mind. I think I went to fifty places yesterday. Nothing to do--nothing. To-day is Sunday, but I tried even to-day. I came home to get some dinner.--I might have been a porter in a hotel, and carried trunks--that was my one chance. But I have not the physical power for that. --And then after all--toward evening--when I was so tired I was almost wild--I had an offer at last! And guess what it was--of all the things that I had made up my mind I could not bear--to be a waiter! It is, I believe, what a man should call a rare opportunity. It is a fairly good restaurant just off Broadway; and I get ten dollars and tips. Poor me! My heart bounded for a moment, and then I asked myself, And what do you want with money any more? I took the place, and I am to begin the day after to-morrow. I am so tired I can hardly move. * * * * * February 17th. Was it not irony? I have watched day by day for snow; and now that I have taken the other place--behold, to-day it snows a foot! --I went to see the editor in the afternoon. I was desperate at the thought of to-morrow. I said I would tell him!--But when I got there I only had the courage to inquire about the poem. He had not read it. I feared he seemed annoyed. I shall not go there again for a week. I can not make him hurry. * * * * * February 18th. To-day I had to begin by apologizing to my landlady, and begging her to let me pay her a week later. I had to go into an elaborate explanation--she wanted to know why I had not been working all these months, and so on. She has a red face, and drinks, I think.