There is another torment about this fearful place that I am in, one that you could not imagine. I had thought that it would be a pleasure, but it tears my soul. They have music in the evening; and fancy a person in my state listening to a violin! Chiefly, of course, they play trash; but sometimes there comes something beautiful, perhaps only a phrase. But it takes hold of my soul, it makes my eyes grow dim, it makes me shudder. It is all my pent-up agony, it is all my sleeping passion--why, it overwhelms me! And I am helpless--I can not get away from it! Remember that I have not heard any music for a year. It is like the voice of a dead love to me. I thought to-night that I could not bear it. * * * * * March 1st. To-day I had a day off, and I went to see the editor. I have been waiting, day by day, for a letter; it has been a month since I left it with him, and I found that he had not read it yet! “Mr. Stirling,” he said, “it is not my fault, it has simply been impossible. Now I will tell you what to do. I am going out of the city Sunday week, and I shall have a little leisure then. I do not see how I can get to it before that, so you take it and see if you can find some one else to read it meanwhile. If you will bring it to me Saturday, a week from to-day, I will promise you faithfully to read it on Sunday.” So I took the manuscript. I tried four publishing houses, but I could not find one that would read it in a week. I had to take the manuscript home. * * * * * March 3d. To-morrow ends my second week at the restaurant. It took me five days to find that place, but I am going to give it up to-morrow. I could not bear it, if it were to save my life. I can not bear the noise and the grease and the dirt, and the endless, endless vulgarity; but above all I can not bear the music. I can bear almost any degradation, I have found; but not when I have to listen to music! Besides, I can afford to give it up. I have made a fortune. I shall have over thirty dollars when I leave! * * * * * I have always been paid, I find, in proportion to the indignities I bore--in proportion to the amount I humiliated myself before the rich and the vulgar. These vile, bejeweled, befeathered women, these loathsome, swinish men--_these_ are the people who have money to spend. They go through the world scattering their largess with royal hand; and you can get down and gather it up out of the mud beneath their feet. * * * * * I come home at night worn out and weak, sometimes almost in a stupor; but I am never too ill to brood over that hideous state of affairs. I gaze at it and I wring my hands, and I cry: Oh my Father in heaven, will it always be like this?