Yes, sometimes I shrink from it; but I will do it--meaning what those words mean. I will fight that fight, I will live that life--to the last gasp; and it shall go forth into the world a living thing, a new well-spring of life. It shall be--I don't know what you call the thing, but when you have hauled your load halfway up the hill you put a block in the way to keep it from sliding back. That same thing has to be done to society. Man will never get behind the Declaration of Independence again, nor behind the writings of Voltaire again. We let Catholicism run around loose now, but that is because Voltaire cut its claws and pulled out all its teeth. * * * * * April 16th. I was thinking to-day, that The Captive would be an interesting document to students of style. Read it, and make up your mind about it; then I will tell you--the first line of it is almost the first line of blank verse I ever wrote in my life. I have read about the French artists, the great masters of style, and how they give ten years of their lives to writing things that are never published. But I have noticed that when they are masters at last, and when they do begin to publish--they very seldom have anything to say that I care in the least to hear. --My soul is centered upon _the thing_! Let it be a test. * * * * * I am trying to be an artist; but I have never been able to study style. I believe that the style of this great writer came from what he had to say. You think about how he said it; but he thought about what he was saying. It seemed strange to me when I thought of it. With all my trembling eagerness, with all my preparation, such an idea as “practise” never came to me. How could I cut the path until I had come to the forest? All my soul has been centered upon _living_. Since this book first took hold of me--eighteen months ago--I could not tell with what terrible intensity I have lived it. They said to me, “You are a poet; why don't you write verses for the magazines?” But I was not a writer of verses for the magazines. It has been a shrine that I have kept in the corner of my heart, and tended there. I have never gone near it, except upon my knees. There were days when I did not go near it at all, when I was weak, or distraught. But I knew that every day I was closer to the task, that every day my heart was more full of it. It was like wild music--it came to a climax that swept me away in spite of myself. To get the mastery of your soul, to hold it here, in your hands, at your bidding, to consecrate your life to that, to watch and pray and toil for that, to rouse yourself and goad yourself day and night for that; to thrill with the memory of great consecrations, of heroic sufferings and aspirations; to have the power of the stars in your heart, of nature, of history and the soul of man; _that_ is your “practise.” * * * * * April 17th.