To live humbly and in oblivion would be my choice, but it will be my duty to do differently. I know enough about the human heart to know that the presence of one righteous man makes ten thousand unrighteous men angry and uncomfortable. And therefore, for the help of any whom it may comfort, and for the damnation of all the rest, I shall choose that the life I live and the thing I do shall be public; I shall choose that the millions in our country who are wearing out their frantic lives in the pursuit of the dollar, and the few who are squandering their treasures in drunken pomp, shall know that there is one man who laughs at them--whom all the millions of all of them could not buy--and who dwells in joy and worship in a heaven of which they can not even know. In other words, it is my idea not merely to make a poem of my life, but to publish the poem. I shall have other, and deeper, and kinder reasons also, for what I shall do. What I write in my books must be from my deepest heart, the confession of those moments of which I would speak to no living soul; it must be all my tenderness, and all my rapture, and all my prayer; and do you think it will come easily to me to put that out before the rough world to be stared at, to be bound up in a book and hawked about by commercial people?... (Here follows in the manuscript the outline of a plan for publishing the writer's works at cost.) * * * * * Would it not be interesting to me, if I could but pierce the future once, and see how long it is destined to be before I do so publish a book! I would do my work better, I fancy, for that.--But let it lie. I shall publish it some day surely, that I know at least. * * * * * Sometimes I can hardly realize what it will be to me when I have really won fame, when I can speak the things that so need speaking--and be heard. * * * * * May 25th. Line by line, page by page, I do it. I am counting the days now, wondering--longing. It is not merely the writing of it, it is the seeing of it--the planning and designing. Sometimes I brood over it for hours--I can not find what I want; and then suddenly a phrase flashes over me and like a train of gunpowder my thought goes running on--leaping, flying; and then the whole thing is plain as day. And I hold it all living in my hands. I am blessed with a good memory. In times of excitement such as that I seize all the best phrases and carry them away, and bury them out of sight, like a miser. They are my nuggets of gold. And sometimes I am a greedy miser, and stand perplexed; shall I go on and gather more, or shall I make off with the armful that I have? * * * * * May 26th. My religion is my Art. I have no prayer but my work.