--I have just nine dollars left of my money. I can not possibly make it do more than three or four weeks; and meanwhile I sit and brood and watch them go by in blank despair. * * * * * April 28th. I fight with myself--I must get that hellish thing out of my head! I went to a publisher's to-day--I didn't have the heart to go in, but I gave it to the clerk. It will take two or three weeks. This will be the eighth publisher. * * * * * I said to-day: “I will force myself to read, I will get myself together; I will not let myself be stamped to the mud by this man.” * * * * * There is nothing I can do about it--I only poison my whole soul thinking of it. I must put it out of my mind--I must work! * * * * * May 1st. I said to myself to-day: “Do you really believe that the world would heed that poem? Do you think that if any publisher published it, he could sell it?” I answered, “No, I do not.” If one took it I should think I was making a fool of him. I offer it on that chance! --What am I going to do? I do not know. I must try to find some work that does not tear me to pieces; and then perhaps some day I shall be able to write something different. * * * * * May 3d. My whole soul is in a turmoil these days. I struggle,--I can not give up while I live; but for what do I struggle? I am a man journeying in a thicket; I can not see one step before me. --I try to forget myself--I try to get interested in a book. But I never had but one kind of interest. I can not get used to living without a purpose, without enthusiasm, without morality. * * * * * I have no ideas any more. My whole life is shrunken and contracted. It is all stagnant--the garden of my soul is full of weeds. The broad fields that I used to cover, the far-off things I used to strive for--what have they to do with me now? * * * * * --I heard a gull to-day--far, far up--a mere speck in the sky. I started, as I watched him vanish. Then I said: “But you, too, will have to come down and mingle in the turmoil and the danger!” * * * * * May 6th. I go over into the Park--the springtime is in full glory, all the sights that used to thrill my heart are there; the splendor of new verdure and young flowers, the birds that I love rioting in song. But it moves me not in the least, it only makes me ten times more mournful. I turn away. Why, once an apple spray in blossom was to me a drunken ecstasy. --Shall I ever know what it is to be generous, and rich and royal in my heart again? To know that surging fulness of emotion that makes you think of gold and purple and regal pomp?